I’m looking into self-hosting a SearXNG instance for my own use. One thing I don’t get is how the results are aggregated if I’m using a local instance. Is it just going to all the configured search engines and making requests? If that’s the case, what’s the benefit of using SearXNG instead of just going to that search engine myself from a privacy perspective?
Yes, searxng is indeed making requests to all configured search engines.
The intended use of searxng is to proxy searches for many users, making tracking individuals difficult for the search engines, since everyone’s data is mixed together.
Using searxng does however also bring some benefits if used by one person only:
- no browser fingerprinting
- convenience: get results from across many search engines at once
I personally use a private instance mostly because I like the simple search results page.
From Wikipedia:
SearXNG removes private data from requests sent to search services. Result pages do not include advertisements or referral links. SearXNG itself stores little to no information that can be used to identify users.
The thing with SearXNG is that it will search in multiple search engines in parallel and then aggregate the results. If the same result appears in all of the queries, it’ll be weighted more than one that appears in only one of the results.
This way you get very neutral overall results compared to the biased ones Google usually delivers.
Also, you can easily define custom search engines, so you could make it search on your favourite website as well.
yeah, I’m well aware of these features. Just didn’t get the benefit of running a private instance vs. using a trusted public instance, which would hide my IP from the search engines.
Configure the TOR Duckduckgo and Brave search engines and only search over TOR. Switch circuits every x hours.
You can run your searxng on a VPS, and then it’ll hide your IP address.
In most cloud provides you can also change your machine’s IP address so there’s also that.
Self-host more Gemini content!
