I’ve tried searx, but even simple queries returned no results. I just want sometnig reasonably private that works and doesn’t turn the Web into a shopping mall.
Searx is pretty good, but you have to tell it to use search engines. It uses cookies to store settings by default, but they expire in about a month. You can also use a URL that stores the configuration, or good old !bangs. For example, !go will return results from Google - and it doesn’t compromise privacy since the Searx instance is the one making the query to Google, and then it passes the results to you.
Is there a guide on how to do this? Quite frankly, it sounds way too complicated for me - using search engine to learn how to use search engines and then having to set it up monthly…
Just click on the settings icon on any SearXNG instance. You will see a list of search engines with checkboxes to enable them and the bang notation you can add to your query to limit a search to just this engine.
My suggestion would be: try to get used to it, it’s really worth it.
