I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

We will be running Sonic Femslash Week this June!

This event will run from Monday the 15th of June 2026 – Sunday the 21st of June 2026. There are prompts for each day, but I will still reblog late submissions for each!

No sign-ups required, just create for whatever prompts you're interested in!

Prompts:

Day 1: Working/Chilling

Day 2: Fashion/Music

Day 3: Firsts/Prototype and Classic designs

Day 4: Summer/Winter

Day 5: Struggles/Awe

Day 6: AU/Celebrations

Day 7: Free Day!

We'll be using the tag "sonicfemslashweek26" (tagged on this post!) and you can tag this blog whilst posting!

You can make any kind of art that you like for these, including fanart, fanfic, poetry, analysis posts, cosplay, playlists, etc... But please no AI-generated content!

This is an SFW event

AUs, polyships, and OC x Canon are all welcome, as well as transfem headcanons of canon male characters, but not just genderbends of them*

*That last past is the way it is because I absolutely want to welcome and encourage trans headcanons (E.G F/F Metamy with transfem Metal) but I don’t want this event which is supposed to be about boosting femslash in the fandom to just turn into people genderbending their favourite M/M ships (E.G Classic rule 63 Sonadow. If you headcanon them both as transfem, and create something about that, great, that’s perfect! But if it’s just a genderbend to get into the event, then that’s sort of against the spirit of it all)

And if you have any questions, my askbox is open, so feel free to send me an ask! 💖

The current FAQ can be found here, and if you’re curious about last year’s event and its submissions, you can check out out submissions by prompts here

We also have an AO3 collection found here!

Pronouns

An accent

Here are some of the reviews: