Onion Search Engine

Onion Search Engine is a search engine specifically designed to index and search content hosted on Tor hidden services (.onion domains). Unlike surface web search engines, it crawls .onion addresses and provides keyword-based search across dark web content, making it accessible through a standard web browser.

For OSINT investigators, Onion Search Engine serves as an accessible entry point for dark web intelligence gathering without requiring Tor Browser. By indexing .onion content and surfacing it through a standard HTTPS interface, it allows investigators to search for specific terms, usernames, email addresses, product listings, or other indicators across the dark web ecosystem.

Common investigative workflows include: searching for a suspect's known username across dark web forums and markets to identify their dark web presence, looking for leaked data from a specific organization on dark web paste sites or markets, identifying which dark web services discuss a specific topic relevant to an investigation, and finding the current active addresses for dark web services that frequently change URLs.

Onion Search Engine provides search results with titles, descriptions, and cached content from indexed .onion pages. This cached content is particularly valuable when a specific site has gone offline — the index may retain content from when the site was active, preserving evidence that would otherwise be lost.

The index also captures content without editorial filtering, including illegal content categories. Investigators should approach results with awareness of legal obligations around accessing or possessing certain content types.

Record all search queries, result URLs, and retrieval timestamps. For evidentiary findings, capture and preserve the primary source through Tor Browser in a properly isolated investigation environment.