this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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Just came across this while scrolling pixelfed!

A Canadian hosted search engine.

I have been using Ecosia, but will have to try this out.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (4 children)

It's worth knowing that SearXNG (Wikipedia) is an open-source metasearch engine that has many available hosts. At the bottom of maapl.net is a link to a list of public instances. maapl.net isn't actually on the list yet, but there's one other Canadian host, https://searxng.shreven.org/. For any non-Canadians who catch this, there's a bunch of other instances you might want to try, e.g. in Europe.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

yep. and for the self-hosters it's easy to setup a private instance of it. i fairly recently set one up, and it's been great.

also, mike, who set that up, also runs a smaller Canadian mastodon instance, with about 150 ~~registered~~ monthly active users, so if you're looking for a smaller mastodon instance, that's an option too.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hi, we actually have 150 monthly active users we have several hundred registered users. We've had thousands of registered users at one time but I purge the rolls every so often.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

oops, sorry, fixed! thanks!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Definitely recommend SearxNG. Been loving using it because I don't need to worry about bullshit results for malvertisements disguised as actual results.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Thank you for this awesome comment! I will be saving those 2 instances in my bookmarks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Looks like 3 of the 5 search back ends are throwing errors at the moment, so it's basically a frontend for Google and Wikipedia for now.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

It’s SearXNG

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I just added it as my default on my phone to give it a try. First impressions are that search is slow (they say they combine results from multiple search engines so maybe that’s why?) but the few searches I did returned what I expected from any search engine.

Thanks for posting this! I hope it turns out to be a good enough to keep as my default!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's up as sort of a beta right now so sorry about any performance issues. I'll commit more resources as the use case expands

[–] CowsLookLikeMaps 3 points 1 month ago

Welcome! Do you have any concerns regarding amount of people using it vs server costs?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

You're welcome!! I am hopeful too.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Use this with Lemmy.ca, Mstdn.ca, Pixelfed.ca, CBC, 1Password, Ground News, Graphene OS, Loops, Pendora.io, Interac.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Looks like it's just yet another searxng instance:

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No ads? How do they pay their server fees on a sustainable basis?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

SearXNG is pretty lightweight to run, it's mostly run by the same kind of people who host Mastodon and other fediverse instances, often off the same servers. maapl.net is run by Mike Fraser, @[email protected] from the image in OP, where thecanadian.social is his donation-supported, Canadian-focussed Mastodon instance. I don't know whether the funding for maapl.net comes out of that same donation pool, but it would make sense.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's basically self funded by me for now. I'm pondering at some point maybe doing a membership at like a dollar a month for hosting expenses.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

It’s basically self funded by me for now. I’m pondering at some point maybe doing a membership at like a dollar a month for hosting expenses.

Have you thought about applying for a CIRA grant? mstdn.ca did something similar with them back in 2022.

https://www.cira.ca/en/net-good/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Anyone know how to make this default on Firefox? Keeps saying it had an error connecting.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

https://maapl.net/search?q = %s is what I had to put in for the URL for Maapl. (Without the spaces between q, = And %s)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That doesn't seem to work for FF mobile. It's just taking me to the main search page after I put something in the search bar. Am I doing this wrong?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I can't spot the difference and I set it on mobile as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

You have a Q in there and that solved it. Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

That worked! Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Tip: You can add a search bar with SearxNG on your Android phone with SearchBar EX