#SearchEngine #FederatedSoftware #Fediverse

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Note, this blog is not cited, sorry!

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We cannot use google forever, no one can index exponential amounts of data, nevermind the predatory SEO and AI.

But YaCy is fundamentally flawed, providing no meaningful results, along with barely anyone using it.

SearX is just built on other search engines, so it does not fundamentally solves the issue.

But, what if we can use our past?

Web-Rings

In the early days of the internet, Web-Rings were used to associate sites that were related to each other.

This created a thriving young internet, but a strive for convenience led to the creation of search engines to navigate through those early sites.

But, even in those early days of the 90s, it was known that there was no way for a search engine to be able to index an exponentially increasing amount of data.

Monopolistic Search Engines

Now, most of the world utilizes a small set of monopolistic servers.

Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu.

The internet is defined and shaped through SEOs and more, with information suppressed and promoted at the whims of billionaires and trillionaires.

This cannot go on.

Putting it together

What if, instead of a search engine trying to read every site on the planet, the search engines scope was restricted, but restricted to what?

How about a search engine dedicated to web-rings.

Users create and publish web-rings that are a collection of sites to this system.

Other instances declare which web-rings they will index.

When a user wants to search something up, they first search for a topic in web-rings, and then they select that web-ring.

After they selected a web-ring, a list of servers who support the web-ring are displayed. The user can then select one.

After they select their server, they type in their query, and the query is sent to that server.

The server receives the query, and produces the results.

Conclusions

Federated Web-Rings and Search Engines that index those Web Rings.

Sure there are more clicks, but I feel that not only does this avoid the nightmare that is YaCy, but it restricts the scope enough that servers do not have to index an infinite amount of data!

What do you think, I didn't solve the fundamental issue, but I have mitigated its effects enough.

Now the issue is moderating web-rings, users, web-ring sorting, web-ring federation, server ranking, server and user blocking, and more.

Mraw! ✨