# Marginalia Search 50 Hacker News commenters recommended Marginalia Search and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Recommended for finding real personal blogs and non-commercial sites that mainstream engines bury, often as a second search. Caveat: its index is small and misses many queries. ## Why people recommend it - Good alternative when Google falls short (5 comments): "results from search engines like marginalia etc that I tend to forget to search directly but like having meshed into my general searches." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48266490)) "I usually use Marginalia Search when I'm researching something and not finding any good results on Kagi or Google." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49008565)) "Marginalia likely returns better results than Google, when it returns useful results." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49672656)) - Finds obscure small-web sites (5 comments): "has some not-very-obvious tools for exploring the link graph, that will occasionally turn up interesting things" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46015197)) "You can kinda get a similar experience to StumbleUpon with marginalia's explore mode" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46170123)) "I love your search engine for my ttrpg side projects to find obscure blogs, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47312361)) - Surfaces real personal blogs (3 comments): "almost always I find a real person writing about their experiences, not some content farm or corporate bland talk" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46763748)) "is an indie search engine that prioritizes small websites and non-commercial content" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46689828)) "it does achieve its stated goal: of resurfacing real people on the internet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47025707)) - Filters out ads and scripts (3 comments): "It flags sites that have advertising, javascript, etc. meaning that you can easily avoid those." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48081130)) "Whitelisting non–slop is sufficient and gets you Marginalia Search." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47029034)) "Whatever it does find is pretty much guaranteed to be non-slop." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47408734)) ## What people warn about - Index is small and incomplete (3 comments): "It's refreshing, although it doesn't index enough stuff to find what you're looking for, most times." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47071838)) "Try Marginalia Search but be warned it doesn't index the entire web" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47763095)) "a much larger index created by one person with less funding" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49026192)) - Newer interface needs JavaScript (2 comments): "And the 'old' interface, you bet I tried to use it... which is actually gated with javascript" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47424499)) "Sadely this search engine is now javascript only." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47411664)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Google Search](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-search.md): 315 recommend - [Yandex Search](https://hackerapproved.com/p/yandex.md): 79 recommend - [Bing](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bing.md): 33 recommend - [Ecosia](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ecosia.md): 24 recommend - [AltaVista](https://hackerapproved.com/p/altavista.md): 24 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://marginalia-search.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Marginalia Search", https://hackerapproved.com/p/marginalia-search/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).