Not everything on the web will show up in a list of search results on Google or Bing; there are numerous places that the sites’ web crawlers cannot access.
There is a whole world of content hiding on the so-called “Invisible Web,” the part of the internet that does not appear in search results or web directories. While there is no official data available, experts agree that the invisible web is multiple times larger than the regular web we browse every day. There are two parts to the invisible web: the deep web and the dark web.
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The Deep Web |
The deep web is made up of content that typically requires some form of accreditation to access. Examples include library databases, email inboxes, personal records (financial, academic, health, and legal), cloud storage drives, and company intranets. If you have the correct details, you can access the content through a regular web browser. |
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The Dark Web |
The dark web is a subsection of the deep web. You need to use a dedicated browser (such as Tor) to access dark web content. It’s more anonymous than the regular web and is thus often the home of illegal activities. However, not everything on the dark web is illegal. Some of the best dark web websites are just versions of regular sites, but are hidden to enable users in totalitarian regimes to access them. |
There is another big difference between the regular web and the invisible web, and that’s how you find data. Most of the time, you can’t just turn to Google to find information on the dark web. No, for that, you need to use one of these specialized deep search engine tools.
Find people, pay a price
Pipl brands itself as the world’s largest people search engine. Unlike Google, Pipl can interact with searchable databases, member directories, court records, and other deep internet search content to offer you a detailed snapshot of a person. You can also use Pipl to deep search yourself.
However, unlike most of the deep search engines on this list, Pipl isn’t free; it’s a premium search tool with varying costs based on usage, offering both pay-per-usage and monthly fee models.
Look back in time
Regular search engines only provide results from the most recent version of a website that’s available.
The Wayback Machine is different. It has copies of more than 950 billion web pages on its servers, allowing you to search for content that’s no longer available on the visible web. It’s also a handy site for viewing old versions of any website or finding old copies of your favorite magazines.
Like Wikipedia, The Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine are incredible resources for the internet, and the vast amount of content hiding there actually makes it one of the most underrated entertainment websites.
It’s one of the oldest existing web resources
The WWW Virtual Library is one of the oldest catalogs on the web. It was started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, back in 1991, and is a precursor to many of the modern web catalog systems we know now (better known as search engines).
Volunteers compiled the list of links by hand, creating a high-quality index of deep web content across dozens of categories.
Private search is the best
DuckDuckGo is well-known as one of the best private search engines for the visible web and offers one of the best privacy-focused smartphone browsers. But did you know the company also offers an onion site that lets you explore the dark web?
Even the regular search engine offers more deep web content than Google. It pools results from more than 500 standalone search tools to find its results. If you pair the regular DuckDuckGo engine with the Onion version, you can perform an entire web search.
DuckDuckGo’s Onion site can be found at
For all your governmental needs
The amount of content on USA.gov is seriously impressive. It’s a portal to all the public material you need on every federal agency and state, local, or tribal government.
You will also find information about government jobs, loans, grants, taxes, and a whole lot more. Most of the information on the site will not appear on Google, and can only be accessed by searching specifically within the website.
Research with ease
The Directory of Open Access Journals is a deep internet search engine that provides access to academic papers. The papers are available to anyone without charge.
The current repository has over 22,000 journals with over 10 million articles across all subjects. Although you can easily find free articles on Google Scholar and access some information, we think the DOAJ is a better research tool. It also undergoes periodic reapplication processes to make sure the journals and their credentials are up to date, which can result in some journals being removed. However, it’s a key way to keep the directory clean.
This open-source metasearch engine is completely different
If you are looking for a dark web search engine that also gets data from the visible web, check out SearXNG. It’s what’s known as a “metasearch engine,” in that it doesn’t spend time crawling the web to find links like Google or Brave. Instead, it sends your search query on to 70 different search engines, then returns the best results. In that, it’s like an extra-powerful tool that allows you to search Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, and more, all at one time.
It’s also an open-source project that allows you to run your own private instance of the tool. Doing so gives you extra privacy when searching the web, and SearXNG is often regarded as one of the most private ways to do so. If it exists, this SearXNG can probably find it.
The site has an Onion domain name, so it is not accessible through a standard web browser. To load it, open a dark web browser such as Tor and paste into the address bar.
Connect to every library, read every newspaper
Veridian aims to provide a single portal to all the historical newspapers of the world. It’s a fantastic resource for researchers—especially family historians, genealogists, and students.
Many of the newspapers on the site are exclusively on the deep web; they will not show up on Google. At the time of writing, over 3.6 million newspapers are available.
Veridian Software is the company behind the now-dead portal for historical newspapers, Elephind. If you loved Elephind and want an alternative, you’ll be happy to know that all of its library is still accessible via Veridian’s website.
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Torch
Search every part of the dark web
As one of the oldest deep web search engines, Torch is one of the best. Torch prides itself on not censoring any search results, and it scours the deep web every day for new publicly available Onion websites on the Tor network. It can be a mixed bag, mind. The nature of the dark web means you may receive partial results, odd combinations, and some bits that are straight up wrong. It can also surface some of the more questionable results on the dark web, so do be careful what you click—that’s the core strategy of using the dark web safely.
Torch has indexed over three million documents as of writing. To access Torch, copy and paste the following link in Tor:
Search the dark web from the clearnet
Ahmia is a dark web search engine. But there’s a twist—it is one of the few dark web search engines that is available on the regular web. Of course, any links and results will not be openable unless you have the Tor browser installed on your computer. However, it’s still a great way to get a taste of what’s available on the dark web without exposing yourself to the inherent risks of using the dark web. Before exploring, you should first know how to avoid dangerous content on the dark web.
The big difference between Torch and Ahmia is the approach to security and some of the materials served. As mentioned, Torch can return some of the darker side of the dark web, while Ahmia works to make sure it filters out any dangerous content involving minors (yes, the dark web can be a truly horrendous place).
You can find Ahmia on the dark web at the address juhanurmihxlp77nkq76byazcldy2hlmovfu2epvl5ankdibsot4csyd.onion/.