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Hi HN! I'm the creator of Runnaroo. The title is a fun little rib at Neeva, which has been getting a lot of press recently. I initially launched Runnaroo in

Hi HN! I'm the creator of Runnaroo. The title is a fun little rib at Neeva, which has been getting a lot of press recently. I initially launched Runnaroo in a Show HN [0] at the end of February, and wanted to do a followup because the site has grown considerably in features and users over the last fews of months. The core idea of Runnaroo revolves around a search engine of federated data sources to provide the most relevant and highest quality results. We are now over 50 Deep Search sources, and adding more weekly. Some examples of queries that I believe provide better results than peer search engines. react.js: https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js creatine effects research: https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=creatine+effects+research https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=creatine+effects+resear... metallica tabs: https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=Metallica+tabs https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=Metallica+tabs parkinson podcast: https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=parkinson+podcast https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=parkinson+podcast bootstrap collapse link: https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=bootstrap+collapse+link https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=bootstrap+collapse+link [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22422604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22422604

chris_f 6y ago
Also, just as a point of reference, here are the same queries on DuckDuckGo. react.js: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=react.js&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=react.js&ia=web creatine effects research: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=creatine+effects+research&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=creatine+effects+research&ia=web metallica tabs: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=metallica+tabs&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=metallica+tabs&ia=web parkinson podcast: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=parkinson+podcast&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=parkinson+podcast&ia=web bootstrap collapse link: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bootstrap+collapse+link&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bootstrap+collapse+link&ia=web
- tgb 6y ago
  You've got a typo in your second link! Confused me for a second.
  - chris_f 6y ago
    Updated. Thanks.
aboringusername 6y ago
I think you've done something very interesting that makes me rethink the idea of a "search engine". For all the data Google has, and all the AI and technology, their search isn't very "smart" at allowing you to contextualize or filter the searches very well. For example, a button to remove social, to offer meta-data (such as whether a question is answered/unanswered) or offer features that might help me find what I am looking for. Google has a huge index, but naturally, there's going to be 'noise', and maybe I want to see what's on page 50, or want to try and 'filter' some of the more popular sites. Their UI for enabling this is non-existent. Another example: Google BigQuery has the entire Reddit archive, they could surface meta-data such as the number of comments or whether entire comment chains are deleted (although, doing that against Reddit's API at scale would be a very difficult challenge and perhaps not welcomed by reddit). But to me, as a user of search, that might influence what content I end up viewing, because perhaps a thread with 0 comments isn't so useful to me, or a thread full of [deleted] comments is worthless and should be de-indexed (and deciding what is valuable is a very hard question to answer).
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  I think all search engines fail in providing a list of ordered results. What you actually want is a look at the graph that they were plucked from. As things stand, it's not just a case of being unable to see the forest for the trees, but being unable to see the forest because you are forced to infer its structure from a small basket of leaves. The only company I've seen attempt anything like this is the (criminally under-recognized) carrotsearch.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    Do you mean https://search.carrot2.org/ https://search.carrot2.org/?
    - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
      If he does, I can see why it's not popular. I tried a single query and was told my search limits been exceeded.
marban 6y ago
If you're interested in doing something with News hit me up. https://yetigogo.com https://yetigogo.com thomas.me
cookiengineer 6y ago
How does Runnaroo compare to search engines like duckduckgo, searx.me and in the sense of openness and accessible source codes? Is it open source? Does it have an openly accessible plugin/search feature ecosystem? How do you think people would trust you when it comes to the privacy aspects?
- chris_f 6y ago
  All good questions. Trust will only come with time and a track record of making user centric decisions. Runnaroo currently does not save any information on user search queries, and a core element of the tool is the privacy aspect. If you need an open source hackable search engine, Searx is a better choice, and the most privacy centric option because you can run your own instance.
RestlessMind 6y ago
Interesting site, and we definitely need more options for search. What is your business model?
- Splendor 6y ago
  I'm not OP, but they answered this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23773713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23773713
SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
This is intriguing. Have you considered allowing external developers to provide Deep Search integrations? I'm imagining a platform where developers can submit Deep Search modules that would run in a sandbox with access to your index, metadata stores and knowledge graph. These modules would return a confidence score and results for a given query, with no ability to snoop on users by exfiltrating data. They could answer a single query or handle an entire domain. The best ones would rise in prominence according to their performance. One big hurdle is that developers would have to be properly incentivized to return accurate results, but if that can be achieved, you could end up with something that is way better than Google.
dang 6y ago
(If anyone is missing a rib, the submitted title was "Show HN: Runnaroo – A new search engine that didn't raise 37.5M to launch")
- ebg13 6y ago
  > If anyone is missing a rib What do you mean by that?
  - dang 6y ago
    The GP mentioned that the title originally included a "rib". We took that part out of the title. Some people might read the GP comment and wonder what it was talking about. When we make a change to a title or URL and notice a comment whose meaning is affected by the change, I try to reply with the missing information.
thewarrior 6y ago
It seems that its using Google search results as raw input and re ranking them. How do you get access to google search results ?
