Privacy-first web search with DuckDuckGo-style bangs (!w, !yt, !gh)

SearXNG Search

Privacy-respecting metasearch engine that anonymizes searches and aggregates results from 250+ engines.

Quick Start

Search the web using the bundled script:

python3 scripts/search.py "your query"

Returns JSON with titles, URLs, and content snippets.

Common Workflows

Basic Web Search

python3 scripts/search.py "OpenClaw AI agent" --num 5

News Search

python3 scripts/search.py "latest tech news" --categories news

Localized Search

python3 scripts/search.py "Python Tutorial" --lang de

Multi-Category Search

python3 scripts/search.py "machine learning" --categories general,science --num 10

Bang Searches (Direct Engine)

Wikipedia
python3 scripts/search.py "Albert Einstein" --bang w

YouTube
python3 scripts/search.py "python tutorial" --bang yt

GitHub
python3 scripts/search.py "openclaw" --bang gh

Reddit
python3 scripts/search.py "best laptop 2026" --bang r

Bangs are more granular than categories and search directly on specific engines.

Privacy Features

SearXNG protects your privacy through multiple layers:

1. Randomized Browser Fingerprints - Generates a new fake browser profile for each search query (version, OS, screen resolution, language)

2. IP Masking - Search engines see the SearXNG instance IP, not yours

3. No Cookies - Never forwards cookies to external search engines

4. No Referrer - Target websites don't see which search engine referred you

5. Optional Tor/Proxy - Can route all queries through Tor for additional anonymity

Result: Search engines cannot build a profile about you.

When to Use

Prefer SearXNG for:

• -Privacy-sensitive searches (no tracking, no profiling)
• -High-volume searches (no rate limits)
• -When self-hosted infrastructure is available
• -Multi-engine result aggregation (250+ engines)
• -Ad-free results

Prefer Brave API (web_search tool) for:

• -Faster response times
• -Structured data requirements
• -When external APIs are acceptable

Processing Results

The script returns clean JSON that's easy to parse and present:

import json
import subprocess

result = subprocess.run(
    ['python3', 'scripts/search.py', 'query', '--num', '5'],
    capture_output=True,
    text=True
)

data = json.loads(result.stdout)
for item in data['results']:
    print(f"Title: {item['title']}")
    print(f"URL: {item['url']}")
    print(f"Snippet: {item['content']}")
    print()

Advanced Options

See references/api.md for:

• -All available categories
• -Engine-specific searches
• -Language codes
• -Error handling
• -Comparison with Brave Search API

Configuration

SearXNG Instance

By default, the script uses http://127.0.0.1:8080. Configure via environment variable:

export SEARXNG_URL=http://your-searxng-instance.com
python3 scripts/search.py "query"

Options:

• -Self-hosted instance (recommended for privacy)
• -Public instances: https://searx.space (community-run servers)

Using Public Instances

If you don't run your own SearXNG:

Example with public instance
export SEARXNG_URL=https://searx.be
python3 scripts/search.py "query"

Note: Public instances may have rate limits or be slower than self-hosted.

Technical Details

• -Default URL: http://127.0.0.1:8080 (override with SEARXNG_URL)
• -Method: HTML parsing (JSON API often disabled for CSRF protection)
• -Parser: Custom HTMLParser in scripts/search.py
• -Timeout: 15 seconds
• -Result Format: Clean JSON with title, URL, content