30 Minutes On

Creating a Custom Search Engine

How do search engines work?
Exploring alternative search engines like Marginalia, SearXNG, Carrot2, and Ecosia
Creating your own custom search engine using Google's Programmable Search

Direct alternative to Google, works similarly but can bring up different results (including for images): Bing
Get results from multiple search engines at once, less tracking of your data, no shopping or AI overview: SearXNG
Privacy-focused, has some Google-like features: DuckDuckGo
Find off-beat, unique, non-commercial sites: Marginalia
Cluster your search results by topic: Carrot2
Public benefit corporation, plants trees for every search,
uses Bing's search index: Ecosia
Regional search engines like Yandex (70% of the market in Russia) and Baidu (50% of market in China)

Learn more about the global search engine market (Statista)

We'll be using Google's Programmable Search Engine.
Instead of searching the entire web, this tool lets you curate the sources (sites) that are included
You also get some control over how the search functions (e.g. how keywords are weighted, how results are ranked and displayed)

Go to Google Programmable Search
Add a new search
Give it a name
Enter the URLs of the sites you want to search. Formatting matters!

To search an entire site, format URL patterns like this:
*.threadtheory.ca/*
*.inquirer.com/*
Start with an asterisk, then a period. Leave out the scheme (https) and the subdomain (including www), unless you only want to search that specific subdomain. Follow the URL with a slash and an asterisk.
Choose your search settings (e.g. include image search)
Try it out! Add 1-2 sites and test, then add more (up to 5,000). It's an iterative process!