We’re building – Mojeek – the world’s alternative search engine which respects your privacy, and provides its own unique and unbiased results. Ask us anything.

How is it better/different than Duck Duck Go?

The main difference is Mojeek is a crawler-based search engine, whereas DuckDuckGo is a metasearch engine. Crawler search engines build their own index of web pages, whereas metasearch engines build on top of other crawlers, like DuckDuckGo whose organic results primarily come from Bing.

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We believe having full control of our own algorithm is also what makes us potentially better than DDG.

What does unbiased mean in the context of a search engine? How are other search engines biased? Is bias the same as personalised results - and then, isn't that also a disadvantage?

Bias in search engines can mean many things, from manipulation of the results, or preferential display for advertisers or a point of view. It could also include personalised results and we don‘t believe it‘s that much of a disadvantage, because most of the personalisation that occurs is for targeted advertising. Whereas, when you‘re on search engine your results are based on your keywords you type in, to a larger degree than your history. Who knows if other search engines are biased, some people believe so, and whether they are or not, it shows the importance that other choices exist.

Are you using this AMA to test your bandwidth?

No. It was for feedback and any ideas that may come from that.

I did a couple of test searches and your site is pretty fast. I like the context cards (eg wiki definitions). However your ordering algorithm seems like it could do with a lot of improvement (I imagine that it's the most complex part of a search engine). How do you plan to improve the ordering algo?

Our algorithm is highly configurable on a search by search basis, so we’re continuously improving it as well as the systems we use to test those improvements. At sometime in the future we may consider making some of these algorithm settings configurable via the UI.

Could you explain the "emotions" search? Is the emotion supposed to be how a person will react to the results? Like, search "frowny face" to find things that will make you angry?

Not OP but try it out its clever. The results returned fit the emotion. I searched for 'dirtbag'. Angry face emoji returned stories of dirtbags going to prison, happy emoji was about loveable dirtbags and Avril Lavigne 'Teenage Dirtbag' concert tickets...etc. Nice work u/FjjB

Oh, that is pretty neat! I searched "science fiction". The happy face gave me scifi-themed cartoons, the "wow face" gave me amazing science discoveries, etc. Cool stuff!

Cheers, glad you like it!

What do you have in place to prevent websites from using spammy techniques to manipulate your results?

How did you choose a name with a J which is not linked to any major brands and could result in failing to produce brand memorability throughout different languages? Name some big brands that use a J.

You mentioned you would consider advertising for funding. How are you going to provide advertising if you do not collect user data? No advertisers are going to want to pay to advertise to 100% of your audience.

How does your (and will your algorithm) compete with algorithms that have been in constant development for dozens of years?

Fair point, we’ve never thought about the ‘J’ in the name as problem before. Some people seem to love the name and others not so. It’s also a matter of coming up with a new one that’s available, then we might consider it.

A major component of the search engine is to build algorithms that satisfy a user's query. Even Google's algorithm which is considered state of the art is constantly evolving and having to adapt to what user's are searching for.

User data is not a necessity for advertisers (and is also how DDG monetise). The fact that a user is entering a search query describing their intentions provides enough information to an advertiser about the intentions of the user. Having a browsing history of the user such as what Google would have for example, might be useful in further deciding a user's intention and for targeted advertising when on sites other than Google search, but this comes at the sacrifice of their privacy.

Our algorithm is designed to return the most relevant results without the need for personal user data, and has also been developed over many years. Now we just need to grow the index considerably.

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Could you throw some raw numbers at us? How large is the index in TB? How many pages are indexed vs. unindexed? How much bandwidth does the crawler burn per month?

Our search index now contains 2.3 billion web pages and we aim on doubling this by the end of year, and again next. But I don’t have the other numbers at hand, so we’ll have to get back to you on this one, hopefully by tomorrow.

Why are your crawler and indexing sources not open? Do you not agree that closed source and trust is a hard sell, and, in the current media clime, justifiably so?

We value open source software, and note the likes of Gigablast who have shared their code on Github.

Search engines are a curious beast where there needs to be an element of secrecy in order for results not to be manipulated en masse by those who wish to manipulate search engine results. It's a well known game of cat and mouse between search engines and search engine marketers. Sometimes this is known as SEO, on a more technical level it's been called "adverserial information retreival". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_information_retrieval

While Mojeek prides itself on unbiased results, we also recognise that having transparent algorithms could lead to a degrading of results. It is a fine line to follow and one that we continually evaluate in order to satisfy all user's requirements.

Would it be similar to the DuckDuckGo search engine?

Yes in respect to privacy, but Mojeek is a crawler-based search engine and therefore we have our own search index and algorithm.

So eventually DDG will probably just incorporate results from Mojeek as well, like it does other search engines, and I don’t need to change anything? Sweet. 😉

Well yes, if they want to pay us for them. And then at least their back end search provider will be privacy focused as well and have similar values.

Without tracking, how are you going to monetize this? 100 servers isn't cheap.

Having our own technology gives us plenty of options, including API access, licensing, advertising and more.

When you say you will provide with unbiased results how will this effect the markup behind websites?

This doesn‘t affect the markup behind any website. Providing unbiased results is just a value we hold strong.

Do you have any plans on how to compete in a market that is so significantly dominated by a single player?

Our plans right now are simple; build up our index with the aim of retaining more users. At the same time keeping our costs to a minimum so we can still be a viable and successful company without necessarily challenging Google directly (although that would be the ultimate aim). Also, more and more people are becoming aware of the importance of privacy and the need for an alternative, which is only helping us further.