How I Cut My Google Search Dependence in Half with Hister

The Problem: When Search Became a Memory Problem

Like many developers and knowledge workers, I found myself constantly reaching for Google Search throughout my workday. It had become such an ingrained habit that I barely noticed how often I was context-switching away from my actual work to perform searches.

But over time, something had changed about the experience. The search results that once felt reliable and helpful were increasingly problematic in several ways.

The Degradation of Search Results

What used to be a clean list of relevant links now requires scrolling past multiple sponsored results, shopping suggestions, and promoted content just to reach the organic results. Often, the actual information I'm looking for doesn't appear until halfway down the page, after I've mentally filtered out all the commercial noise.

Organic results themselves have been manipulated by SEO tactics rather than truly reflecting the most relevant and helpful content. Websites optimized for search engines rather than humans dominate the rankings, while genuinely useful resources from smaller sites or personal blogs get buried on page two or three. The signal-to-noise ratio has degraded significantly.

Google has recently added AI-generated summaries at the top of many search results. While sometimes helpful, these summaries often miss crucial nuance, provide oversimplified or occasionally incorrect information, and add yet another layer between me and the actual source material I'm trying to find. For technical queries where precision matters, these AI answers can be misleading or incomplete.

The Privacy Cost

The convenience of search comes at the cost of giving away intimate details about my work and life. Google tracks every query I make, building a detailed profile of my interests, work patterns, and information needs. This data is used for ad targeting and who knows what else.

The Realization That Changed Everything

But the realization that pushed me to build a solution was that I was often searching for pages I'd already visited. That documentation page I read last week but forgot to bookmark. That GitHub issue I commented on yesterday but couldn't remember the exact project name. Those internal wiki pages with crucial information about our infrastructure.

I was using Google as a personal memory aid, outsourcing my recall to an external service that was tracking my every query. And for content behind authentication (internal tools, documentation, private repositories) Google couldn't help at all, since it can't index pages it can't access.

The Two Types of Search We Actually Do

Thinking on how to replace Google led me to a crucial realization about the nature of search itself. When we type queries into a search box, we're actually doing one of two fundamentally different things, even though the interface is identical:

Discovery Search: Finding New Information

Discovery search is what we typically think of when we imagine "searching the internet". It's about finding information we've never encountered before. This is true exploration - we're venturing into unknown territory, discovering new resources, learning about topics we're unfamiliar with, and finding answers to questions we've never asked before.

For this type of search, we genuinely need the vast index of the internet that services like Google provide. We need to cast a wide net and see what the collective knowledge of the web has to offer.

Recall Search: Refinding Known Information

But then there's the other type of search - what I call "recall search". This is when we're trying to find information we've already encountered. We're not discovering something new; we're trying to remember where we saw something.

Examples of this include searches like "That authentication bug I fixed last month..." when you remember solving a problem but can't recall the exact solution, or "The Bleve docs page about result highlighters..." when you know you've read the documentation before but can't remember the specific URL or section title.

Another common example: "That Stack Overflow answer about async/await..." when you remember reading a particularly clear explanation but didn't save the link.

A significant portion of my daily searches - probably more than half - were recall searches, not discovery searches.

The revelation that changed everything for me was this: A significant portion of my daily searches - probably more than half - were recall searches, not discovery searches. I was constantly using Google to search my own browsing history, to refind pages I'd already visited and information I'd already read.

But Google's interface treats both types of search identically, and it has no special optimization for helping you refind your own content. Worse, for pages behind authentication or on private networks, Google can't help at all because it can't index content it can't access.

This insight suggested a solution: What if I had a dedicated tool optimized specifically for recall search - for refinding my own browsing history, and only fall back to Google for true discovery search?

The potential benefits were enormous: faster results, better privacy, access to authenticated content, results tailored specifically to my interests and work.

Building Hister: A Personal Search Engine

Since nothing existed that checked all these boxes, I decided to build it myself.

What I Needed

The requirements for my ideal solution were clear:

Fast lookup: If searching my local index took longer than just Googling, I'd never use it. I needed instant, sub-second search response times, keyboard shortcuts to make it faster to search locally than to context-switch to Google.

Automatic indexing: I didn't want to manually save pages or make conscious decisions about what to index. It needed to capture pages as I browse with zero manual work on my part. The tool should disappear into the background and just work.

