Goggles enable any individual—or community of people—to alter the ranking of Brave Search by using a set of instructions (rules and filters). Anyone can create, apply, or extend a Goggle. Essentially Goggles act as a custom re-ranking on top of the Brave search index.
This means that, instead of a single ranking, Brave Search can offer an almost limitless number of ranking options. While Brave Search does not have editorial biases, all search engines have some level of intrinsic bias due to data and algorithmic choices. Goggles allows users to counter any intrinsic biases in the algorithm. Goggles also empowers anyone to create specific search use-cases that are too niche to be properly covered by an all-purpose search engine.
To learn more about Goggles, visit the repository, where you can find the syntax specification, examples, FAQs, and more.
Why is Goggles in Beta
Goggles represent a fundamental push towards algorithmic transparency and openness in search. We’ve designated Goggles as in “beta” to denote that Goggles are a living project that will evolve with feedback and requests from the community of builders.
While in beta, we will keep Goggles on a dedicated tab at https://search.brave.com/goggles. Once out of beta, it will be integrated into the main search.
Using Goggles
To use Goggles, you can visit the Goggles tab, follow existing Goggles, and apply them to your queries. You can discover available goggles on the Discovery page. The Goggles you follow will be added to your browser’s localStorage, which means they’re privately applied only when used with a query.
Creating Goggles
If you’d like to create your own Goggles, read the getting started guide for developers in https://github.com/brave/goggles-quickstart. You can host them on GitHub, Gist, or GitLab, and submit your goggles at https://search.brave.com/goggles/create using their URLs. They’ll then be fetched, validated, and cached by Brave Search, and ready for you to use.
It’s important to stress that the sole owner of a Goggle is the person (or group) who controls the URL on which it’s hosted. That person or community has the sole rights to update it.
Brave has no claim on the ownership of Goggles. Anyone can create or use a Goggle; there is no sign-up or identification required from Brave Search. We believe that this is the best setup for the community to develop alternative rankings that cater to a wide range of use-cases.
Privacy Considerations
To apply a Goggle, a user needs to pass the Goggle URL together with a query. We treat Goggle URLs with the same strict provisions we use to handle other data elements (like IP or geo-coordinates) that could serve as identifiers. Brave does not track the queries of any of its users, and searching with Goggles is no exception. However, note that if a Goggle is used only by one, or a very small number of people, the Goggle URL could serve as an identifier, and enable the creation of a profile of the user’s queries while using that particular Goggle.
Learn more about our privacy policy.