Search Proxies - Whoogle and SearXNG - eviltoast

I’m trying to unfuk myself from Google. It’s an admirable goal, but damned difficult to do if you intend to continue using the Internet.

Except … well … you actually can do this. You can run a search proxy locally that will completely obfuscate you to the search engines and also strip out all of the tracking and ads they spit back at you.

I think there are more apps, but there are two primary search proxy platforms that are well developed and support running in a Docker container, so you could run it on any Windows or Linux box.

…

Whoogle https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search

Try this app first. Low system requirements. Super, super easy to setup. “Whoogle is intended to only ever be deployed to private instances by individuals of any background, with as little effort as possible.” Let Whoogle be your gateway to running a search proxy.

I’ve run Whoogle for almost 6 months now. Google has tried to break it twice. Had to adjust some docker params and upgrade the LXC to fix. I’m extremely satisfied with Whoogle.

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SearXNG - https://github.com/searxng/searxng

This app is the all around better tool, but its much more complicated to manage. It’s had a fractious background, forked from an older project called SearX. The author of Whoogle says, “I’m a huge fan of Searx though and encourage anyone to use that instead if they want access to other search engines/a different UI/more configuration.”

I’ve just deployed SearXNG today based on benbusby’s recommendation. Ya know, I was a Whoogle fan, but this is just a step above. 140+ search engines, it looks awesome, and its got a large contributor list with lots of recent commits.

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I run Proxmox VE, and both of these apps have been given the tteck treatment for easy setup.

Whoogle - https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/scripts?id=whoogle

SearXNG - https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/scripts?id=searxng

  • dbtngOPEnglish
    1·
    7 days ago

    I have been getting rate limit errors from Google, forces a captcha. Its occurring mostly on a laptop thats on a different subnet from whoogle/searxing,. It happens occasionally when it tries to use google directly. Whoogle itself will spit a rate limit error, but I think it gives you a quick refresh button. Searxing is designed to paper over search engine failures, and always gives results.

    I hven’t done much data gathering, no reboots, browser troubleshooting. I’ve got a lot going with my network, that laptop is also on a vpn, and its hard to lay the blame on any one thing. Its also not an isssue, because I usually have several terminals open where I could search without pissing off google.

    I’m enjoying running these apps. I very much want to get away from google. You pretty much need to run a search proxy in order to cut those ties. Gonna stand up NextCloud soon and stop using google apps. I’m committed. This is the way forward.

    I’m probably going to run YaCy. They have some easy starter methods, but it looks like something I want to approach with a plan. Haven’t had time yet. If google gets more inconvenient, the YaCy project might get prioritised.

  • dbtngOPEnglish
    2·
    26 days ago

    The Whoogle UI. A search for bl0rp.

  • dbtngOPEnglish
    2·
    26 days ago

    The SearXNG UI. A search for bl0rp.

    OMG. I just realized that’s probably supposed to be pronounced like “searching”. What an awful name. I do like the app tho.

    It’s giving me deep search results. Like I used to be able to get out of google. And Alta Vista before that. All kinds of weird stuff. Oh boy. I forgot the internet could look like this. I might get lost in a couple weird websites. You know. Like the old days …

    • johntashMEnglish
      2·
      21 days ago

      OMG. I just realized that’s probably supposed to be pronounced like “searching”. What an awful name. I do like the app tho.

      I’ll be honest, I’ve been using searxng for years and never realized that either.

  • johntashMEnglish
    2·
    21 days ago

    If you want another fun project, check out https://yacy.net/

    It’s a self-hosted search engine/crawler. I don’t run it anymore, but I did for a while and it was kind of neat. I basically imported all of my browser history into it and set up searxng to show results from yacy (in addition to google etc) so it felt like more curated results sometimes.

    • dbtngOPEnglish
      2·
      21 days ago

      Lol. My first reaction was … “whaa …? hmm.” I don’t even understand what it does yet. Yup, this looks like something I’d mess with.