About searchmysite.net

What is the search engine and why should I use it?

The searchmysite.net search engine is a niche search, focussing on the "indieweb" or "small web" or "digital gardens", i.e. non-commercial content, primarily personal and independent websites.

If you want to research people's personal experiences of or deep-dives into certain topics, hobbies or interests, then you may find the searchmysite.net public search useful to avoid having to wade through all the marketing websites and blog spam that fill the big search engines. It differs from the commercial search engines because it:

• Indexes only user-submitted and moderated sites, rather than indexing the entire internet with all of its spam, "search engine optimisation" and "click-bait" content.
• Does not show adverts and promotes advert-free results pages, to remove the incentives for spam and surveillance capitalism.
• Aims to have a sustainable and user-aligned operating model, planning to pay running costs via the "search as a service" features, rather than relying on advertising which could put it in conflict with user needs.
• Offers an unusually high level of privacy for a search engine, thanks to the operating model which is not based on advertising or collecting personal information for sale to advertisers (see the Privacy Policy for full details).
• Is fully open source, for even greater transparency of the searching, ranking and indexing processes, and for greater community involvement in improving the service.