search-engine

YaCy: Free Self-hosted Privacy-First Decentralized Search Engine

Distributed Peer-to-Peer Web Search Engine and Intranet Search Appliance

Hazem Abbas

Aug 25, 2023 — 3 min read

YaCy is a powerful and reliable search engine that can be used by anyone to efficiently search the internet (including both WWW and ftp). In addition to this, it also allows you to create a personalized search portal for your own use or for others to use (whether it's for the internet or an intranet). With the capability to index billions of web pages, the scale of YaCy is virtually limitless and is only restricted by the number of users.

One of the most unique features of YaCy is its fully decentralized p2p mode, which ensures that all users in the search engine network are treated equally. This means that it is impossible for anyone to censor the content of the distributed index, ensuring complete freedom of information for all users.

Each YaCy user is either part of a large search network (search indexes can be exchanged with other installation over a built-in peer-to-peer network protocol) or the user runs YaCy to produce a personal search portal that is either public or private.

YaCy search portals can also be placed in an intranet environment, making it a replacement for commercial enterprise search solutions. A network scanner makes it easy to discover all available HTTP, FTP and SMB servers.

In addition to the features mentioned earlier, YaCy also offers several other noteworthy features such as web crawling, intranet indexing, and drop-in replacement of Google Search Appliance. Additionally, YaCy is equipped with embedded Solr, providing Solr API, and allows for peer-to-peer index sharing. With all these features combined, YaCy is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a powerful and flexible search engine solution.

Features

Web Crawling
P2P Search Mode
Your Own Search Portal
Intranet Indexing
Drop-In Replacement of Google Search Appliance
Embedded Solr - provides Solr API
Peer-to-Peer Index Sharing

Platforms

Windows
Linux
macOS

YaCy has a strong connection to privacy-aware tools. As such it does not collect personalized data. It also has no 'phoning-home' integrated. This web page does not use cookies. However, linked services may have cookies.