Search for the small web

Every ask, newest first

Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.

Reader’s note. Many frame it as search that skips ad-funded pages.

1. Mar 2026Wants discovery that surfaces rarely-posting sites with good content, rather than favoring frequent posters. Read it: a comment in “Kagi Small Web”
2. Mar 2026Wants an easier way to find hand-made personal websites in the old-web spirit. Read it: a comment in “The Cathode Ray Tube site”
3. Apr 2024Wants a modern directory of quirky small websites with the feel of Wiby. Read it: a comment in “We need to rewild the internet”
4. Nov 2023Wants a search engine that catalogs only ad-free pages. Read it: a comment in “The Small Website Discoverability Crisis (2021)”
5. Jul 2023Wants a search engine that finds personal experience blog posts, which major engines bury beneath big domains. Read it: a comment in “Every person on the planet should have their own website”
6. Mar 2023Wants simple discovery of ad-free, text-focused websites, perhaps through a dedicated search engine. Read it: a comment in “Vivaldi co-founder: Advertisers 'stole the internet from us'”
7. Nov 2022Misses StumbleUpon and wants a similar site-discovery tool. Read it: a comment in “Bubbles”
8. Apr 2022Wants an aggregator of informative hobby sites without the fluff found on Reddit. Read it: a comment in “Turning scrap copper into beautiful crystals”
9. Mar 2022Wants a search engine returning only vintage-style hand-coded sites without popups or tracking notices. Read it: a comment in “Teclis – Non-commercial web search”
10. Nov 2021Wants a directory of niche hobby sites like the crystal-growing one. Read it: a comment in “How to grow sodium chloride crystals at home”
11. Jul 2021Wants an easier way to discover passionate independent blogs on narrow topics. Read it: a comment in “What’s the matter with airports? (2011)”
12. Apr 2021Wants a site that lists all the single-purpose, artsy little websites. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: Places to watch ducks if you're sick of everything”
13. Dec 2020Wants a search engine that skips mainstream news, social media and shopping to surface obscure results. Read it: a comment in “How AltaVista, the first good search engine, fell into the digital abyss”
14. Sep 2020Would pay for research-style search that filters big names and lets them browse the long tail by date. Read it: a comment in “DuckDuckGo is growing fast”
15. Aug 2020Wants a search engine indexing only personal websites and blogs. Read it: a comment in “Hunting the Nearly-Invisible Personal Website”
16. Jun 2020Wants search over the personal web that penalizes ads and large sites. Read it: a comment in “What is Electricity? (1996)”
17. Jul 2019Wants a search engine limited to the ad-free web, using Google only for commercial queries. Read it: a comment in “Advertising Is a Cancer on Society”
18. Apr 2019Suggests building a search engine that indexes only ad-free pages, mostly private blogs. Read it: a comment in “Have a personal web site”
19. Apr 2019Wants a direct service for discovering blogs, similar to podcast discovery tools. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Best Way to Discover Blogs?”
20. Dec 2018Wants a blog and discussion search engine for substantial writing on a topic, not buried deep in results. Read it: a comment in “Searching the Creative Internet”
21. Aug 2015Wants a search engine that filters for sites matching minimalist, anti-bloat web design criteria. Read it: a comment in “Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013)”
22. Mar 2010Wants a search engine for ad-free, old, human-edited content linked from similar sites, avoiding SEO junk. Read it: a comment in “Web Content Management is dead but death is just the beginning”