Hey there! Whenever we come across an unknown term, the usual sane thing to do is to "Google" it. Because google knows it all. So, you are happy because of the results that google provided to you. The results pointed you to great articles that helped you feed your curiosity and google is happy because they have just earned some money. How?? Google shows you prioritised result and ad(s) when you search and they keep log of some information. You are using Google's search service for free but as the saying goes, "If the product is provided to you for free then you are the product". So, essentially the ad revenue and the data they have collected from you is a fees for their service!

My previous post was about Brave Browser and how it is paving a way for a great alternative to traditional ads revenue with their "BAT Rewards" by providing non-intrusive ads to their users if they opt-in and giving them 70% of the ad revenue. More about that here.

Well, there is a great decentralized alternative to Google Search too. Presearch!. So, according to their website, "Presearch is an open, decentralized search engine that rewards community members with Presearch Tokens for their usage, contribution to, and promotion of the platform."

Decentralised search means that there is no single central server or organisation recieving all the queries that users generate on the network. Instead, several nodes (more on them later!) are running on the network to resolve the queries. In simple terms, you search for something over Presearch and your query request will be sent to their nodes. The nodes will then resolve the received queries and send the result back to you. Users are rewarded for searching through the Presearch web page with their Presearch (PRE) tokens and they also get private results with no tracking whatsoever. 

A user will get 30 paid searches every day. The rewards of search is dynamic which means that depending on the price of the token in the market and various other factors, the amount of PRE token you will get per search will fluctuate. Pre is "ERC-20 token" and hence uses Ethereum blockchain and the transaction (gas) fees is pretty high. There are plans to incorporate the token on Binance smart chain. And since Ethereum 2.0 is almost here (most probably this year), till then, it is best to hold the token. The token grew by almost 1600% last year!!

Also, you will only be rewarded when using their own Pre-search Engine or D-Search. You are free to search using other providers (google, DDG etc) on presearch but no rewards will be provided when using those search engines. The homepage looks sleek. And when using their own search engine, if you are not satisfied by the result, then you can simply fetch the results of same query from other provider by clicking the icon of the provider which are present on the side bar (The side bar is on right in the desktop as shown in the picture below) of the result page. You are free to customise the list of provider. I have been quite satisified with the result that their default provider  provides.

Now, there has to be a way for the network to generate revenue otherwise it just cannot thrive. This is where Keyword staking comes in. So, if you have certain number of PRE tokens, you can stake them for a certain keyword. Say, you have a website called "ABC.com" then you stake your PRE token against the "ABC" keyword. Whenever someone searches anything related to the said keyword, an "Ad", that you have chosen, will be shown at the top of their search result. For staking to work you need to be the highest bidder. Suppose, someone has staked more Presearch token for the "ABC" keyword than you, then their ad will be shown instead of yours.

As of now, the keyword staking is free which means that you will get the same number of token back when you unstake them. So, essentially you can get free traffic flowing to wherever you want!!

Presearch do not have their own search index as of now. They have been working on it but till it is being developed, the results for your queries are being fetched from other search engines. But since the search engine is decentralised, how does it work? This is done by the "Nodes" running on the network. So, you stake some Presearch tokens and become a node operator. Then, you can run the node via your computer or raspberry or on a virtual server. Whenever the user queries over the presearch network, they will be resolved by these nodes. The nodes, as of now, simply act as your proxy and fetch the result from Third Party. However, no data is stored and you get quality result back to you.

Suppose you searched for "Presearch". Your query (which is "Presearch") will be sent to a node. The node will inturn query this over some other search engine. The Third Party search engine (Google or Bing etc) will think that the particular node (to whom you have sent your query) is searching for "Presearch". The result that the node get back from various search engines will be sent back to you.

But why would you stake your token to run a node? Well, you will earn Pre tokens for every query your node resolves. So, it is essentially a win-win. User is getting free Pre-token for searching and node operators are getting incentivised for resolving those searches.

If your searches are not counting in your daily reward then check whether you are logged in on the the Presearch Engine or DSearch (Only these 2 will give you reward for searching). You might see "Register or Login" instead of your current rewards. It means you are not logged into presearch engine. Just click that button and it will automatically log you in if you have logged in on the home page.

PRO - TIP: If you are using Presearch on your Computer's browser, then you can install their extension. It will simply make Presearch your default Search Engine. That way you will not have to manually go to presearch website and then perform the search.
For smartphone you can use their apps. If you don't want to have seperate app, then do this:

• Head over to this "Engine.Presearch.org" on your browser.
• Then perform a simple search there.
• Once done, go to your android browser settings. In the "Search Engine", you will see "engine.presearch.org" as a suggested option.
• Select that option and you are all set.

All of your searches that you do in the address bar will be performed on Presearch Network by default.

Presearch is in Beta-phase as of now. They will be moving to main-net sometime this year. The growth that the project has shown has been insane. You can sign-up using my link where both of us will get 25 PRE token, otherwise here is the link to their official sign up page without my referral. Either way, do check out the project. 

Peace.