Independent search engine Mojeek among UK companies seeking to make global impact

With global search dominated by tech giants, companies like Mojeek are seeking to change the game for people that want a better search experience.

Taking on the likes of Bing and Google, Mojeek are UK tech specialists that have set an ambitious goal to change how people search the web. As part of our series in highlighting innovative digital players, London Issue explored Mojeek to discover a fast, tailored search engine that is built on providing custom search experiences.

When speaking about Mojeek’s ambitions, CEO Colin Hayhurst this week said, “Web search innovation has been sparse since the market became dominated by one major player. Mojeek has always been determined to offer users something new, useful, and easy-to-use. We already offer independent search results and now we are giving people even more autonomy, something the big players have increasingly shied away from.”

Having almost indexed 6 billion pages to-date, Mojeek joins a host of UK tech companies that are making strides in improving the architecture of the web, and providing powerful alternative tools that are needed to make the global search market more diversified and transparent.

Mojeek set its latest goals on creating a people-first search engine without tracking or the need for users to create a specific account. With their Personal Search tool called Focus, the site provides users with the option to build lists of sites they want to search, with tailored results. Users can then save their configurations and fine-tune their search criteria across specific parts of included website domains.

“As a search engine that puts its principles and the autonomy of its users first, we talked directly to our users. We asked what was important to them and what that they wanted from us. This feedback is essential since we don’t and have never tracked our users. What we learned is that users wanted more control over how they search and what search results show up”, added Hayhurst.

Despite post-pandemic headwinds, the UK tech scene has been a bright spot in the UK economy with a variety of startups and tech businesses making substantial innovations that will shape future technologies. Recent figures published at this year’s London Tech Week revealed that the UK had attracted a record £12.4bn in venture capital funding since the start of the year, only second to the US.