I've started a side project called **SearchCraft**, where I'm building a search engine from scratch using Python.

The goal isn't to compete with Elasticsearch, Lucene, or any existing search engine. Those projects are incredible, but they're also so mature that it's easy to use them without ever understanding what's happening underneath.

So I decided to build one from first principles.

I'm implementing each component myself, starting with the basics: loading documents, tokenizing text, building an inverted index, and searching through it. As the project grows, I'll be adding things like posting lists, phrase search, ranking algorithms (TF-IDF/BM25), snippets, fuzzy search, and whatever else I can reasonably build along the way.

The primary reason for this project is to learn. I find that the best way to understand how a system works is to build a simplified version of it yourself.

I'm documenting the journey as I go, both for myself and in the hope that it might help someone else who's curious about how search engines work under the hood. There are plenty of tutorials on *using* search engines, but far fewer resources that walk through building one piece by piece.

It's still in its early stages, but I'm excited to see where it goes. Even if it never becomes production-ready, I'll come away with a much deeper understanding of one of the most fundamental pieces of modern software. After all, humans spend a good chunk of their lives typing words into little boxes and expecting magic to happen. Figuring out how that "magic" works seemed like a worthwhile weekend habit.

Here's the link to my project: [https://github.com/rajtilakjee/searchcraft\](https://github.com/rajtilakjee/searchcraft)

I would be writing about it in my blog here: [https://rajtilakjee.github.io/\](https://rajtilakjee.github.io/)

google seems to be the most reliable and brave the least, startpage and duckduckgo are identical. i would have put a 5th search engine but i couldn't think of any

edit: the searches were without quotation marks

When AI chatbots arrived on the scene, they raised the question: Who would go through the steps of a traditional web search when ChatGPT gave an answer on the spot?

But rather than depress search activity, artificial intelligence has amplified it, according to Nick Fox, Google's senior VP of knowledge and information.

In a LinkedIn post, he also responds to fears that the company's AI search experience will decimate traffic to web pages by eliminating any incentive to click through.

I am looking for some tips to optimize the search engine I am making. Currently there are about 114k listings. The listings have calendars, dynamic pricing, and minimums.

The issue I am having is normalizing the data fast enough. The listings come from roughly 4000 subdomains across 3 primary domains, like user.domainA.com, user.domainB.com, and user.DomainC.com.

Unfortunately for me the initial availability api call for all 3 returns different results:

Domain A: full price including additional fees and taxes

Domain B: price including additional feees, no taxes

Domain C: price, no additional fees and taxes

So currently for B and C there is a second layer of calls to normalize the price but it takes additional time as it’s calling individual listings vs entire user inventory.

Should I just eliminate the additional calls and normalize to optimize for C so that it’s basically just the price no additional fees or taxes or is displaying the final price more important to consumers?

Plenty of sites like Amazon, Shopify, Airbnb, don’t include fees and taxes until you go to checkout but I’ve always not liked that I see a price and when I go to buy it has potential hidden costs. Would love to hear y’all’s thoughts.

The publishers who survive won’t be the fastest to react. They’ll be the slowest to panic.

Google used to offer "instant answers" to common queries right in the search bar like in this video: https://www.google.com/chrome/static/images/v2/gallery/search_predictive.mp4 . However i can no longer trigger any of them. Does anyone here know what happened? Example queries that used to work: "weather london", "msft stock", "sunrise today", "gdp of france", "5 eur to usd". The only thing that still works for me is a calculator and a unit convertor.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI answers are changing how customers find businesses.

Most advice about it is guesswork, and some of it is made up.

We made a free, extremely extensive report that sets out what the published data actually shows: what is worth doing, what is not, and how to tell the difference.

Feel free to use the PDF as a source of truth for your AI SEO workflows!

https://wilkileads.com/ai-seo-report-2026/

Very hyperspecific problem I haven't seen discussed or mentioned anywhere else so im forced to make a post about it

So for whatever reason, on a relatively new account mind you, my search results using the search feature will only ever show results from users I follow and THAT'S IT. Nothing else! Rarely rarely someone else

All results would go back years and years instead of just finding more recent and more relevant results

To test this i searched a tweet a freind of mine sent me, almost verbatim. I never interacted with that account before so I couldn't search it. I then open the link they sent me, like the post, then close the tab. I then go ahead and try searching the same exact thing again, and only THEN does the tweet show up. Didnt even change what I was searching

PLEASE HELP

The fact that search engines are now using AI seems to signal a fundamental shift from users having agency over what information they are searching for and are able to find, to what we see now: oftentimes factually incorrect AI summaries that strip away user’s ability to judge the information for themselves. What was once a relatively neutral and objective tool is now seemingly biased.

