By Andrea Widburg
American Thinker receives hundreds of promotional emails a week. Most swiftly head to the circular file. However, last week I received an email from a woman named Molly Koweek, promising that Luxxle, her employer’s search engine is truly revolutionary. Her email piqued my interest, so I did something I very rarely do: I set up a phone call. So far, it appears that she didn’t oversell anything; Luxxle really is something different, especially for those who are sick of seeing the major search engines ignore conservative content or give them such a low ranking that they essentially vanish. It’s still imperfect but it’s better than the alternatives.
As you can imagine, since I write posts every day, I frequently turn to search engines to help me track down information I know exists, so that I can provide a link to support my factual assertions. And every day, no matter the search engine I use, I run into the same problem: If I saw the facts on a conservative site, the search engines make it almost impossible to locate the source, and that’s true even if I include the site’s name in the search itself.
Instead, especially for controversial topics (COVID, Trump, J6, etc.), I get pages of content from the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, etc.. Sometimes, these sources have the fact I’m seeking but, usually, I have to wade through paragraphs of leftist agitprop to find the fact buried in a paragraph at the end of the article. I waste incredible amounts of time thanks to the search engines’ manifest bias and link to sites to which I’d rather not send traffic.
That’s why I got interested when Molly’s email said,
As you may be aware, traditional search engines typically exclude non-mainstream media sources, such as American Thinker, from their main algorithm of results. Even after searching for popular keywords like “Trump” or “Trump news” on Google, your content does not appear in any of the results.
At Luxxle, we believe that all publishers deserve a fair chance to be discovered, which is why we rank your content alongside the world’s biggest news outlets. Our platform is specifically designed to showcase high-quality content, like yours, front and center, so that readers can easily find and access it.
In addition, we have developed a powerful tool called Lenses that makes it even easier for users to find your content quickly. Our goal is to grow our user base and help quality publishers like American Thinker reach a wider audience.
Obviously, Molly was writing to us as a content provider, but I was intrigued by the promise that the search engine doesn’t do viewpoint discrimination.
After speaking with Molly it’s apparent that, while the site is still a work in progress, it’s progressing in the right direction. Also, along with more control over results, the search engine also respectes privacy. On the “about” page, Luxxle promises not to sell data and that its searches are encrypted. It has a mobile browser (which I haven’t tried) that blocks trackers, allowing private browsing.
Here’s what you see when you go to Luxxle:
I was immediately taken by how clean the page is. In a world of too much information, minimalism is attractive. But it’s not the look, it’s the functionality, that makes Luxxle different. Just look what happens if I punched in the phrase “Kamala Harris”:
The Luxxle feature is that “lenses” option at the top of the results. The first row says “Lean Left,” “All” (which is currently darker/highlighted), and “Lean Right.” The second row says “Algorithmically” (darkened/highlighted), “Alphabetically,” and “Freshness.” In other words, I can filter results by source and then, within that filter, I can view the results in different orders, depending on what’s useful to me. I can also filter out all MSM sources.
If I click “Lean Right” and “Freshness,” I no longer get CNN and the New York Times. Instead, the news comes from JustTheNews and Breitbart, and even The Gateway Pundit and Newsmax
I don’t advocate filtering out all leftist content (you need to know where your opponent stands), but this is a useful tool for finding conservative content that provides facts the leftists routinely ignore.
The site isn’t perfect. The filter didn’t work as well for the phrase “southern border.” This was my first result, and you can see that it doesn’t even offer the full “lenses” option at the top of the page, although it does include a Townhall article in the line-up:
To filter contents, I have to click on the “lenses” button higher on the page, below the search bar. Then, I get this global menu which, when saved, affects all future searches:
If I choose “Lean Right,” and screen out MSM and Wiki sources, I still get leftist content for the “southern border” search:
In other words, for some searches, I’m no worse off than I am at Bing, Google, or DuckDuckGo, and for other searches, I’m in much better shape. Given that there’s no seeming downside and only an upside for making the switch, I’ve set Luxxle as my default search engine.