Working with Search Results
A single search engine gives you a ranked list, and you have no way to tell whether the page at the top is there because it is the best answer or because that one engine happens to favor it. Pelorus answers that question by asking several engines and counting. This page explains what the Unified Search list shows, what the counts mean, and what you can do with a result once you have it.
The Unified Search List
Unified Search runs every engine you turned on and combines what they return into one list, with no repeats. The same page found by three engines becomes one entry.
The order is what makes it useful. When more than one engine finds the same page on its own, that page moves up. A result several engines turned up independently is usually the one you were looking for. Each entry says how many found it.
Agreement is a measure of how much the engines corroborate one another. It is not a measure of truth. A page every engine agrees on can still be wrong.
For the curious How the List Is Scored
Each engine contributes up to ten results per page. Two results are the same page when their address matches after the usual decorations are removed: capital letters, a leading www, a trailing slash, and the tracking parameters engines add. Each index then contributes one score for that page, based on where it ranked it: 1 divided by (60 plus the rank). Those scores are added up. The constant 60 keeps the curve flat, so one more engine agreeing roughly doubles a page's score while thirty places of depth costs about a third. Ties break by the number of indexes that found the page, then by the best single rank. The full account, with the arithmetic, is in the Explain sheet on the Unified card.
Engines and Indexes
Not every engine has its own index of the web. DuckDuckGo shows Bing's results, and Startpage shows Google's. When two engines share an index, their agreeing is one opinion twice, so Pelorus groups them and counts the index once. The counts you see are counts of indexes, which is why a count can be smaller than the number of engines you turned on.
Research sources work differently. OpenAlex, Crossref, and arXiv return papers rather than web pages, and the same paper can appear in all three. Pelorus matches those by DOI, so they do count toward agreement.
Wikipedia and Hacker News return their own pages, so a hit there is one site's content rather than confirmation from somewhere else. Their results appear in your list without adding to a page's count. Internet Archive is a library of books, audio, film, software, and other resources, not web search. So its results are not included in Unified results.
The info button on the Unified card names the engines that ran in this search, which of them counted as indexes, which contributed without counting, and which could not be read at all. Tap Explain on the card for the full account of how results are gathered, merged, and ranked.
Controls on the Unified Card
The chips above the list change what you see without running the search again.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Result filter | All results, found in two or more indexes, found in three or more, or Contrarian, the pages only one index found. When a filter is on, the foot of the list says how many results it hid. Part of Pelorus Unlimited. |
| All Engines | Leave an engine out of the list for this search without turning it off. The chip reads All Engines until you do, then the number still counting. |
| Interpreted or Verbatim | Whether engines may drop filler words and match synonyms, or must take your words as typed. See Advanced Searching. |
| Time | Any time, past day, past week, past month, past year, or a custom range. |
| Result details | The list glyph at the left. Every result gains a Rankings line that says which engines found it and where each ranked it. Rankings: Brave 1, Google 2 means Brave put the page first and Google second. |
| Explain | How Unified Search gathers, merges, and ranks results, and which engines contributed to this search. |
| Pelorus Insights | Facts about the search itself. See below. |
Below the first twenty results, Load 20 more results shows the rest. At the foot of the list, Search Deeper asks every engine for its next page. Advanced Searching explains what that does to the counts.
Probably this
When your search appears to obviously name a specific site, such as the name of a company or a product, Pelorus lifts that site's page above the ranked list under the heading Probably this. The same result keeps its ranked place below. The setting is Favor the Official Site under Settings > Search > Unified Search.
Boost, Bury, and Block
There are sites you always want to see first, and sites you would rather never see again. Touch and hold any result in the Unified list and choose Boost, Bury, or Block for that site. The rule applies to every search from then on.
- Boost moves the site to the top of its agreement group.
- Bury moves it to the bottom of its agreement group.
- Block removes it. The foot of the list says how many results your rules hid, so you always know when something was removed.
A boosted or buried site carries a small arrow beside its address. Boost and bury move a page within its agreement group only. A boosted page one index found never outranks a page three indexes found, because agreement stays the ranking signal. The three lists live under Settings > Search > Unified Search, where you can remove a rule. Domain rules are part of Pelorus Unlimited.
Pelorus Insights
Tap Pelorus Insights on the Unified card for facts about the search itself: whether the top result was unanimous or contested, which pages every index found, which only one index found, where the indexes disagreed most, whether one website holds much of the top ten, and how much the indexes overlapped at all. These are counted by Pelorus from the results. This data is computed by Pelorus; it does not use AI to generate any of it.
Below the facts, What It Might Mean interprets those results in the context of your specific search. This section is written by the AI provider you set up, and it does not appear without one. The AI model never sees the search results themselves. Pelorus feeds the model:
- your search query;
- the facts Pelorus Insights already computed above (unanimous/contested top result, overlap, which results every index found, and so on) with page titles replaced by a placeholder;
- the domains of the top results with where each engine ranked them.
It does not feed titles, full addresses, or snippets, and the AI model does not pull from any other sources. So what you get in the interpretation is the AI's analysis of Pelorus Insights' arithmetic about the results, plus bare domains and relative ranks.
As you work through Unified results and search deeper, those additional results would affect the information Pelorus Insights provides you. So as you search deeper, Pelorus will add a Refresh button here rather than automatically spending more of your AI tokens without consent.
Pelorus Insights is part of Pelorus Unlimited.
On an Engine's Own Card
Each card shows the engine's own results page, in the engine's own order, with the engine's own tools. You can browse it, page through it, and sign in to it.
Doing that never changes the Unified list, its counts, or anything computed from them. Each card is the engine's own answer to browse. The Unified list is what Pelorus made of all of them together.
Simplify Formatting. The Pelorus button on an engine card offers Simplify Formatting, which replaces the engine's page with a plain list of its results: title, address, and snippet, with no ads, no boxes, no AI answers. Previous and Next page through the engine's results. Show Engine's Page brings the real page back. To have every engine card open this way, turn on Always Simplify Formatting under Settings > General > Appearance. Simplify Formatting works only on engines whose pages Pelorus can read, which the Engine Status page lists.
The shield. Tap the shield in a card's header to see what Pelorus blocked on this card, what the site stored, and the Keep Me Signed In switch. Managing Site Logins explains that switch.
A human check. Some engines occasionally answer with a check that you are human before providing results. The card shows it. Pass the check on the card. Results that arrive after a check stay on that engine's card.
Taking Results with You
The Pelorus button's Export / Send To menu saves what you found. The Unified Search list exports as Markdown, CSV, or PDF. An open page exports as a Markdown file, plain text, or PDF. A whole session exports as one Markdown file. Send any of them to Bear, DEVONthink, or Obsidian when those apps are installed, send by email, or use the share sheet to reach anything else. Exporting a page fetches it once, and the menu says so.