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.
Every search engine will use your location. Especially when you make location based searches.
Do you think “restaurants in my area” should mean Earth? Or would you include the ISS also?
Ideally it should also include the restaurant at the end of the universe
How is that place still in business
A place like that relies on repeat customers
Any website you connect have access to your public IP for each request, hence location recommendations
This is true, and there are ways to obscure this such as using a VPN. However, my issue is not with the site seeing the IP, but rather with search engines providing biased results that are tailored to a specific location or user based on things like IP address or search history. They can snapshot my IP data, store it, and see it for all I care, but at the end of the day I want non-biased results from my search engine.
This is how search engines worked back in the 90s, so I know this is possible, and it seems like there must still be a search engine somewhere that provides this type of service.
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You’re right that searching “restaurants in my area” would not be a practical set of keywords to enter into a search engine that does not harvest location data. Instead, one would simply have to enter something specific, such as “restaurants in Edmonton” or wherever you are located at the time. However, I use this as a test to see if a search engine is altering results based on my location, which is concerning to me for the reasons I have explained above.
I’m looking for one that only responds to information that I deliberately input, so that if you and I both searched “anarcho-communism” (just for example), we would both see similar results, as opposed to me being more likely to see something biased toward agencies and trends in my area.
You use the word “harvest”. Which has a meaning along the lines of: Collect and save for later use. That’s not necessarily the case in your example though. Nothing needs to be collected or saved. It only needs the one IP, the one time that search is done, then it can be (and on most of your “tested” engines is) forgotten.
If you search for “restaurants in Edmonton”, you’ll likely receive exactly what you think.
If you search for “anarcho-communism” or something equally non-related to location. Than the IP won’t matter, beyond giving you results in your local language.
A truly blind search, would generally suck. You’d need nearly half a dozen qualifiers to find some relevancy.
Yes, this is what I want. Do you know of any search engines like this? Half a dozen sounds very fair. That’s like a second or two of typing.
That’s just a test though, to see if the search engine is using some form of tracking. If they searched for something like “news” or “hot milfs” they don’t want “hot milfs in your area”.
That isn’t tracking. That’s just using the IP the search came from to specify “my area”.
No one said it was tracking. Is using location as a search term without it being asked for. What OP is looking for is a search engine that would return different results for “restaurants” and “restaurants near [location]”
It is providing search results that are skewed toward trends and agencies in my location, so it is not a neutral or trustworthy search engine.
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True, but there is no requirement for a search engine to use such an algorithm to net results. I know this because I’ve been using search engines since the Windows 95 era. It’s possible to have what I seek. I’m just starting to question if anyone makes it.
I’m going to try the .onion version of DuckDuckGo later and see how that goes.
Update: 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.
Update 2: Ooops, I was using the clearnet version. I switched to the .onion version, which it turns out has to be done manually. I’m still getting very different results based on the exit node, although it’s much less obvious now. I’m thinking there might be some other .onion search engine that does what I need.