Building a Privacy-Respecting Metasearch Engine SearX

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Explore Searx, a Metasearch Engine Respecting Privacy

What Is the Use

  • Upholds privacy, leaving no traces on the server

  • Enables searching for a vast array of information

  • Allows categorization of search results: files, images, music, news, academic sources, videos and more

  • Features:

    English Chinese
    Features

    - Self hosted
    - No user tracking
    - No user profiling
    - About 70 supported search engines
    - Easy integration with any search engine
    - Cookies are not used by default
    - Secure, encrypted connections (HTTPS/SSL)
    - Hosted by organizations, such as La Quadrature du Net, which promote digital rights    		 Features:

    - Self-hosted
    - No tracking of users
    - No creation of user profiles
    - Supports approximately 70 search engines
    - Seamless integration with any search engine
    - Default lack of cookie usage
    - Ensures secure, encrypted connections (HTTPS/SSL)
    - Hosted by organizations advocating for digital rights, like La Quadrature du Net

How to Use

Try it out here: SearX Proxy

Related Content

Implementation Method

docker-compose.yml

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version: "3"
services:
    searx:
        volumes:
            - ./searx:/etc/searx
        ports:
            - 8099:8080
        environment:
            - BASE_URL=http://localhost:8099/
        restart: always
        image: searx/searx

Settings explanation: searx > settings.yml

Searx Metasearch Station Configuration for Proxy

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outgoing: # communication with search engines
    request_timeout : 2.0        # default timeout in seconds, can be overridden by the engine
    # max_request_timeout: 10.0  # the maximum timeout in seconds
    useragent_suffix : ""        # information such as an email address to the administrator
    pool_connections : 100       # Number of different hosts
    pool_maxsize : 10            # Number of simultaneous requests per host
# uncomment below section if you want to use a proxy
    proxies:
        http:
            - http://192.168.6.116:8080
#            - http://proxy2:8080
        socks:
            - socks5://192.168.6.116:8080
        https:
            - http://192.168.6.116:8080

proxies :

Specify one or more proxies you wish to utilize, refer to requests proxies. If there are multiple proxies for one protocol (http, https), requests to the engines are evenly distributed.

Removing Unnecessary Languages

Search language

Adjust Locales in settings.yml (delete the excessive language section at the end; then set the default UI language), merely changing the Change the language of the layout

Decided against deletion;

Since the search results default to English (US), manually switching languages implies a search for content specific to that language environment, which is often unnecessary

Due to the proxy server’s Japanese IP, Google search results may display some Japanese content

Adjusting the Number of Rows on the Page

Upon submitting a search, the page typically displays around 9 - 11 rows of results

Page size

Question: Increase results per page #1585

Linked to #2505. Searx does not currently support adjusting the number of results displayed per page.

Inspiration

Privacy-respecting metasearch engine