Google Search Mojeek is a British search engine operated by Mojeek Limited, a company registered in England (Company No. 06918197) and headquartered at Science Park Square, Brighton, Sussex. Founded in 2004 by Marc Smith as a personal project at the Sussex Innovation Centre and incorporated in 2009, Mojeek is unique among privacy-focused search engines in that it builds and maintains its own web index rather than resurfacing results from Google or Bing.
The search engine operates its own crawler-based index called Gravity, which has grown to over 9 billion pages as of 2025 — from 1 billion in 2015 to 2 billion in 2018 to 6 billion in October 2022. The technology was developed entirely from scratch by Marc Smith, primarily in C, using no pre-existing search or crawler technology. All technology and intellectual property is fully owned by Mojeek Limited. The infrastructure runs on 100+ bare metal servers, partially self-built, housed in a green data centre.
Mojeek was the first search engine to adopt a no-tracking privacy policy in 2006. IP addresses are replaced with a two-letter country code at collection time, making identification impossible. No cookies are placed by default, no third-party trackers are used, and log data is never sold or distributed. Revenue comes from privacy-preserving contextual advertising (keyword-based, not profile-based) and API licensing.
Key Features
- Independent Crawler Index: Own 9-billion-page index (Gravity) — not dependent on Google, Bing, or any other search provider
- First No-Tracking Search Engine: Adopted no-tracking policy in 2006, before any other search engine
- No IP Address Storage: IP addresses replaced with country code at collection time
- Mojeek Focus: Custom search engine builder — define up to 25 sites to search across, no login required
- Web Search API: Full access to the index with top 1,000 results per query (vs. Google’s 100 or Bing’s ~300)
- No Registration Required: Full functionality without any account or cookies
- Green Data Centre: Infrastructure hosted in a facility with “Green Data Centre” accreditation
Privacy Highlights
Mojeek implements privacy through data minimization by design. IP addresses are not recorded — they are replaced with a two-letter country code at the point of collection, making user identification impossible even from server logs. No cookies are placed by default; cookies are only set with explicit user consent for personal preferences like Focus. No third-party trackers are used. All development is entirely in-house with no outsourcing to third parties.
Standard server logs are kept indefinitely but contain no personally identifiable information — only country code, timestamp, page requested, referral data, and browser information. This log data is never sold or distributed to third parties under any circumstances. For contact information (name/email), data is deleted upon GDPR withdrawal of consent.
Mojeek operates under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. While the UK is in the Five Eyes jurisdiction, Mojeek states they have no useful personal data to hand over since no IP addresses or PII are stored. The company has never received any government requests to remove content or provide data.
Privacy Breakdown
Data Residency (Score: 60 — Confidence: High)
Pros:
- All servers located in the UK in a dedicated secure room at a green data centre.
- Data minimization by design — no personal data to reside anywhere.
- Has never received government data requests (nothing to provide).
Cons:
- UK jurisdiction is in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
- UK Investigatory Powers Act (“Snoopers’ Charter”) applies to UK-based services, though Mojeek argues it applies to Communication Service Providers, not search engines.
- Not in the EU — post-Brexit UK data protection adequacy could change.
Open Source (Score: 10 — Confidence: High)
Pros:
- Mobile app (React Native) is publicly available on GitHub (github.com/Mojeek).
- 3 public repositories on GitHub.
Cons:
- Core search engine (crawler, indexer, ranking algorithm) is fully proprietary and closed source.
- Technology developed entirely in-house by Marc Smith in C — all IP owned by Mojeek Limited.
- No explicit open source license on public repositories.
Privacy Policy (Score: 85 — Confidence: High)
Pros:
- IP addresses replaced with country code at collection point — identification impossible.
- No cookies by default. No third-party trackers. No data selling.
- All development in-house. No outsourcing to third parties.
- Clear retention policies documented. GDPR rights fully supported.
Cons:
- Mojeek acknowledges users cannot fully verify no-tracking claims — requires trust.
- Anonymized logs kept indefinitely (though containing no PII).
- Closed source prevents independent verification.
Trackers (Score: 95 — Confidence: High)
Pros:
- Zero third-party trackers. No analytics. No advertising cookies.
- IP addresses anonymized at collection point (replaced with country code).
- Contextual advertising based on query keyword only — no user profiling.
- All development in-house, minimizing third-party service consumption.
Cons:
- Logs referrer URL (last web page visited before Mojeek).
- Closed source prevents full independent verification.
Terms of Service (Score: 75 — Confidence: Medium)
Pros:
- Refusing cookies does not limit service access. Complete cookie disclosure list provided.
- Archives of Terms available for version comparison.
Cons:
- Personal data may be disclosed to comply with government requests without user notice.
- Service provided “as is” with no guarantees.
- English court jurisdiction governs the terms.
Controversies
Mojeek has faced relatively few controversies compared to other search engines. The most common criticism relates to search quality — with a 9-billion-page index compared to Google’s hundreds of billions, results are inevitably less comprehensive, particularly for non-English queries. Image search is limited, sourcing from Openverse and Pixabay only. [1]
A historical privacy policy clause stated that searches related to illegal activities involving minors would have the full IP log retained and handed to authorities. Mojeek later clarified this was only a deterrent and was technically impossible due to their anonymization architecture. The clause has since been removed. [2]
Some critics question whether organic growth without venture capital can sustain the engine long-term. Mojeek has raised approximately $3.85M total from private individual investors (non-institutional, non-Big Tech), with the latest round being a seed round of approximately $80K in September 2013. [3]