Authentication aware indexing: So much of the content I reference daily is behind authentication: internal wikis, private documents, authenticated API documentation, internal dashboards. Any solution that couldn't handle authenticated content would miss a huge portion of my actual browsing.

Full-text search: Meant searching the actual page content, not just URLs and titles. Browser history is useless when you remember reading something about "microservice authentication patterns" but can't remember which blog or doc site it was on. I needed to be able to search the words within the pages.

Powerful query capabilities: Like Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), field-specific searches (search only URLs, or only titles), and wildcard matching would make it possible to narrow down results quickly.

Zero cognitive overhead: The tool needed to work seamlessly in my workflow. It should integrate naturally with how I already browse and search.

Transparent fallback to online search engines: If I searched locally and didn't find what I wanted, I should be able to immediately fall back to Google with the same query, making adoption gradual rather than requiring a complete workflow change.

Fine-tuning capabilities: Let me customize the experience over time. I wanted to be able to blacklist irrelevant sites I never want to see again, prioritize important sources, and create keyword aliases for common searches.

Offline preview of saved content: I could read indexed pages even if the original site went down or the page was deleted; a nice bonus that would occasionally save me from link rot.

Import existing history: I wanted to start with years of browsing data already indexed, rather than building up an index from scratch over months.

Free software, Self-Hosted: With no recurring costs or vendor lock-in. My browsing history is my personal data, it should not be owned by companies.

Introducing Hister

Hister is a self-hosted web history management tool that treats your browsing history as a personal search engine.

The Results: 50% Reduction in 1.5 Months

After using Hister for six weeks, I analyzed my search patterns:

• ~50% of my Google searches now answered locally
• Found content Google couldn't (authenticated pages, deleted content)
• Zero privacy concerns (no tracking, no profiling)
• Better results for my specific needs (because it's MY history)

The more I use it, the better it gets. My local index is now:

• More relevant than Google for my common queries
• As fast as opening a new browser tab
• Comprehensive across authenticated services
• A personal knowledge base of everything I've read

Unexpected Benefits

Rediscovery: I'm finding valuable content I'd forgotten about. That article I bookmarked 2 years ago but never revisited? Now it shows up in relevant searches.

Learning patterns: Seeing what I search for reveals my knowledge gaps and interests.

Offline access: When documentation sites go down or pages get deleted, I still have the content.

Before and After: The Workflow Transformation

Before Hister:

1. Open Google Search: "bleve query"
2. Click first result (probably wrong)
3. Click second result (looks familiar…)
4. Realize I've been here before
5. Finally find the specific page I wanted

Time: ~1-2 minutes, 5-10 clicks

With Hister:

1. Open Hister
2. Type: "bleve query", press enter
3. First result is opened with the EXACT page I visited last month

Time: ~5 seconds, few keystrokes

The Philosophy Behind Hister

We've accepted that search means "go to Google" for so long that we've forgotten there are alternatives. But for a huge portion of my daily searches - probably more than half - I don't need the entire internet. I need OUR internet: the pages I've read, the docs I've opened, the internal tools I use daily.

Hister isn't trying to replace Google for discovery. It's trying to replace Google for recall. And in that domain, it's already better than Google could ever be, because:

• It knows about authenticated pages Google will never see
• It searches YOUR history, not the entire web
• It's instant, private, and ad-free
• It gets better the more you use it

After 1.5 months, I've cut my Google dependence in half. I expect this number will increase as my index grows.

If you're a developer, researcher, or knowledge worker who constantly re-searches for information you've already found, give Hister a try. It might just change how you find information on the internet.

Get Started with Hister

To get started with Hister check out the following links:

• Download Hister
• Download Firefox Extension
• Download Chrome Extension

Future Development

I'm actively developing Hister with these goals:

• Improve usability
• Add automatic indexing capabilities based on the index and opened results
• Find a secure and privacy respecting way to connect local Hister's to a distributed search engine
• Export search results
• Advanced analytics and search insights

Hister is open source (AGPLv3) and welcomes contributions!

Ways to Contribute

• 🐛 Report bugs and suggest features on GitHub Issues
• 💻 Submit pull requests (check out good first issues)
• 📖 Improve documentation
• 🎨 Design better UI/UX
• 🌍 Translate to other languages
• ⭐ Star the repo and spread the word!

Have questions or feedback? Open an issue on GitHub or reach out to @asciimoo.

Last updated: February 2026