Tips & Troubleshooting

From Seeks

Seeks is based on relaying queries to existing search engines then applying social filtering. Since several search engines try their best to provide results no matter what, the query can be transformed (fixed typos, removing quotes and other restrictions, etc.) and will return those results instead. Basically by design search queries are inclusive rather than strict.

Consequently once mixed with the results of other engines one might get unexpected results if the search was strict.

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.

How to use seeks and privoxy simultaneously ?

Change the Seeks default TCP port value to another value than 8118 (default value for privoxy):

listen-address  127.0.0.1:8250

Define forward value to have seeks using privoxy instead of sending directly its traffic to web servers

forward /       localhost:8118

Configure your browser to connect to Seeks proxy.

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 a 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 traffic. On Firefox, a useful plugin that does just this is FoxyProxy, that allows you to route your traffic 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 traffic 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 comfort and performance reasons, seeks releases >= 0.2.3 embed a lightweight HTTP server as a plugin.

Follow the explanations on how to configure 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 search engines. It is possible to deactivate some or all of the query interceptors, 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 comment the search engine(s) you don't want Seeks to intercept, e.g.

#*.google.*/search?

Restart seeks (automatic detection of configuration changes is an upcoming 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 browsers, try it 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 my default search engine in Firefox, even in the address bar

You may want to add seeks as a browser default, by opening the about:config page in Firefox, and modifying the value of

browser.search.defaultenginename

and set the value to

Seeks Search

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 changed 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.

How can I create easily a Search Engine plugin for a Seeks node in Firefox or IE ?

The Mycroft project from Mozdev provides a form to generate automatically the code for a such plugin.

Tick Show full instructions? to have help to fill the form ;
For the Search URL, you have to put url and vars needed by the search form of your node. For example : http://my-seeks-node.domain.com/search/search?q={searchTerms} and select GET method ;
To chose a language for the search result, select the desired one in Language of the results.

When the form is filled, click on Generate Plugin and don't forget to Test Plugin before Submit Plugin.

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 built-in language commands. For example for querying 'Paris bar' in French, do

:fr Paris bar

or in German

:de Paris bar

or in Swedish

:sv Paris bar

and so on.

The language codes follow ISO-639-1, you can find 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 defaults 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.

Currently 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 to make 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 engine and a thread per result page to parse. In consequence, performance strongly depends 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 one to four search engines, five to eigh, and so on. On a single core CPU, allowing two hyperthreads, running with four search engines should be about twice as slow as running with two.
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 speed up failed connections and broken transfers. See the appropriate documentation for more details on how to do this.

Tips & Troubleshooting

From Seeks

Contents

Seeks Behavior

Why I am receiving extra results?