- thruflo22 6y ago
  Yup, Google T&Cs explicitly forbid. So it’s either breaking them or got a deal with Google?
  - rvnx 6y ago
    Knowing how Google works there is no deal
- puranjay 6y ago
  For complex queries, my results are distinctly different than Google
- zelly 6y ago
  Probably scraping with a sea of proxy IPs or a rented botnet One could test this hypothesis by doing the same thing to it--spamming search queries from numerous IPs--to see if Runnaroo's IPs stop working (get 429'd or captchawalled). I don't really have time to whiteknight for G, but OP should be prepared for them to take notice. (Maybe create a global rate limit.) I'm interested in how the ranking algorithm works because it seems really good. Edit: Runaroo is now down. Looks like he was ahead of me on the global rate limit suggestion.
temp231239 6y ago
One think that I would like to see solved by indie search engines is the ability to break the search bubble and see whats usually hidden on 10th page of google search results. This is a serious problem in all big search engines. One interesting way to solve search bubble problem is to have an option to filter out results from high traffic websites and blogs who invest heavily in CEO and pollute search results. Having this filter will surely open a completely different world of information that's very hard to search.
- skratlo 6y ago
  This is so on point, thanks for that. Pollution is indeed the right word for it.
- Flashtoo 6y ago
  > have an option to filter out results from high traffic websites That's what Million Short does https://millionshort.com/ https://millionshort.com/
  - fireattack 6y ago
    The first thing I searched, it shows Oops.. sorry about that!Engineers have been notified and are looking into the issue. If you see a captcha, be sure to fill it out and submit to continue your search Edit: it looks like it doesn't support anything that is not in Latin letters at all.
  - ornornor 6y ago
    Thanks, worked well for me and I found information I couldn’t find on ddg.
  - Darkphibre 6y ago
    Good grief, this is astonishing. The other day I tried tracking down the names for various avatar species in VRChat. Surely someone had a list curated... but bing, google, and ddg all let me down with ancient wikis or completely unrelated sites, no matter my quoting or alternate search terms (animals, avatars, creatures, etc.). Very first hit on millionshort: https://www.vrcarena.com/ https://www.vrcarena.com/ Edit: Though, I'm still trying to track down a more comprehensive list. That one's missing Nanachis, which are rather common these days.
nbardy 6y ago
Well done. The rect page is better for sure. Runnaroo is lacking in design Visually everything is very similar and hard to quickly parse. I want to immediately be able to scan results to tell what url's they are from. Two issues, the url is light grey and blends in with the text body. There is no favicon.
still_grokking 6y ago
It passed my "search engine quick test" :-) I've tried "metacircularevaluator" as a search term. The results are relevant and good. Will have an eye on this one!
- inetsee 6y ago
  My search engine quick test is "lojban" and Runnaroo's results were among the best I've seen. I've been using DuckDuckGo as my search engine of choice 95%+ of the time, only falling back to Google if DDG's results seem weak. I've added Runnaroo to my bookmarks toolbar. I'm going to try it out as my second choice search engine, demoting Google to third place.
markandrewj 6y ago
I just wanted to say that I was impressed by privacy statement being short and clear. I clicked on the privacy link expecting multiple pages of overly complicated writing.
tmikaeld 6y ago
Are date filters planned?
- chris_f 6y ago
  Absolutely.
mesaframe 6y ago
You are saying Neeva is getting a lot of press. But, This is the first time I read about that.
zerr 6y ago
What about the tech behind?
puranjay 6y ago
Man this is really, really good stuff! In a few test searches, you beat Google. I tried this search on Runnaroo and Google: "black muscular guy in 99" (I meant to search for Terry Crews from Brooklyn 99). Google just showed me some random Pinterest page as the 1st result, followed by results from YouTube, Facebook, and Google Books. But on Runnaroo, Terry Crews was the result in the right sidebar. It was also the 3rd result. This is the first time a search engine has excited me in years. Very impressed.
ori_b 6y ago
Do you index the web yourself?
noncoml 6y ago
May I ask how do you plan to monetize this? I like your privacy policy, but unless there is a good financial plan behind it, I have trouble seeing how it can be sustained
- rebel1 6y ago
  Great question. I answered in a another post: I wish something like the Web Monetization API was a viable path to monetization, but I don't think it is in the current state. I believe the only current path to monetization that preserves user privacy is context based display ads that work like billboards in the real world. I am working on that now, but the idea is a flat fee to display the ad for N days regardless of views or clicks. It is certainly challenging, but DDG and Startpage both exist and seem to be profitable. The key is to monetize and 1.) ensure user privacy, 2.) ensure the monetization method doesn't create perverse incentives in contention of providing better search results for users.
  - noncoml 6y ago
    thank you!
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    How aggressively are you willing to moderate and kill bad ads? The biggest issue I see with Google/Bing/AOL/Yahoo Search (and even DDG!) is malicious advertising. It's led me to the general view that any search ads are hostile by default, and I've often found outright dysfunction when it comes to shutting down bad actors. The other issue I'd be curious about is your position on trademark squatting. i.e., where if I'm Best Buy, my competitors can buy ads over the search term "best buy", so if I want my own site to be the first "result" for my own business name, I have to buy ads.
    - elcomet 6y ago
      Maybe the answer is that you buy display time, but with no keywords. Like in the real world, everyone will see the ad. Or you can just buy ads for a given "theme" and the search engine will try to interpret queries and assign theme the most close theme, displaying relevant ads.
randomstring 6y ago
Uhg. Site is down at the moment. Even these suggested searches are returning an error page. Top Tip to future search engine builders: cache, cache, cache. Especially the canned searches on you press releases and HackerNews posts.
- rebel1 6y ago
  Fair enough. It will be down for a little while. Good lesson for the future.
Exuma 6y ago
What is a federated data source?
nycdatasci 6y ago
This maintenance seems poorly timed: "Thank you for checking out Runnaroo! Unfortunetely, we are temporarily taking the site down while we perform some updates. Apologies to our existing users. We are working to get back up to be better than before."
- FPGAhacker 6y ago
  Typo too.
- chris_f 6y ago
  Ha, you're telling me! Yeah, taking the site down was directly related to the Hacker News post. It will be temporary though.
riquito 6y ago
Any plans to allow users to blacklist domains? Even post search would be fabulous
blux 6y ago
Hi Chris! Looks great! Are you considering a domain blacklist feature? For example, when searching for C++ documentation, I rather never be served results from cplusplus.com.

