Our Own Index
A crawler we run ourselves visits .onion sites and indexes titles, descriptions, and page text. Nothing is pulled from Google, Bing, or any outside API.
Nothing to Profile
No cookies, no fingerprinting, no third-party analytics. Queries are not tied to a person, and we have no advertising profile to build.
Plain HTML
Every page is rendered on the server and works with JavaScript fully disabled — including Tor Browser on its Safest setting.
Why EXCAVATOR Exists
Mainstream search engines pay for themselves by learning who you are. On Tor, that model makes no sense: people are there precisely because they do not want to be identified. EXCAVATOR is a search engine that fits the network it serves.
The whole stack is server-side PHP that emits plain HTML. There are no client scripts, no CDN assets, no fonts loaded from someone else's server. Whatever browser you use, the page you get is the page we sent.
We crawl the network with our own software and keep the index on hardware we control. Nothing is outsourced to a cloud provider, and nothing in the index is shared with or sold to third parties.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is EXCAVATOR?
A keyword search engine for Tor hidden services — the sites that end in .onion. We crawl them, index what we find, and let you search the result the way you would search the regular web.
Do I need Tor Browser?
Not to search. The clearnet entry point at excavatorsearch.direct works in any browser. You will need Tor Browser to open the .onion results themselves, and it is the more private way to use EXCAVATOR too.
What do you record when I search?
We keep server-side counts of page views and search terms so we can see load and popular topics. We set no cookies, load no third-party analytics, and never build user profiles or sell data.
How do I get my .onion site listed?
Submit it through Add URL. Every submission is reviewed by a person before it appears in results. Sites that link to already-indexed pages are usually picked up by the crawler on its own.
How is ranking done?
Your query is matched against titles, descriptions, URLs, and page text in our local index, then ordered by relevance. There is no paid ranking: promoted listings are labeled as such and shown separately from organic results.
Can I advertise?
Yes — homepage banners and clearly labeled promoted listings. Pricing and placement details are on the Advertise page.
What are the clearnet mirrors?
Regular websites that expose EXCAVATOR services without Tor Browser: search on excavatorsearch.direct and excavatorsearch.link, the curated directory on excavatorsearch.wiki, guides on excavatorsearch.info, and the .onion link shortener on excavatorsearch.click.
The EXCAVATOR Network
excavatorsearch.direct
Search
The main search page. Type a keyword, get .onion results from our own index.
excavatorsearch.wiki
Directory
Hand-checked .onion sites sorted by category: search, email, news, tools, and more.
excavatorsearch.info
Guides
Plain-language explainers on Tor, hidden services, and staying safe on the network.
excavatorsearch.click
Link Shortener
Turn a 56-character .onion address into a short link you can actually share.
excavatorsearch.link
Alternate Search
A second clearnet address for search, backed by the same index as the Tor version.
excavatorsearch.website
Project Home
This page: what the project is, how it works, and where everything lives.
Use It on Tor
The most private way to search is the .onion address itself, opened in Tor Browser:
Get Tor Browser from torproject.org — download it only from there.
Contact
Partnerships, abuse reports, and removal requests all go through one place:
the contact form on excavatorsearch.direct. Removal requests for indexed content are handled first.