Hi, I think I’m looking for a unicorn. I would like to use a search engine that does not alter results based on things like location data harvested from my IP or prior search keywords, but that only responds to deliberate input from the user (keywords and syntax).
The reason is I find it very disturbing how people can be influenced by results that target them. This became a great concern in my mind when I first [made the mistake of] trying Tik Tok for the first time. Before it had collected any data from me, it was clear that my location and the interests of people in this area were strongly influencing results, with most of the content being of the radical alt-right variety. While results from a typical search engine may not be so dramatically skewed, it’s still troubling that we may be influenced in some way by results tailored to appeal to us or to other users in our households / locales.
So far, these are the ones I’ve tried (I won’t even mention search engines like Bing and Google, because … obviously):
1. Qwant: This was my first hope since it promotes itself as “the search engine that doesn’t know anything about you.” Upon searching “restaurants in my area,” this bold claim was immediately disproven.
2. Startpage: I used this for a long time before I noticed that results were being altered. It was subtle. While Startpage does not appear to use location information from my IP, I happened to search a specific address while in another town, and the day after this I started noticing results that heavily skewed toward that location, so apparently it does change search results based on which keywords you’ve searched before, which is just as troubling. Add to this the fact that they are suspect in the first place, being a System1 product, and it makes me feel ill at ease.
3. SearXNG: So I realize there’s a lot of customization one can do within SearXNG, but so far the public instances I’ve tried have all clearly netted results that are location-based.
4. Kagi: I can’t really afford to use this, but I had heard good things about it, so I tried the free trial. It was immediately giving me results based on my location. I’d say it was just as bad as mainline search engines such as Google and Bing.
5. DuckDuckGo HTML: This was my most recent attempt at finding a search engine. I knew from experience that standard DuckDuckGo changed results based on location, but I had read some information that led me to believe the HTML version does not. Unfortunately, it does.
Does anyone know of any search engine I can try that only nets results based on my input without trying to think for me? I’m exhausted lol
Edit: I just thought of this, and now I’m curious. I don’t know much about how Tor works, but do search engines with .onion URLs yield results from the general internet, or only .onion sites?
Edit 2: This is … extremely odd. Simplified explanation: Tor connects you via a specific circuit of nodes, which you can see by clicking an icon next to the address bar. The last node it connects to is the exit node. But here’s the thing: Even the Tor edition of DDG insists on providing location-biased results that match the location of the exit node. I tested this by running a search on DDG and then connecting via a different circuit several times. Each time, the results were tailored to the location of the exit node. This is very disappointing. I’m going to do some searching and try some different search engines, but I think it’s safe to say I will not find what I’m looking for in any fork of DuckDuckGo, not even the .onion version.
Edit 3: https://wiby.me/ This … might be it. This looks promising!
Edit 4: https://searxng.no-logs.com/ Another one, possibly? It appears to provide a lot of results around Stockholm though, so maybe it’s not totally location-neutral. It’s easy enough to trick a search engine into thinking you’re at another location if that’s the goal, but the goal here is authentic results.
Edit 5: Someone pointed out to me that https://www.mojeek.com/ has a setting to search with “no location bias,” and so far it appears it does not alter results based on location. I’m going to try this for a while.
Mainline DuckDuckGo? Care to tell me where that is? There’s an “all regions” option in settings, but it’s non-functional in that DDG will still provide location-based results, even in a private tab or another browser (I have Librewolf, Waterfox, and Firefox on my Windows PC for testing).
DuckDuckGo HTML on the other hand lacks such a setting, but it is much more subtle about changing results based on location. It was actually a fluke that I discovered this due to a technical problem I was having with the site’s interaction with Firefox.
This one. I haven’t tested it systematically but it works well enough for me. If I search just for ‘restaurants’, the map will use my location, but the regular search results are tripadvisor and opentable results for Chicago, Bronx, and Milwaukee, none of which are remotely close to me.
Edit: Just realised the marking wasn’t saved, but the toggle is right above the map.
That’s what I don’t want it to do, though. It may not appear at first that it is customizing other results based on location, but if it’s doing this, then it’s certain that your results are not location-neutral. For example, I’d be much more likely to see far-right extremism served to me by this search engine because of the political climate and existing institutions in the place where I live. I want something that does not use IP data at all to serve results, but only uses deliberate input. If I want to find restaurants in my town, I would have to search for “restaurants in [name of city] [name of state] [name of country]”
Keywords and syntax only, no locational customization of my results.
I think the map part is separate, the regular results didn’t take my IP into account from what I can tell. But I can’t guarantee that of course. Otherwise you could also check out mojeek. From their about page:
That sounds promising! I’ll try it.