chris_f 6y ago

Also, just as a point of reference, here are the same queries on DuckDuckGo. react.js: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=react.js&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=react.js&ia=web creatine effects research: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=creatine+effects+research&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=creatine+effects+research&ia=web metallica tabs: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=metallica+tabs&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=metallica+tabs&ia=web parkinson podcast: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=parkinson+podcast&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=parkinson+podcast&ia=web bootstrap collapse link: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bootstrap+collapse+link&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bootstrap+collapse+link&ia=web

tgb 6y ago
You've got a typo in your second link! Confused me for a second.
- chris_f 6y ago
  Updated. Thanks.

aboringusername 6y ago

I think you've done something very interesting that makes me rethink the idea of a "search engine". For all the data Google has, and all the AI and technology, their search isn't very "smart" at allowing you to contextualize or filter the searches very well. For example, a button to remove social, to offer meta-data (such as whether a question is answered/unanswered) or offer features that might help me find what I am looking for. Google has a huge index, but naturally, there's going to be 'noise', and maybe I want to see what's on page 50, or want to try and 'filter' some of the more popular sites. Their UI for enabling this is non-existent. Another example: Google BigQuery has the entire Reddit archive, they could surface meta-data such as the number of comments or whether entire comment chains are deleted (although, doing that against Reddit's API at scale would be a very difficult challenge and perhaps not welcomed by reddit). But to me, as a user of search, that might influence what content I end up viewing, because perhaps a thread with 0 comments isn't so useful to me, or a thread full of [deleted] comments is worthless and should be de-indexed (and deciding what is valuable is a very hard question to answer).

