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Ask HN: Is there a search engine which excludes the world's biggest websites?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there a search engine which excludes the world's biggest websites?

#11

Post by technotarek »

chasd00 wrote: post #8

in the same vein, it would be awesome to search for a product to buy with the results being ecomm websites owned by people in my area. A way to "shop local" online.

ATTIC: A visual search and discovery engine to help you find the latest products from small, unique businesses near you.

https://attic.city/

Currently for three product tiers (furniture, home decor, and fashion/clothing) in 14 major US markets, where stores within ~100 miles or a ~2 hour drive are considered as part of the market.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the founders.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a search engine which excludes the world's biggest websites?

#12

Post by lazyjones »

noad wrote: post #4

This is a great question, I also want a way to search the internet but exclude all major media domains as well as any company over a certain size. So I just want to search through old blogs, SO, non-corporate social media, weird forums, etc. There are so many cool things I remember reading on the web like 10-20 years ago that still exist that are so buried now on Google they might as well not exist. Nowadays searchin…

This is somewhat ironic because 20 years ago, hobbyists would frequently put their obscure personal pages on Geocities and other large corporation's web space.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a search engine which excludes the world's biggest websites?

#13

Post by rozab »

turnipla wrote: post #2

Google used to let you blacklist websites many moons ago, that would go a long way already. Now there are a few extensions that do that, but obviously they only hide the results from each page, so sometimes you will see pages with 2 results, if any at all.

Would be easy to just inject a negative site clause into the query, e.g. `-site:fandom.com`

Re: Ask HN: Is there a search engine which excludes the world's biggest websites?

#16

Post by [deleted] »

noad wrote: post #4

This is a great question, I also want a way to search the internet but exclude all major media domains as well as any company over a certain size. So I just want to search through old blogs, SO, non-corporate social media, weird forums, etc. There are so many cool things I remember reading on the web like 10-20 years ago that still exist that are so buried now on Google they might as well not exist. Nowadays searchin…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is there a search engine which excludes the world's biggest websites?

#17

Post by generalpass »

chaos_a wrote: post #7

https://wiby.me/ exists to solve this exact problem. I've found some pretty neat/odd websites on it in the past.

It is a carefully curated directory, which is problematic.

For example, I submitted Pizza Hut's archived original web page [1], but it wasn't added.

Even for a search engine exposing niches, updating a directory manually will likely be too slow, unless the directory is maintaining a single nich (e.g., unladen airspeed of every species of swallow), but then we end up with some insane number of search engines and how to select which one?

[1] http://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html

Re: Ask HN: Is there a search engine which excludes the world's biggest websites?

#18

Post by chrisfrantz »

rozab wrote: post #13
turnipla wrote: post #2

Google used to let you blacklist websites many moons ago, that would go a long way already. Now there are a few extensions that do that, but obviously they only hide the results from each page, so sometimes you will see pages with 2 results, if any at all.

Would be easy to just inject a negative site clause into the query, e.g. `-site:fandom.com`

Looks like google limits search query length to 2048 characters. That’s probably enough room to exclude a majority of the biggest names.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a search engine which excludes the world's biggest websites?

#19

Post by alibaba_x »

chasd00 wrote: post #8

in the same vein, it would be awesome to search for a product to buy with the results being ecomm websites owned by people in my area. A way to "shop local" online.

Shopify released a mobile app recently for this exact purpose.
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