searxng/searxng
Searxng
This project is a privacy-focused, self-hosted metasearch engine that aggregates results from a wide array of web, academic, and media sources into a single, unified interface. By acting as a proxy between the user and external search providers, it strips identifying headers and tracking parameters from requests, ensuring that search activity remains anonymous and protected from third-party profiling.
The platform distinguishes itself through a modular, plugin-based architecture that allows for extensive customization of search behavior, result filtering, and interface branding. It supports advanced privacy features such as routing traffic through the Tor network and proxying external assets like images and favicons to prevent IP address leakage. Users can manage their own instances, configuring search engines, language preferences, and security policies to suit specific deployment needs.
The service includes a comprehensive suite of tools for managing search aggregation, including sliding-window rate limiting to prevent abuse and persistent key-value caching to improve response latency. It supports diverse content types, rendering specialized results for academic papers, media, and structured data, while providing administrative APIs for programmatic control over instance settings and engine availability.
The software is designed for flexible deployment, supporting containerized environments and providing automated scripts for installation and maintenance. Detailed documentation and configuration files allow for granular control over the search experience, from defining custom search shortcuts to enforcing strict access controls on specific engines.