Why did this switch happen? Am I missing something in my understanding?

I was looking for this blog:

Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP | a personal view of the theory of ...

And If I type "godelslostl etterandpvsnp" or "godelslostletterandpvsnp" google doesn't find anything

But If I break the letters further without finding where each word ends like this "godels lostl ettera ndpvsnp" google gave the correct result

I am using the Firefox browser and Yahoo Search as my default search engine. I have my Privacy and Security settings in the browser set to "Clear cookies and site data every time you close Firefox".

I've noticed that when I begin typing something into the search field, I'm getting suggested search terms from previous Firefox sessions, even though I have everything set to clear after I close out of a session. Why is this happening, and is there a way to stop it from happening? The whole point of setting my settings to clear data after I exist Firefox is for this not to be happening. These are not searches I'm doing even logged into my Yahoo account; these are just cold searches.

It's strange, too, because it's suggesting searches I've done in previous sessions where I've spelled words incorrectly. I do not wanting it suggesting those to me. Help.

Anybody else wonder why when you search disclosure day on google a cardinal flies onto your screen?!

ok so I have been getting all sorts of weird suggestions in the search bar. Never been to em but these arent the typical trending searches. Its often misspelled.

Here is one "which way should your garden face kdalandscapetion"

Or another was "how often upgrade gaming pc jogameplayer"

Certainly these cant be trending searches? I have no addons. no/extensions, have activity turned off. Almost seems like malware but i have scanned with norton and get nothing.

My Facebook account is more than 10 years old. About a year ago, I changed my Facebook username/URL to my first and last name to improve visibility in search results.

Until this week, my profile appeared normally on Google when searching for:

“FirstName LastName Facebook”

Now it has completely disappeared from Google search results.

My Facebook account is in good standing, my profile is public, my name is included in the About section, and I add descriptions and alt text to my photos. I have not made any privacy or profile changes recently.

My profile still appears normally on Bing. I also have friends who barely use their Facebook accounts, but their profiles still show up on Google...

Has anyone else experienced their Facebook profile suddenly being removed from Google search? Could this be a temporary indexing issue..?

Here’s how users generally behave:

**When you know exactly what you want** (“Dog”, “Beach”, “Wedding”), overwhelmingly prefer a **search box**. This is the fastest path.

**When you don’t know what you’re looking for** or want to rediscover photos, visual exploration beats an alphabetical list. This is where something like **Category Universe** shines.

**Alphabetical lists** are useful for power users who already know the label name, but it can become cumbersome when there are hundreds or thousands of categories.

I mean for everything here you can find beteer answers via a Google search or Google AI overview. Just try it.

Hey r/searchengines, I'm back! Missed me? Probably not.

It's been over 3 months since I announced Slick, my independent search engine focused on privacy, speed, and clean results, and I have a major update.

The goal with Slick has changed a bit since I first started building it, but I've always focused on one thing: building a search experience that adapts to the user, not the other way around.

After months of improving the engine, I've decided Slick is finally ready for a wider public launch with all of the new features I've been working on.

You might (not) be wondering why I'm calling Slick the "world's most customizable" search engine. Over time I've added many settings and controls that let users define their own search experience, and I'm planning to continue expanding customization based on what users actually want.

Some of the features include Custom Ranking (similar to Kagi), Recipes (similar to Brave Goggles), Custom CSS, Custom Bangs, layout adjustments, and most importantly, an Index Switcher.

The Index Switcher lets you switch between Slick's own index and DuckDuckGo results. The DuckDuckGo option can be more prone to rate limiting, which is why I'm planning to move this option to the Brave API in the future.

I added this feature for two reasons: user control, and because Slick's index is still growing.

Slick's index has come a long way, but there is still room to improve. The long-term goal is to continue expanding it and eventually compete with other independent indexes like Brave, Ecosia, and Mojeek.

The link is below if you want to try it out and explore all of what Slick has to offer. I'd especially love feedback on search quality, ranking, and anything that feels missing. If you enjoy Slick and want to follow the launch, the Product Hunt page is now live.

Website: https://slicksearchhq.com
Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/products/slick-7
Overview video:

https://reddit.com/link/1usa9cw/video/5e3tvco9uach1/player