Tips & Troubleshooting
From Seeks
Seeks' proxy
How do I use Seeks' proxy ?
run Seeks and setup your browser to use Seeks as its HTTP and HTTPS proxy. By default, it is listening on localhost (127.0.0.1) and port 8118.
Is there a simple way to activate/deactivate Seeks' proxy on my local machine ?
Yes, depending on your browser. On Firefox, a useful plugin is QuickProxy, another one is SwitchProxy.
The two solutions above are what you need if you are using a local proxy, that is if seeks is running on your machine or on a trusted local network. While this is the recommended use of Seeks, it is possible to connect to distant Seeks proxy somewhere on the Internet. In this case, you might want to only let go to the proxy a subset of your HTTP trafic. On Firefox, a useful plugin that does just this is FoxyProxy, that allows you to route your trafic using a set of URL patterns. On Firefox and other navigators you may find other similar products. Configuration will look the same though, and here is what you need to do.
- use a pattern for routing the search engine trafic to Seeks. For example, if you are using Google most of the time, add a pattern of the form
*.google.*/search?*
- use a pattern to route the Seeks' proxy internal calls. This is mandatory :
*.s.s.*
would do the trick.
Websearch plugin
Is it possible to have a Web search interface similar to that of other search engines instead of using the proxy ?
Yes, you need to setup a webserver and to route the queries to the Seeks proxy.
For confort and performance reasons, seeks releases >= 0.2.3 embeds a lightweight HTTP server as a plugin.
Follow the explanations on how to set Seeks on the Web.
I do not want or cannot set up and maintain my own Seeks websearch machine, can I use a public one ?
Yes, take a look at the list of existing nodes.
How do I prevent Seeks from intercepting all my queries to search engines ?
By default Seeks intercepts your websearch queries to Google, Bing & Cuil search engines. It is possible to deactivate some or all of the query intercetors, while continuing to use Seeks when needed. To do so, edit the file
seeks/src/plugins/websearch/patterns/qi_patterns
By default this file contains
*.google.*/search? *.bing.*/search? *.cuil.com*/search?
Simply uncomment the search engine(s) you don't want Seeks to intercept, e.g.
#*.google.*/search?
Restart seeks (automatic detection of configuration changes is a soon-to-be feature).
Seeks remains accessible through its main search page, available from your local Seeks proxy at
http://s.s/websearch-hp
How can I add Seeks websearch to my browser's list of search engine ?
Currently, we tell you how to do it with Firefox. For other navigators, try and let us know if what comes below works.
Seeks follows the opensearch specification. This allows you to add your favorite public node to the main list of search engines.
Using Firefox, while on a Seeks websearch page, simply open the list of search engines, you should see a Seeks search 'plugin' ready to be added.
More than that, I want to put seeks as default search engine in Firefox, even in the address bar
You may add seeks as a default browser, by opening the about:config page in Firefox, and modifying the value of
keyword.URL
so it is
http://your.node/search?expansion=1&action=expand&q=
You're done!
I had Seeks in my Firefox's list of search engines, but it doesn't seem to work anymore
Probably your current node did change version or some of its options. You need to update your Firefox search plugin.
To do so, first, remove Seeks from your list of search engines (Go to the search bar, and choose 'Manage your search engines' from the list.
Then go to your seeks node directly, that is type its URL in your Firefox. Now set the search plugin again, as specified above, in the previous entry.
I don't get search results in the language I want
Normally, Seeks automatically detects your language preferences, based on HTTP headers. Now, in some cases, you may be using a server that is not configured to do this, or, more frequently, your browser sets a language that is different from the language you wish to perform a query with.
In this case, use the buit-in language commands. For example for querying 'Paris bar' in French, do
:fr Paris bar
or in German, do
:de Paris bar
or in Swedish, do
:sv Paris bar
and so on.
The language codes follow ISO-639-1, you can fin all the codes here.
Using language commands is very practical. However, when you do so, Seeks has to impose a default region to associate to your language.
For example, when requesting French, Seeks default to France as a region for your queries. This does not mean that French-Canadian related results will not appears, but that your results will be more targeted to France.
As for now, you cannot specify a region in the language command. This might be added in the future.
How to get the websearch to perform as fast as possible
Depending on your configuration, Seeks websearch might take over a couple of seconds for certain queries.
If you want it faster, here is what you should consider doing:
- As a general rule, reduce the number of search engines to the minimum. More precisely, Seeks uses a threaded connection for every search engines and a thread per result page to parse. In consequence, performances strongly depend on your machine CPU. For example, running on a dual-core CPU, you should enjoy 4 hyperthreads, and Seeks should exhibit the same performances for 1 to 4 search engines, 5 to 8, ... On a single core CPU, allowing two hyperthreads, running with 4 search engines should be about twice slower than running with 2.
- Disable content analysis if you have enabled it. See the dedicated documentation for more details on how to do this.
- Disable extended highlighting (put extended-highlight to 0 in your websearch-config file).
- Lower the connection and transfer timeout, as this can fasten failed connections and broken transfers. See the appropriate documentation for more details on how to do this.
