Some of you may already know about Presearch—a blockchain-based search engine that rewards users with crypto tokens for their searches. Sounds amazing, isn't it?

Today I want to share my four-year experience with Presearch and explain how, in the end, I became a bit disappointed.

The Beginning

My story with Presearch begins in December 2020. When I signed up, I received a 25 PRE bonus—sweet! At that time, users could earn 0.25 PRE per search, with a maximum of 25 searches per day. PRE, the platform's native token, was priced at around $0.01561. The minimum withdrawal amount was 1,000 PRE, which sounded like a lot at first. If you used all the available searches every day, it would take roughly 156 days to reach the minimum withdrawal.

The search engine didn’t disappoint; the results were on par with, if not better than, Google’s. It felt great to earn cryptocurrency for something as simple as searching the web.

The Long Run

So after a few months, the reward per search started to drop. It went from 0.25 PRE to around 0.13 PRE or 0.10 PRE per search. Now, it would take around 390 days to reach the minimum withdrawal. Okay, I thought, that’s fair enough, considering the number of users was increasing. But then, things took a turn for the worse.

Can you guess how much each search is worth now? Only 0.01 PRE. At that rate, it would take about 10 years to reach the minimum withdrawal amount. Isn’t that crazy?

The Price

PRE was once worth around $1.40. While that may not have been a fortune, it was decent for a decentralized search engine trying to make a name for itself. Today, the token is worth only $0.022.
So after 10 years with 1000 PRE you get just 22$?

The Big Disappointment

So, after four years of fair use of Presearch, I finally accumulated the 1,000 PRE required for withdrawal. Great! I thought—finally, I can cash out. I submitted the withdrawal request and waited for confirmation. And then, I experienced my biggest disappointment.

The system checked all my searches and removed around 250 PRE as "fraudulent." Are you serious? I can swear on my life that I was using Presearch fairly—no automated searches, no bots, no repetitive or spammy searches. Every search I made was legitimate.

Presearch claims that these deductions are meant to maintain fairness on the platform by removing tokens from searches that don’t meet their standards. But there’s no transparency here—no explanation about which searches were considered invalid or why. I’ve never used bots, spammed searches, or tried to game the system.

If Presearch wants to maintain any credibility, they need to provide clear communication about what constitutes an "invalid search" and offer users the ability to contest these deductions.

Conclusion

I’m not sure if I will continue using Presearch after my experience. Maybe I’ll go back to Google or try another privacy-oriented search engine.

What about you? Are you using Presearch? What’s your experience with it? And how would you react to a situation like mine? Let me know in the comments, because our opinion matters!

Yours truly,
Merlin's Grandson