How to make the internet fun again

For the past few months, I’ve been using an old yet refreshing tool to find my way across the internet. It’s a custom search engine. And it has made my use of the internet a lot more fun and interesting.

A custom search engine allows you to specify which sites you prefer seeing results from, and which ones you want to omit.

This allows you to tailor your search results to your own preferences, guided by your needs and interests in life. Reducing the influence of keyword optimization from advertisements and low quality content. which may distract you from what you were actually looking for.

Sounds cool! Where do I get one?

I’m using Google’s Programmable Search Engine. It was made to be integrated into other websites, but it works as a standalone search engine too. If you are able to pay, Kagi looks like a great option with better privacy and features.

OK! But how should I configure it?

When it comes to deciding which sites to add to a search engine, I find it useful to include sites that are large “repositories” of content. These can be very broad, like YouTube and Wikipedia, or focused to a certain topic, like AZLyrics and StackOverflow.

I also like to get results from community-based sites, such as Reddit and Stack Exchange. I find these places give me perspectives or pieces of information that I wouldn’t find elsewhere.

It’s a good idea to allow the search engine to also include results from websites outside of the ones specified. The sites in the list will still receive priority. In Programmable Search, I’ve enabled the checkbox: Augment results (Search the entire web).

In my blocklist are a few sites that tend to rank very high, but are never useful.

Closing thoughts

When switching to a custom search engine, remember to make it the default in your browser. And create a quick way to get to its control panel, so you can update your preferences as you go without much effort.

For those interested, I recommend these two videos related to this topic, they inspired me to look for a better solution and share it with all.

Happy searching!