Mojeek, A Search Alternative

Overview

Recently, I received a comment on an article I wrote last year exposing Google’s Online Insights Study. I figured that the commenter found the article by doing an internet search. An individual searching for “Online Insights Study” probably received an offer in the mail (as I did) and is looking for information on whether they should join Google’s Online Insights Study. Therefore, my article would be one of the first articles a searcher would want to read.

 Since Google is the largest search engine, and the article was not exactly positive about Google’s Online Insights Study, I was curious how various search engines would rank the article. The results were interesting and highlighted the uniqueness of the Mojeek search engine.

The Search Results

I used various search engines to search for “Online Insights Study”.  I used the Brave browser with a New Private Window to ensure that there would be no history in the browser to influence the results for each search engine. From each search engine result, I counted everything shown as an individual item except subitems (for example 6 items in a Reddit listing counted as 1 item).

Here are the results:

As you can see, most search engines buried my article. Google, the largest search engine, ranks the article at 167! Startpage, which uses Google for its searches, ranks it at 52. Although Yandex ranked my article highly, I had trouble opening the sight and many results were in Russian, so it may not be a viable option for many.

Mojeek Stood Out

Many readers are probably not aware of the Mojeek search engine, but they should be. As you can see from my search above, Mojeek was the only viable search engine that ranked my article highly. Mojeek bills itself as “The alternative search engine that puts the people who use it first”.

Privacy

Many search engines will track everything they can about you, but Mojeek is a private search engine. Mojeek has a strict no-tracking privacy policy. Google, Bing, and other search engines gather as much information as they can about you. They use this information to increase their revenues by offering targeted ads and services. Mojeek does not. When you search Mojeek, your results are based entirely on the keywords you typed in. Mojeek does not possess any previous identifying information about you, such as IP addresses, search history, or click behavior. The results will be ranked according to what their algorithm considers the most relevant.

Independent Seach Index

Like Google and Bing, Mojeek is a crawler-based search engine that crawls the web like a spider, automatically updating and adding new pages to its search index as it goes. This allows Mojeek to develop, build, and maintain its own searchable databases of web pages, and its own ranking algorithm.

Most search engines are metasearch engines. They rely on the results of other search engines to retrieve their results and provide rankings. Therefore, Mojeek’s algorithm is designed to better suit keyword-based searching. Having their own algorithm gives Mojeek the ability to provide genuine independent and bias-free search results.

Interface

Mojeek presents a clean and simple user interface. The search page opens with a search box. In the upper right corner is the option to search on the Web (default), Images, News, Substack (search content from Substack’s independent writers), and Emotions (search content based on 5 emotions – ‘love’, ‘laughter’, ‘surprise’, ‘sadness’ and ‘anger’).

Bottom Line

Many readers are probably not familiar with the Mojeek search engine. Mojeek is a private search engine that does not track any personal identifying information, such as IP addresses, search history, or click behavior. Mojeek is a crawler-based search engine that has its own searchable databases of web pages, and its own ranking algorithm. This algorithm is designed to better suit keyword-based searching which provides more independent and bias-free search results. DCT readers may want to use Mojeek as a search alternative to the big search engines.

Let me know in the comments if you have used Mojeek and if you have found their searches to be more biased-free and relevant than the others.

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