One of the few engines I enable on my self-hosted searXNG instance since they don’t track IP. Very simple-to-understand privacy policy as well. Here’s a snippet:
Tracking and Logging Policy
Mojeek doesn’t implement any kind of specific user tracking, whether that be at the time of visit or subsequently via standard logs, which Mojeek does keep indefinitely. These logs contain the time of visit, page requested, possibly referral data, and located in a separate log browser information. IP addresses are not recorded, instead the IP address is replaced with a simple two letter code indicating the visitors country of origin. By doing this, Mojeek removes any possibility of tracking or identifying any particular user. We use a URL parameter to monitor if a campaign landing page visit results in a Mojeek search request. This parameter is visible in the URL and is not used after the first search.
Data Usage
The remaining log data (country, time/date, page requested, referral data, and in a separate log browser data), which although now contains no identifiable data, would still in no situation whatsoever be sold or distributed to any third party vendors. This data is kept private for the sole purpose of storing historical traffic volumes and country demographics of our visitors. We may also use aggregate, non-personal search data to improve our results.
We do not outsource any development of Mojeek to third parties; all development is kept in-house. We pride ourselves on limiting the number of third party products and services that Mojeek consumes.
I don’t believe Mojeek uses any third-parties and I think they said once it wasn’t possible for them to log IP addresses due to how their system was built to anonymize users, but that isn’t entirely true since IP addresses can always be logged.
I wasn’t recommending MetaGer, I was simply pointing out that some providers are more explicit with how they perform GeoIP lookups.
iirc, MetaGer was insanely sending off partial IP addresses to advertisers years ago.
To receive this advertising, we give the first two blocks of the IP in connection with some non-identifying parts of the so-called user agent to our advertising partners
I tried and DuckDuckGo lists a Register article about the movement. I think this is less about censorship and more about mojeek prefering semantic search as opposed to classifyng “web of links” and SEO optimisation.
Search engines should provide you the quickest way to where you want to go, period. Having extra clicks and tracking to go through is a dark pattern at best, censorship at worst.
This isn’t a preference IMO, it’s just the fact that Microsoft (which makes Bing, which DuckDuckGo relies on) and Google (which Startpage relies on) can’t afford to block all things referencing the blocked site, especially popular news sites. This would cause them more trouble. It’s reputation control, not SEO optimisation.
A few months ago I could still find consumerrights.wiki on Startpage, and not anymore. It’s a shame, really
Yes that’s it! When Startpage was set to my own country it was unfindable (Netherlands), but on US/All regions it is back again : D
Yeah and for search results that rely on Bing, it seems Microsoft has their own agenda. For critical searches I will from now on diversify my search engine of choice (like using more Startpage and Mojeek). Luckily in Firefox & forks this is pretty easy to set up with a keyword like “@s” for startpage and “@m” for Mojeek and I’ll keep DuckDuckGo the default since it is still really solid.
I’m testing Mojeek and it’s workig grat so far. Also, it’s structure makes it even better than Ecosia, which I often rely on, from a privacy and environmental POV.
IMHO it should be included both as “best environmental” and “best independent and rivate” alternative to US Big Techs and US Proxyes in EU (Startpage, Qwant, Ecosia).
Mojeek surpassed 9 billion pages in 2025 and should be considered for this.
