Help & FAQs

What is True Search?

True Search is an AI-era search engine that strips every paid placement out of your rankings so what you see is ordered purely by relevance — never by who paid the most. It pairs a fast, sponsor-free search experience with two AI cards above every results page — a cited AI Answer on page 1 and an AI Summary of the page of results in front of you — and a one-click AI Preview on every link so you know what's there before you click.

Can I try True Search before I subscribe?

Yes — visit the demo gallery to view real cached results pages for three example queries with no login required. You'll see exactly what subscribers see: the cited AI Answer, the unique AI Summary of these results, the 📍 Score by location button, and pre-recorded AI Previews on the top results — all rendered by the same code that serves live searches.

What the demos can't do is run a brand-new query, paginate, or open Images / News — those are the only members-only pieces. There's no time-limited free trial because we don't want a small group of members subsidising bigger anonymous traffic; the demo is a permanent showcase instead.

How much does True Search cost?

True Search is a members-only product: $5 per month, billed via Stripe. There is no free trial and no freemium tier — every member pays the same price, which is what makes it possible to keep the product 100% sponsor-free and ad-free with no behavioural advertising of any kind. You can cancel anytime from your account page (it opens the Stripe-hosted portal), and your access continues through the end of the current billing period.

Why a paid model? Because the alternative is what every other big search engine does: sell your attention and your data to the highest bidder. Removing that incentive is the whole product. Subscribe here.

How do I sign up and log in?

True Search uses Replit Auth for sign-in (email/password, Google, GitHub, Apple — whatever you've enabled on your Replit account). Click Log in from the homepage or the subscribe page; you'll be sent to Replit's secure sign-in page and bounced straight back. Your session stays alive via a secure, http-only cookie on truesearch.site — there's no password for True Search to lose.

After signing in, complete checkout once and you're done. Sign out anytime from your account page.

Premium support

Every membership includes premium email support directly from Indusbridge Digital. Email indusbridgedigital@gmail.com with anything — bug reports, billing questions, feature requests, account help — and a real human will reply.

How is True Search different from Google?

Google's results pages mix sponsored listings, shopping carousels, "people also bought" carousels and other paid surfaces in with organic results. True Search uses an independent index that doesn't inject ads into rankings to begin with — what you see is the organic web, ordered by relevance.

We carry zero advertising of any kind — no sponsored results, no display banners, no AdSense, no affiliate links. The membership fee is the entire business model, so the rankings stay yours, not advertisers'.

Where do the results come from?

True Search is a meta-search engine. Web, image and news queries are sent server-side to the Brave Search API, which serves results from Brave's own independent web index (built by their own crawler — not a Google reseller). Your queries never go directly to Google from your browser, and the Brave API key lives only on our server.

Autocomplete suggestions come from Brave first; on plans where Brave returns no suggestions, we fall back server-side to DuckDuckGo's free autocomplete (so your browser still never talks to Google).

What are the AI cards at the top of results?

Every web results page renders cards generated by Groq's Llama 3.3 70B model:

• AI Answer (page 1 only) — directly answers your query, citing the top organic results inline as [1], [2], etc. Click any citation to jump to the source. Page 1 is the only place the answer is meaningful, so it doesn't re-fire on deeper pages.
• AI Summary of these results (every page) — describes the actual page of results in front of you: what the top sources collectively cover, where they agree, where they differ, which ones stand out. This is True Search's signature feature — Google's "AI Overview" and Perplexity write generic answers; only True Search summarizes this specific page so you can decide what to click. It re-fires when you paginate so it always reflects the visible results.

The AI never sees ads, never recommends products, and never personalises based on who you are. Treat it as a fast study aid; verify important facts at the cited source.

What does the "📍 Score by location" button do?

Click 📍 Score by location on the AI Summary card and Llama 3.3 will rate each top result 0–100 for relevance to where you are right now, with a one-line verdict ("Highly local · Florida-specific guidance", "Generic — applies anywhere", etc.) and a coloured bar. Useful for jobs, services, regulations, weather, news — anywhere "local" is the answer.

