Millionshort

Million Short is a search engine that deliberately filters out the most popular, highest-traffic websites from its results, allowing investigators to discover smaller, less commercially prominent web content that is typically buried beneath dominant results in standard search engines. Users can select to remove the top 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, or even 1 million most visited sites from results.

For OSINT investigators, Million Short addresses a fundamental problem with standard search engines: popular platforms like Wikipedia, major news sites, LinkedIn, and corporate websites consistently dominate results, suppressing relevant information from smaller websites, forums, regional news outlets, and niche communities.

By filtering out high-traffic sites, Million Short surfaces content from community forums, personal websites, smaller regional publications, archived pages, and niche databases that would otherwise appear dozens of pages deep in standard search results. This is particularly valuable when investigating individuals who are discussed on smaller community websites rather than major platforms.

Regional and international content is disproportionately surfaced by Million Short's filtering because local news sites and regional platforms are typically lower-traffic than major national or international sources. For investigations with regional specificity, this exposure to regional web content can surface locally-relevant information invisible in standard searches.

For investigative coverage of controversial topics, Million Short surfaces discussion from smaller ideological communities, specialized forums, and niche publications that may carry information not found on mainstream platforms — important for understanding the full ecosystem of discussion around a topic.

Filtering all top results can be adjusted — filtering only the top 100 sites removes the most obvious results while retaining many useful sources, while filtering the top 1 million produces extremely niche content that may be difficult to evaluate.

Use Million Short as a complementary tool in search investigations after conducting standard engine searches — it specifically surfaces content that standard searches systematically obscure.