anigbrowl 6y ago
I think all search engines fail in providing a list of ordered results. What you actually want is a look at the graph that they were plucked from. As things stand, it's not just a case of being unable to see the forest for the trees, but being unable to see the forest because you are forced to infer its structure from a small basket of leaves. The only company I've seen attempt anything like this is the (criminally under-recognized) carrotsearch.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Do you mean https://search.carrot2.org/ https://search.carrot2.org/?
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    If he does, I can see why it's not popular. I tried a single query and was told my search limits been exceeded.

marban 6y ago

If you're interested in doing something with News hit me up. https://yetigogo.com https://yetigogo.com thomas.me

cookiengineer 6y ago

How does Runnaroo compare to search engines like duckduckgo, searx.me and in the sense of openness and accessible source codes? Is it open source? Does it have an openly accessible plugin/search feature ecosystem? How do you think people would trust you when it comes to the privacy aspects?

chris_f 6y ago
All good questions. Trust will only come with time and a track record of making user centric decisions. Runnaroo currently does not save any information on user search queries, and a core element of the tool is the privacy aspect. If you need an open source hackable search engine, Searx is a better choice, and the most privacy centric option because you can run your own instance.

RestlessMind 6y ago

Interesting site, and we definitely need more options for search. What is your business model?

Splendor 6y ago
I'm not OP, but they answered this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23773713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23773713

SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago

This is intriguing. Have you considered allowing external developers to provide Deep Search integrations? I'm imagining a platform where developers can submit Deep Search modules that would run in a sandbox with access to your index, metadata stores and knowledge graph. These modules would return a confidence score and results for a given query, with no ability to snoop on users by exfiltrating data. They could answer a single query or handle an entire domain. The best ones would rise in prominence according to their performance. One big hurdle is that developers would have to be properly incentivized to return accurate results, but if that can be achieved, you could end up with something that is way better than Google.

dang 6y ago

(If anyone is missing a rib, the submitted title was "Show HN: Runnaroo – A new search engine that didn't raise 37.5M to launch")

ebg13 6y ago
> If anyone is missing a rib What do you mean by that?
- dang 6y ago
  The GP mentioned that the title originally included a "rib". We took that part out of the title. Some people might read the GP comment and wonder what it was talking about. When we make a change to a title or URL and notice a comment whose meaning is affected by the change, I try to reply with the missing information.

thewarrior 6y ago

It seems that its using Google search results as raw input and re ranking them. How do you get access to google search results ?

thruflo22 6y ago
Yup, Google T&Cs explicitly forbid. So it’s either breaking them or got a deal with Google?
- rvnx 6y ago
  Knowing how Google works there is no deal
puranjay 6y ago
For complex queries, my results are distinctly different than Google
zelly 6y ago
Probably scraping with a sea of proxy IPs or a rented botnet One could test this hypothesis by doing the same thing to it--spamming search queries from numerous IPs--to see if Runnaroo's IPs stop working (get 429'd or captchawalled). I don't really have time to whiteknight for G, but OP should be prepared for them to take notice. (Maybe create a global rate limit.) I'm interested in how the ranking algorithm works because it seems really good. Edit: Runaroo is now down. Looks like he was ahead of me on the global rate limit suggestion.

temp231239 6y ago

One think that I would like to see solved by indie search engines is the ability to break the search bubble and see whats usually hidden on 10th page of google search results. This is a serious problem in all big search engines. One interesting way to solve search bubble problem is to have an option to filter out results from high traffic websites and blogs who invest heavily in CEO and pollute search results. Having this filter will surely open a completely different world of information that's very hard to search.

skratlo 6y ago
This is so on point, thanks for that. Pollution is indeed the right word for it.
Flashtoo 6y ago
> have an option to filter out results from high traffic websites That's what Million Short does https://millionshort.com/ https://millionshort.com/
- fireattack 6y ago
  The first thing I searched, it shows Oops.. sorry about that!Engineers have been notified and are looking into the issue. If you see a captcha, be sure to fill it out and submit to continue your search Edit: it looks like it doesn't support anything that is not in Latin letters at all.
- ornornor 6y ago
  Thanks, worked well for me and I found information I couldn’t find on ddg.
- Darkphibre 6y ago
  Good grief, this is astonishing. The other day I tried tracking down the names for various avatar species in VRChat. Surely someone had a list curated... but bing, google, and ddg all let me down with ancient wikis or completely unrelated sites, no matter my quoting or alternate search terms (animals, avatars, creatures, etc.). Very first hit on millionshort: https://www.vrcarena.com/ https://www.vrcarena.com/ Edit: Though, I'm still trying to track down a more comprehensive list. That one's missing Nanachis, which are rather common these days.