Your location is grabbed once from your browser (with permission) and reverse-geocoded to a city via OpenStreetMap. If you decline, you can type a location instead. Scores are cached per query+page+location for the rest of the tab session, so re-clicking is instant. Hide the panel anytime with the chevron.

What is the AI Preview button on each result?

Every web result and every news article has a small AI Preview chip. Click it and our server fetches the linked page, extracts the body text, and asks Llama 3.3 70B to summarize it in 3-5 bullet points — usually in a couple of seconds. You see what's actually behind the link before deciding whether to open it. No more opening twelve tabs to figure out which one has the answer.

Previews are cached server-side for an hour and in your browser for the tab session, so re-opening the same one is instant. If a page can't be fetched (paywall, 403, non-HTML), we fall back gracefully to a snippet-only preview.

How do filters, layouts and "Per page" work?

Use the filter bar above results to sort, restrict by time range, and stack chips like No forums, No social, One per domain, Authoritative, or Documents only. The filters run instantly in your browser — no extra requests — and your selections persist across new searches. There's always a Reset filters button to wipe them in one click.

The layout switcher gives you four views — Comfortable, Compact, 2-column grid and 3-column grid — also persisted across searches.

The Per page dropdown lets you load 10 or 20 results at a time (default: 20). Each results page is exactly one upstream API call — pagination loads the next 20 with another single call, so cost is predictable and never multiplied. Page navigation appears both above and below the results so you don't have to scroll to flip through.

How do I export my results?

Click the Export ▾ button in the filter bar above any results page. The dropdown gives you three formats — pick whichever fits the job:

• Results · .txt — clean plain-text file with every title, URL, snippet, source domain, publication date, and the active sort/filter state. Perfect for research notes and offline archives.
• Results · .html — a standalone, fully clickable HTML page (system-font CSS, light/dark via prefers-color-scheme, no external assets). Save a search and click straight through to the sources later from any browser.
• AI Summary · .html — exports both AI cards (Answer + Summary, whichever are on screen) with every [1] citation rewritten as a link to the original source, plus a "Sources cited" list under each card. Ideal for sharing what the AI told you with the receipts attached.

No extensions, no copy-pasting. Google has never offered any of this.

How does voice search work?

The microphone button uses your browser's built-in Web Speech API. We don't record audio or store transcripts — speech is converted to text locally and submitted as a normal text query. Voice search is currently unavailable in Firefox and Safari; the mic button hides itself there.

Why does the weather widget ask for my location?

If you search for a bare term like weather or forecast, we ask your browser for one-time location access so we can rewrite the query as "weather in [your city]" and return useful local results. We never store your coordinates and we never send them to Google. If you decline, the original query runs as-is. Logged-out visitors are never prompted — the homepage weather chip is members-only.

Where is my data stored?

Your account identity (email + Replit user id) and Stripe subscription state live in our database — that's the minimum required to gate access to a paid product. Search history, theme, language, layout and filter preferences are stored only in your browser's localStorage under the truesearch.* namespace; we have no copy of them. Clear them anytime from Settings → Search history → Clear, or by clearing site data for truesearch.site.

I cancelled — what happens?

Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. Until then, search and AI features keep working normally. After that, you'll see a "re-activate your membership" card on the homepage and search pages will redirect you back to subscribe. Your settings and history stay in your browser the entire time, so re-subscribing picks up exactly where you left off.

Can I use advanced search operators like site:, filetype:, "…"?

Yes — every operator you know from Google works on True Search: site:, filetype:, intitle:, inurl:, intext:, OR, - exclusions, "…" exact-phrase, the * wildcard, numeric .. ranges, related:, before:/after:, and more. The Power Search page has a visual builder that composes the query for you and a complete operator reference, so you don't have to remember the syntax. And for the most common case — searching within a single site — every result on every results page also has an inline "Search this site" expandable, no site: typing required.

I found a bug or have feedback

True Search is built and operated by Indusbridge Digital. Email premium support at indusbridgedigital@gmail.com or visit indusbridge.digital.