The base64 data appears to consist of a very basic protobuf structure, containing a long string of bytes in field 2 which presumably identify the URL.

Sometimes, these redirect URLs take a perceivable amount of time to load, which is very irritating.

https://docs.clearurls.xyz/

Nothing good ever comes from businesses desperately trying to protect their moats rather than making their products better so they don't need to.

Brave has its own independent index which is cool.

Do any large ISPs use visit data to feed into a search index?

I’ve got something that will blow your mind. Google now has tracking analytics, for get this, your business’s phone number. Some “Adsense partner” convinced our web admin to install a little script which changes your phone number on your website so they track phone call enquires back to search engine leads / advertising spend.

Yeah no thanks, that was creepy as hell and had it rolled back ASAP. You’ve got to realise the power these tech companies hold over your business. Don’t show up in the search results, someone lists your business as closed in maps, a tracking phone number goes dead so they can’t call you, you might as well have shut up shop and ceased to exist.

DDG's search results have been poorer recently than they used to — I often see completely unrelated results (to the point of my saying "Why in the world did that come back as a search result??!?") starting from page 2. And yet, I still use them, simply because they aren't Google.