nbardy 6y ago

Well done. The rect page is better for sure. Runnaroo is lacking in design Visually everything is very similar and hard to quickly parse. I want to immediately be able to scan results to tell what url's they are from. Two issues, the url is light grey and blends in with the text body. There is no favicon.

still_grokking 6y ago

It passed my "search engine quick test" :-) I've tried "metacircularevaluator" as a search term. The results are relevant and good. Will have an eye on this one!

inetsee 6y ago
My search engine quick test is "lojban" and Runnaroo's results were among the best I've seen. I've been using DuckDuckGo as my search engine of choice 95%+ of the time, only falling back to Google if DDG's results seem weak. I've added Runnaroo to my bookmarks toolbar. I'm going to try it out as my second choice search engine, demoting Google to third place.

markandrewj 6y ago

I just wanted to say that I was impressed by privacy statement being short and clear. I clicked on the privacy link expecting multiple pages of overly complicated writing.

tmikaeld 6y ago

Are date filters planned?

chris_f 6y ago
Absolutely.

mesaframe 6y ago

You are saying Neeva is getting a lot of press. But, This is the first time I read about that.

zerr 6y ago

What about the tech behind?

puranjay 6y ago

Man this is really, really good stuff! In a few test searches, you beat Google. I tried this search on Runnaroo and Google: "black muscular guy in 99" (I meant to search for Terry Crews from Brooklyn 99). Google just showed me some random Pinterest page as the 1st result, followed by results from YouTube, Facebook, and Google Books. But on Runnaroo, Terry Crews was the result in the right sidebar. It was also the 3rd result. This is the first time a search engine has excited me in years. Very impressed.

ori_b 6y ago

Do you index the web yourself?

noncoml 6y ago

May I ask how do you plan to monetize this? I like your privacy policy, but unless there is a good financial plan behind it, I have trouble seeing how it can be sustained

rebel1 6y ago
Great question. I answered in a another post: I wish something like the Web Monetization API was a viable path to monetization, but I don't think it is in the current state. I believe the only current path to monetization that preserves user privacy is context based display ads that work like billboards in the real world. I am working on that now, but the idea is a flat fee to display the ad for N days regardless of views or clicks. It is certainly challenging, but DDG and Startpage both exist and seem to be profitable. The key is to monetize and 1.) ensure user privacy, 2.) ensure the monetization method doesn't create perverse incentives in contention of providing better search results for users.
- noncoml 6y ago
  thank you!
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  How aggressively are you willing to moderate and kill bad ads? The biggest issue I see with Google/Bing/AOL/Yahoo Search (and even DDG!) is malicious advertising. It's led me to the general view that any search ads are hostile by default, and I've often found outright dysfunction when it comes to shutting down bad actors. The other issue I'd be curious about is your position on trademark squatting. i.e., where if I'm Best Buy, my competitors can buy ads over the search term "best buy", so if I want my own site to be the first "result" for my own business name, I have to buy ads.
  - elcomet 6y ago
    Maybe the answer is that you buy display time, but with no keywords. Like in the real world, everyone will see the ad. Or you can just buy ads for a given "theme" and the search engine will try to interpret queries and assign theme the most close theme, displaying relevant ads.

randomstring 6y ago

Uhg. Site is down at the moment. Even these suggested searches are returning an error page. Top Tip to future search engine builders: cache, cache, cache. Especially the canned searches on you press releases and HackerNews posts.

rebel1 6y ago
Fair enough. It will be down for a little while. Good lesson for the future.

Exuma 6y ago

What is a federated data source?

nycdatasci 6y ago

This maintenance seems poorly timed: "Thank you for checking out Runnaroo! Unfortunetely, we are temporarily taking the site down while we perform some updates. Apologies to our existing users. We are working to get back up to be better than before."

FPGAhacker 6y ago
Typo too.
chris_f 6y ago
Ha, you're telling me! Yeah, taking the site down was directly related to the Hacker News post. It will be temporary though.

riquito 6y ago

Any plans to allow users to blacklist domains? Even post search would be fabulous

blux 6y ago

Hi Chris! Looks great! Are you considering a domain blacklist feature? For example, when searching for C++ documentation, I rather never be served results from cplusplus.com.