Is Searx actually working for everyone on Cloudron?

[marcusquinn]

My go-to test search phrase is "hello". And I have Google & Bing enabled as options, but results are very sparse:

Whereas Qwant.com by comparison gets a lot more:

And searx.org similarly comes back with a lot more too:

Searx on Cloudron last updated 6 months ago - am I missing something?

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn I find it works great some times and then just doesn't work at others, but I've never really investigated it any further than that (and the working/ not working status changes without any action on my part).

I tend to use my Searx for a while until it stops working, then switch to DuckDuckGo or something for a while and then I'll forget about Searx for a while and then get reminded of it again (like right now) and change back to it for a while until it stops working again... although I've just tested mine and it's currently not working so wont be making the switch again just yet.

It's a shame because when it works it works great.

Can't help wondering if we'd have more luck with SearXNG

https://docs.searxng.org/
https://github.com/searxng/searxng
https://github.com/searxng/searxng-docker

[marcusquinn]

@jdaviescoates It's strange because searx.org works nicely. Maybe just use that and forget about self-hosted for this one?

Of all the search engines I've tried, qwant.com is my daily-driver and has been for some time. There's quirks and things I don't like, and ublockorigin.com is essential on all browsers for removing ads, but of all the meta search engines, I find Qwant has all the results I need, and the Maps is perhaps the better of all the alternatives.

[ruihildt]

Not Searx related, but I encourage you all to test Kagi.

It's a paid search engine, business model based only on subscription, promising privacy first and customer focused, as they have no other incentive than making their users happy.

It's been my default search engine for 3 months and I'm very happy with the results, much less spammy results, favors websites with less tracking/ads, focus partly on smaller websites/blogs and some very nice customization and details.

I have no financial incentive, just very happy about spending 10$/month on it.

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn said in Is Searx actually working for everyone on Cloudron?:

@jdaviescoates It's strange because searx.org works nicely.

My Cloudron-hosted searx sometimes works nicely too. But then just doesn't. I may try installing on a few different hosts to see if it's an IP thing...

[marcusquinn]

@ruihildt I do like the look and idea of Kagi, and the Orion Browser Fine for personal, would be a bit of a conversation to have to roll out to 100 business users, most of which will just ignore it and change their home page to Google as if it were 2002 and do no evil was obviously not a binding promise.

[scooke]

@ruihildt Hi, I'm signing up at Kagi as I type, and they ask how I heard about them. Do you mind if I give them the url to your post here? Otherwise I'm just going to say, "Cloudron forums".

[ruihildt]

@scooke Feel free to link here. It's public.

[freediver]

@ruihildt Thanks for the mention! (Kagi Founder here)

@scooke We actually read 'where did you find us' , thanks for referencing it

@marcusquinn We are working on a team plan right now. It will be usage based (not by user, you will be able to add unlimited users to your team, and pay only for what they use - and users searching are usually users being productive).

[nebulon]

@freediver wow nice! I am also recently a very happy kagi customer. I was looking for a solid search engine which I can plainly pay for, for a long time, so thanks for all the hard work!

[marcusquinn]

@freediver Amazing - all fans here for what you're doing! Kagi Maps (beta) looks fantastic!

[marcusquinn]

Tip for anyone wanting to add a new search engine to Firefox. Right-click in the address bar in the space after the address...

[LoudLemur]

@jdaviescoates said in Is Searx actually working for everyone on Cloudron?:

@marcusquinn I find it works great some times and then just doesn't work at others, but I've never really investigated it any further than that (and the working/ not working status changes without any action on my part).

I tend to use my Searx for a while until it stops working, then switch to DuckDuckGo or something for a while and then I'll forget about Searx for a while and then get reminded of it again (like right now) and change back to it for a while until it stops working again... although I've just tested mine and it's currently not working so wont be making the switch again just yet.

It's a shame because when it works it works great.

Can't help wondering if we'd have more luck with SearXNG

https://docs.searxng.org/
https://github.com/searxng/searxng
https://github.com/searxng/searxng-docker

You are great, @jdaviescoates !

Why did they fork the Searx project to create SearxNG? Is it explained somewhere, and why the NG in the name?

[marcusquinn]

@jdaviescoates said in Is Searx actually working for everyone on Cloudron?:

@marcusquinn I find it works great some times and then just doesn't work at others, but I've never really investigated it any further than that (and the working/ not working status changes without any action on my part).

I tend to use my Searx for a while until it stops working, then switch to DuckDuckGo or something for a while and then I'll forget about Searx for a while and then get reminded of it again (like right now) and change back to it for a while until it stops working again... although I've just tested mine and it's currently not working so wont be making the switch again just yet.

It's a shame because when it works it works great.

Can't help wondering if we'd have more luck with SearXNG

https://docs.searxng.org/
https://github.com/searxng/searxng
https://github.com/searxng/searxng-docker

I missed this somehow. Gave it a try and does seem to actually work. Interface is still retro/janky, but just working is a quantum leap.

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn said in Is Searx actually working for everyone on Cloudron?:

I missed this somehow. Gave it a try and does seem to actually work. Interface is still retro/janky, but just working is a quantum leap.

Yeah, for some reason my searx instance just hasn't worked for yonks now.

In the past after I stopped using it for a while it would randomly start working great again, but it's been ages now and still no search results

[LoudLemur]

@jdaviescoates said in Is Searx actually working for everyone on Cloudron?:

@marcusquinn said in Is Searx actually working for everyone on Cloudron?:

I missed this somehow. Gave it a try and does seem to actually work. Interface is still retro/janky, but just working is a quantum leap.

Yeah, for some reason my searx instance just hasn't worked for yonks now.

In the past after I stopped using it for a while it would randomly start working great again, but it's been ages now and still no search results

I have had something similar reported. It might be possible to get things working again by systematically disabling some of the search engines. If you use brave to try a search, youmight be able to see an error message at the top right indicating which engine is not working.

I t seems that the URL isn't correctly figured anymore. Perhaps they changed their requirements. Also, try clicking on one of the tabs at the toop, e.g. General, and see if that brings in the results.

[jdaviescoates]

Out of interest I just uninstalled and re-installed (on a different domain) searx to see what would happen:

First search: No joy. But spotted a timeout error for one of the engines (Brave). Turned that off. Worked. Let's see how long it lasts...

[marcusquinn]

@LoudLemur Honestly, I've just become accustomed to using Qwant.com now, tried them all, and also really like Mojeek.com, but Searx just asks too much and offers to little to get a comparable utility. Ain't free if it costs me more time

[LoudLemur]

@marcusquinn said in Is Searx actually working for everyone on Cloudron?:

@LoudLemur Honestly, I've just become accustomed to using Qwant.com now, tried them all, and also really like Mojeek.com, but Searx just asks too much and offers to little to get a comparable utility. Ain't free if it costs me more time

I hadn't used Searx for a long while because it basically just dogpiles proprietary search engine results. What I found fun recently was that it had increased the number of search engines which it supports by default. This includes Qwant and also e.g. Mojeek and Gigablast.

I think these providers don't like Searx using them and they are deliberately screwing things. Can you remember back in the day with Scroogle? It was the first attempt to proxy google search and after it became popular, Google started making it difficult to get it to work.

[marcusquinn]

@LoudLemur Yeah, also Whoogle works pretty well.