Thanks! I really appreciate the detailed feedback and suggestions.
The idea of supplementing the index with older Common Crawl/Blekko-era data is definitely interesting, especially for preserving pages that are gone now. The metasearch + independent reranking concept is interesting too, but one of the main goals with Slick is staying completely independent long term.
I know that comes with much slower growth and a lot more work, but I think it's better than building on top of another search engine for 5 years and then suddenly having that engine massively change direction. I actually only recently learned that Google is planning to heavily rework Search around AI as well, which honestly reinforced my decision to keep Slick independent instead of relying heavily on another engine (https://san.com/cc/googles-shift-to-ai-powered-search-result...).
Right now I'm mainly focused on improving Slick's own crawl/index quality instead of relying too heavily on external sources.
I've taken a look at 4get.ca, which is Canadian apparently (I am too), it's really good. Although again, I'm not leaning too heavily into metasearch unless maintaining a fully independent index becomes unrealistic. I have already written over 15 thousand lines of code for this engine already, over a year of coding.
I've never noticed the "search engines disappearing", probably because they're disappearing. I should probably read up on that. Most likely it's because they can't afford to run the project anymore, whether it's mentally or financially. I've experienced this too. I'm actively trying to promote to get new supporters of the search engine, to no avail.
I don't think I'll feel disinclined to work on the project any time soon, but if I ever do, I'll be sure to tell you. You are my first supporter after all.
I'm currently not looking for employees right now, but I appreciate the offer. I've been able to do this much on my own, and it's just uphill from here. Improving the ranking bugs I mentioned in my blog, getting more supporters so I have an incentive to get infrastructure, improving my crawler, etc.
I really appreciate the support.
The idea of supplementing the index with older Common Crawl/Blekko-era data is definitely interesting, especially for preserving pages that are gone now. The metasearch + independent reranking concept is interesting too, but one of the main goals with Slick is staying completely independent long term.
I know that comes with much slower growth and a lot more work, but I think it's better than building on top of another search engine for 5 years and then suddenly having that engine massively change direction. I actually only recently learned that Google is planning to heavily rework Search around AI as well, which honestly reinforced my decision to keep Slick independent instead of relying heavily on another engine (https://san.com/cc/googles-shift-to-ai-powered-search-result...).
Right now I'm mainly focused on improving Slick's own crawl/index quality instead of relying too heavily on external sources.
I've taken a look at 4get.ca, which is Canadian apparently (I am too), it's really good. Although again, I'm not leaning too heavily into metasearch unless maintaining a fully independent index becomes unrealistic. I have already written over 15 thousand lines of code for this engine already, over a year of coding.
I've never noticed the "search engines disappearing", probably because they're disappearing. I should probably read up on that. Most likely it's because they can't afford to run the project anymore, whether it's mentally or financially. I've experienced this too. I'm actively trying to promote to get new supporters of the search engine, to no avail.
I don't think I'll feel disinclined to work on the project any time soon, but if I ever do, I'll be sure to tell you. You are my first supporter after all.
I'm currently not looking for employees right now, but I appreciate the offer. I've been able to do this much on my own, and it's just uphill from here. Improving the ranking bugs I mentioned in my blog, getting more supporters so I have an incentive to get infrastructure, improving my crawler, etc.
I really appreciate the support.