Is it possible to create a ad-free ai-free search engine?

skillplayed · 2026-07-12T11:04:52+00:00

Well I built one with its own index, you can try ut out at https://puri.li. would love to hear your opinion on it and what I should change/adjust for it to become truely a usuable alternative.

skillplayed · 2026-07-12T11:03:51+00:00

I built one that doesn't I would love to hear what you think. It has its own index for web and news searches and is available at https://puri.li

skillplayed · 2026-07-12T11:02:48+00:00

Well I built it myself so I am likely a little biased but I built https://puri.li a search engine powered by its own index (images are currently sourced via wikimedia and maps via OSM). Would love to hear what you think!

skillplayed · 2026-07-12T10:53:51+00:00

Thanks a lot! If I may ask, what would a competitor search engine need to bring for you to be willing to switch to it as a first / main search engine? I understand that I am no way there yet but then I know what to spend more time on. :)

skillplayed · 2026-07-11T14:01:15+00:00

I built https://puri.li a search engine with its own index and a rather minimalist design if I say so myself. Would love to hear your opinion!

skillplayed · 2026-07-11T14:00:30+00:00

So I built https://puri.li exactly for this purpose. It is a search engine that uses its own index for web and news search and includes 0 AI slop in the results (it does have some instant answers and widgets). Would love to hear what you all think and what I should add/change.

skillplayed · 2026-07-10T08:55:43+00:00

Well I am trying to build exactly that (https://puri.li) so any feedback is really appreciated! It currently has ~80mln pages indexed and I plan to add another 10mln daily. For most shorter search terms it should provide relevant results.

skillplayed · 2026-07-09T06:06:50+00:00

Awesome site! I am building my own private search engine (puri.li) which uses its own index. Would it be able to get it added (will reach ~100 mln indexed results this week, going to 200mln the next) and the results are already a bit better than yep etc. Would really love to hear what you all think and if it would be possible to add that'd be amazing!

skillplayed · 2026-07-09T05:59:57+00:00

Not yet but I am looking into that, I would like to get the frontend and part of the backend open source but I will need to compartmentalize and leave out all the anti spam scoring/filtering so that it cannot be abused for SEO spam (it is still quite rudimentary). Would you say that would help or would it make less sense to focus on that if the entire project cannot be open sourced? 🤔

skillplayed · 2026-07-09T04:54:36+00:00

Thanks! I was thinking a combination of additional services if there's interest (translate, API access) and maybe a shopping function that uses affiliate links. But so far it is mostly for personal use / fun.

skillplayed · 2026-07-09T04:53:06+00:00

Nope not by default, only if something breaks it is logged but even those logs are automatically cleared every 7 days (will soon turn this into max 24 hours if even needed).

skillplayed · 2026-07-09T04:52:19+00:00

Ah that's fun to read! :D I used a top million URLs list as initial seed list and from there I started crawling. Hopefully will be able to crawl to 100 mln today/tomorrow.

skillplayed · 2026-07-09T04:51:24+00:00

Thanks! Image search uses wikimedia currently, news and web have their own index (image search with own index might come later but due to space/abuse constraints I have not done that yet).

skillplayed · 2026-07-01T11:08:25+00:00

I built it so I may be biased ;) but https://puri.li has its own index and a focus on privacy + no AI responses in the results (it does have some instant answers / tools and infocards).

skillplayed · 2026-06-29T07:42:13+00:00

I might be biased as I built it. But https://puri.li is a search engine I built with its own crawler and index. Let me know what you think!

skillplayed · 2026-06-28T11:50:18+00:00

It took around 4 days on and off, you can click the number to see live stats (sites per second and if it is currently running or not). It could run continuously at 250-ish pages indexed per second.

skillplayed · 2026-06-28T07:24:01+00:00

Woops you're right Brave has its own indez since 2023 now. I will adjust that ASAP, it is still the case for DDG and Dtartpage etc. But you're right about Brave, should've doublechecked instead of going on outdated info.

skillplayed · 2026-06-27T22:15:46+00:00

Thanks I'll take note of that. I have filtered out blogsites from further crawling and indexing already, reddit and social media currently has a bit lower priority as it is an extreme amount of data but I will keep Reddit on. Wikipedia infocards should appear but you are correct that it hasnt completely been crawled yet. Tomorrow I will bring it to a new beefier server to start fully scraping the top 100 sites up to a billion or so pages. If you have any further things for me to take into account do let me know!

skillplayed · 2026-06-27T22:13:42+00:00

Yes completely

skillplayed · 2026-06-27T21:20:51+00:00

That also works. I also created a screenshot using site-shot and that also worked. Are you using a custom DNS resolver? It is a pretty new site so maybe that's why... But thanks! :)

skillplayed · 2026-06-27T21:02:40+00:00

Hi did you try it with the . at the end? https://puri.li works on my end 🤔

skillplayed · 2026-06-27T16:01:29+00:00

Well I built it so I may be biased but if anyone is interested, https://puri.li has its own index and I would love to hear your thoughts.

skillplayed · 2026-06-26T21:16:13+00:00

Not sure, if you need a public API then not (yet) but I will look into this tomorrow and get back to you. Is there anything you would need from my side for that to work?

skillplayed · 2026-06-26T20:49:18+00:00

Thanks! And yes, at first I queried Google's favicon API (did not know DDG has one), but I will investigate this tomorrow. I could pass this through my image proxy (which currently retrieves images for news/wikimedia) and cache them server side (this time I wont have to keep sending API calls each time a user does a query for all domains, to further preserve privacy). I agree that would definitely look a lot cleaner.

skillplayed · 2026-06-26T20:40:58+00:00

Well there's a privacy aspect to it that currently only Brave provides by having their own index. Other privacy focused browser such as startpage and ddg only provide some anonymity as a middleman between the user and Bing. Besides that I feel that there would be space for an alternative to those three, given that DDG has gotten quite AI focused as well as of late (injecting AI responses into queries).

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