Brave Search has launched a new Goggles feature that lets users create and apply custom filters that might change how they see their search results. This could help users find sources they would otherwise miss using conventional search engines like Google or Bing.

The new feature comes as the search engine comes out of beta on its first anniversary. Over the year, Brave amassed 2.5 billion search queries, reaching a high of 14.1 million queries per day and around 5 billion queries annualised (projection based on current monthly totals).

As for Goggles, Brave already has a few demos that users can try out. These goggles include one that prioritises posts from smaller tech blogs or filters out posts from the 1000 most viewed sites on the internet. There’s even a goggle that excludes Pinterest posts without a source from the search result. Other goggles include

Hacker News: prioritises domains usually found in the Hacker News community except the ones ranking in the top 1000 most viewed websites.
Rust programming: Reranks results to boost content related to Rust programming.
Copycat removal: Reranks results to remove redundant content, including StackOverflow posts or Github translations.

This is an image of brave goggles — *Brave Goggles in action. | Source: Brave*

Brave says that these goggles are only for demonstration, won’t be actively maintained and will be removed as users start coming up with their own. Developers can expand on the current goggles or fork them to turn them into something completely different.

All search engines function on some sort of algorithm, and while Brave claims that its engine, built independently from Google or Bing, is free from any editorial bias, algorithms inherently have biases. Goggles is a way to mitigate this bias, giving users a choice in shaping what the bias may be.

However, creating new goggles isn’t as easy as toggling a few filters. There is some coding involved, and Brave has already put out the documentation on Github to help coders get started. You can also read the Goggles white paper.

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