Search for the open web
The web is still out there.
Never Betray the User
The feed is not the web, and neither is the little answer box that talks
back. The web is still made of pages: public records, university papers,
manuals, local reporting, old forum answers, source documents, and small
useful sites written by people who knew something and left it where the
rest of us could find it.
I'm Nic Weyand.
Argand is the search engine I am building for that web. It finds the
original page and sends you there. When it knows the exact place to
look, Argand Navigate points to it. The visit belongs to the page, and
the search does not become a profile of you.
The Argand Principal
The old bargain should not vanish one concession at a time.
Ed Zitron calls it the Rot Economy: useful tools slowly turning into extraction machines. Argand's defense is architectural — the places where that bargain usually rots are left out of the system.
Paid rank has no slot in the system. Argand's document records do not contain a sponsor field, a bid field, or any hidden hook for business logic, so selling rank would require changing the system.
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How it works
From question to source.
A search should feel simple, but the path from question to source should not be a mystery. Argand cleans the query, gathers candidates, re-reads the best ones, and uses Navigate to open the source when it knows where to point.
You ask the question in your own words, with the typos, shorthand, and odd phrasing that come with real searching. Argand cleans up the query before it searches, so rough language does not become a dead end.
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A promise
Search should not replace the page that answered you.
Argand finds the source and sends you there. It runs deliberately small — on ordinary hardware — because that changes who gets credit for the answer.
Most generated-answer search depends on warehouses full of power-hungry graphics cards. Argand made the opposite choice: ordinary processors, the kind already inside cheap laptops and old phones.
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Different by design
Different by design.
- No paid results
Rank is earned, never bought. There is no sponsor field in the system.
- No AI substitution
Argand sends you to the source. It does not replace the page that answered you.
- No profile of you
Searches are not linked to an identity. The same question returns the same results for everyone.
- Traffic goes out
Every result click goes to the source site. Argand does not keep you on Argand.
Dig deeper
Read more about the work.
This page is the short version. The links below go deeper into the evidence behind the claims and the work still ahead.