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I built a 500k-domain search engine for makers in a weekend for $10

alexmorleyfinch.github.io

August 13, 2026

12 min read

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54/100

Summary

A search engine was built to focus on niche content, specifically portfolios, zines, and unique art projects, rather than corporate documentation. The project involved indexing approximately 40 million domains with a planned storage of 40GB for metadata.

Key Takeaways

A personal search engine was built in a weekend, cataloging 560,183 homepages for approximately $10 and an overnight GPU rental.
The search engine focuses on finding creative projects and portfolios, avoiding corporate documentation and SEO-heavy content.
Metadata for each domain is limited to 1KB, and raw page text is discarded after processing to manage storage efficiently.
The crawler prioritizes pages based on categories, allowing for a more relevant selection of sites to index.

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Community Sentiment

Mixed

Positives

The project tackles a real pain point in website discovery, and auto-labeling could be a game-changer for niche searches.
Enthusiasm is brewing for local solutions; folks are excited about how easily they can build custom search engines tailored to their needs.
Some commenters see this as a refreshing shift back to local computing, where users can control their own data and tools without relying on big tech.

Concerns

Critics think the project's 'weekend' claim downplays the complexity of building a robust search engine — low effort shouldn't be a selling point.
Skeptics doubt this solution can compete with established giants like Google or DuckDuckGo, questioning its practical utility.
A few voices express confusion about the project’s usefulness, feeling it might not offer significant advantages over existing search tools.