Help & FAQ

ind-x is a decentralized search engine. Instead of storing a search index in a centralized database, we crawl the web and publish metadata (titles, descriptions, keywords) as Nostr events to participating relays. This makes the index censorship-resistant and accessible to anyone.

Type your query in the search box on the homepage and press Enter or click Search. You can also use Ctrl+K (or ⌘+K on Mac) to focus the search input from anywhere.

After searching, tabs appear below the search bar for different result types: Web, Images, Video, News, Map, Shop, and Chat. Click a tab to filter results. Some verticals (like Shop) are disabled while we build them out.

It takes you directly to the first result for your query, skipping the results page. Useful when you're confident the top result is what you want.

No. We don't use cookies, tracking pixels, fingerprinting, or analytics that identify you. We don't log search queries, IP addresses, or associate queries with identities. See our Privacy Policy for details.

Our crawler visits publicly accessible pages and extracts only metadata: title, description, keywords, and Open Graph tags. We don't extract or store full page content, user-generated content, or private data. We respect robots.txt and rate limits.

Yes. Add a noindex directive to your robots.txt or meta tags, or contact us with the URL(s) in question.

Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays) is an open protocol for censorship-resistant communication. It uses relays to distribute events — anyone can run a relay, anyone can build apps on top. ind-x publishes search metadata as Nostr events.

No. Search works without an account. Connecting a Nostr account (via the account button in the top nav) enables future features like saved searches, personalized ranking, and contributing to the index.

We publish to a set of public Nostr relays. The specific relays may change over time. We don't control relay availability, data retention, or policies — those are governed by each relay operator.

Yes. Any Nostr relay can receive our published events. If you run a relay and want to be included in our default set, let us know.

Basic operators are supported: site:example.com to restrict to a domain, "exact phrase" for exact matches, -term to exclude terms. More operators coming soon.

The index is built by our crawler and published to Nostr. Coverage grows over time. If a result seems wrong, it may be stale metadata from the source page, or the page hasn't been recrawled yet. We don't control third-party content.

Not yet. This is planned. For now, results reflect what's publicly indexed.

There's no public API yet. The search UI queries Nostr relays directly from the browser. An API is on the roadmap — contact us if you have a use case.

Try a simpler query. Check your internet connection (queries go to Nostr relays). If it persists, the relays may be temporarily unavailable — try again in a moment.

Queries fan out to multiple relays. Speed depends on relay latency. We're optimizing this. If it's consistently slow, let us know your region.

Voice search requires microphone permission and HTTPS (or localhost). Make sure you've granted permission and are on a secure context. It uses the browser's Web Speech API, which varies by browser.

ind-x follows your system preference. To override, change your OS/browser theme setting. If something looks wrong, report it with your browser/OS details.

The frontend is public. The crawler and backend components are being opened progressively. Follow github.com/ind-x for updates.

Report bugs, suggest features, improve docs, or contribute code via GitHub. You can also run a Nostr relay that indexes ind-x events, or help with translations.

ind-x is the flagship product of Numeral, a parent company for decentralized internet tools.