When I use Tor, Mojeek frequently refuses to perform my search and displays the message “Sorry your network appears to be sending automated queries so we can’t process your search at this time”. Switching to a new circuit can temporarily resolve the issue, but this is inconvenient and wastes time, especially when it happens so frequently. It adds unnecessary friction and gives the impression that Mojeek does not have consideration for Tor users.
For comparison, I sometimes see a similar error message when using DuckDuckGo, but much less frequently in my experience.
Have you previously submitted through the “If you are seeing this in error please contact us” form? We look at all responses and reply to those that are contactable. Alternatively if you want send a direct message here, or you can email us at aloe[at]mojeek[dot]com and we’ll investigate.
From a provider’s point of view, search engines and many other unique content providers get scraped hard. It’s a tough balance for providers to maintain privacy vs spiralling costs on servicing every request that are essentially automated.
Tor is an old school way to get a bunch of IPs to randomly scrape a site.
Mojeekbot has the courtesy of identifying itself when crawling websites, client UAs beyond fingerprinting are not as authentic.
Understandable people who use Mojeek have a privacy hat on, I’d say people who genuinely buy in should use the API, if they need to access results on a less than reputable network.
I didn’t yet try submitting through the “If you are seeing this in error please contact us” form. I saw the option but honestly wasn’t sure how it would help or how it would prevent the problem from ocurring the next time.
