whoogle-search: [BUG] Captcha for Single-person Use

Describe the bug Not sure how much this is a bug, on whoogle’s part but … I’ve been using whoogle for a while, and today I got hit with a captcha. I switched back to Google to complete it, and switched back, but it still exists. I’ve been hosting on my own computer for my personal use.

To Reproduce This is hard to reproduce, I’m not even exactly sure what caused it

Deployment Method

  • Heroku (one-click deploy)
  • Docker
  • run executable
  • pip/pipx
  • Other: [describe setup]

Version of Whoogle Search

  • Latest build from [source] (i.e. GitHub, Docker Hub, pip, etc)
  • Version [version number]
  • Not sure

Desktop (please complete the following information):

  • OS: [e.g. iOS] Arch Linux ARM
  • Browser [e.g. chrome, safari] Firefox
  • Version [e.g. 22] 88

Smartphone (please complete the following information):

  • Device: [e.g. iPhone6]
  • OS: [e.g. iOS8.1]
  • Browser [e.g. stock browser, safari]
  • Version [e.g. 22]

Additional context Add any other context about the problem here.

About this issue

  • Original URL
  • State: closed
  • Created 3 years ago
  • Comments: 49 (38 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

Most upvoted comments

你发来的文件我已经收到

Just chiming in here to say that adding a blank CONFIG_COUNTRY and setting CONFIG_LANGUAGE to lang_en also solved my captcha issues. I can try adding back the COUNTRY setting if that’s helpful, but the combination of these two has been great.

After adding the lang_en, I have had no issues.

Never mind, it appears again.

I maintain a private instance on the cloud and I started getting rate limited almost every day (sometimes multiple times a day). Usually I could delete and recreate the app to get a new IP and it would work but a bit later it got limited again.

I noticed that it was using WHOOGLE_CONFIG_COUNTRY=US even though I never used it or set it. Maybe some update caused it. Idk.

When I followed the farside link into another instance and played around with the country parameter (in the URL), that instance got limited after a few (< 10) requests. I don’t think that was coincidental.

As someone above mentioned that using invalid values could be causing these issues, I removed the country by using WHOOGLE_CONFIG_COUNTRY="". Now since about 2 days, it has been working fine with no limiting. Maybe it’s a coincidence. I’ll keep trying but just wanted to share. Even searching for ‘technical’ and ‘specific’ terms works fine.

Could it be that Google is blocking repeated use of the gl parameter without auth ? Has anyone tried with an account and/or using cookies ?

I get captcha and I go try and change my VPN to something (physically) closer to where I actually am, it usually solves the problem. But lately, I am getting captcha on almost every time I use whoogle.