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Can you search the internet using Santali words written in Ol Chiki? Do popular search engines understand our script, recognise Santali content, and return relevant results?
Search engines have become an essential part of our everyday digital lives. Whether we are looking for educational materials, news, books, software, historical documents, or answers to everyday questions, we usually begin with a search engine. Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and many other platforms help us discover information from across the internet.
But what happens when we search in a language that receives relatively little attention in the digital world?
Santali is one of the recognised languages of India and has its own writing system, Ol Chiki, developed by Pandit Raghunath Murmu. Although Santali has a rich literary and cultural heritage, its digital presence is still growing. Thousands of Santali words, articles, books, and other resources are available online, but finding them is not always easy.
This raises an important question: Do popular search engines support Santali written in Ol Chiki?
To explore this question, I tested several search engines using Ol Chiki text and compared their results with Google Search. The experiment included international search engines, privacy-focused alternatives, Indian search platforms, and AI-powered search services.
Let's explore the results and understand how well these platforms support our language.
1. Why Does Ol Chiki Search Support Matter?
Before discussing the results, it is important to understand why searching in Ol Chiki matters.
A language's digital development is not limited to creating websites, translating applications, or publishing articles. People must also be able to discover that content.
Imagine someone publishes a Santali article on Wikipedia, Wikisource, a personal blog, or another website. If a user cannot find that article by searching for its title in Ol Chiki, the information becomes much harder to access.
This creates several challenges:
Discoverability: Santali articles and educational resources may remain difficult to find.
Digital inclusion: Santali speakers should be able to search for information using their own writing system.
Language preservation: Searchable digital books and historical documents can help preserve Santali literature.
Education: Students and researchers need easier access to Santali learning materials.
Content development: Better indexing can encourage writers, translators, and publishers to create more Santali content.
Search engines play an important role in connecting users with information. Therefore, supporting Ol Chiki is an important step towards making the Santali language more accessible online.
2. How Did I Test the Search Engines?
For this experiment, I referred to the Wikipedia article List of Search Engines, which provides a collection of different search engines.
I used the following Ol Chiki word as the primary search query:
ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ
This word means Santali.
I selected Google Search as the reference platform because of its popularity and widespread use. I compared the behaviour and results of other search engines against Google.
The experiment was originally documented as of 4 March 2022. Some additional search platforms and AI search services were also considered in the broader list. Therefore, the findings should be understood as observations from the testing period rather than a current technical audit of every platform.
What was I looking for?
I mainly considered the following points:
Unicode recognition: Can the search engine accept and process Ol Chiki characters?
Search results: Does it return relevant pages when searching with Santali text?
Santali content discovery: Can it find websites containing Ol Chiki text?
Consistency: Does it produce useful results similar to Google?
Language understanding: Can it understand the meaning of the query, or does it simply match characters?
It is important to distinguish between accepting a search query and genuinely supporting a language. A search engine may display Ol Chiki characters correctly without understanding Santali grammar, vocabulary, or meaning.
For this reason, the results are divided into three categories: supports, partially supports, and platforms requiring further testing.
3. Search Engines That Showed Ol Chiki Support
During my testing, several search engines were able to process Ol Chiki search queries and return results.
Here are the platforms that showed promising results.
3.1 Google Search
Website: https://www.google.com/
Google was my reference search engine for this experiment. It successfully accepted the Ol Chiki query and returned search results.
Google's extensive web index makes it a useful starting point for discovering Santali websites, articles, and other online resources.
For a language like Santali, Google is particularly important because even a relatively small number of indexed pages can help users discover otherwise difficult-to-find information.
3.2 Qmamu
Website: https://qmamu.com/
Qmamu is an Indian search engine that aims to provide an alternative search experience.
During testing, Qmamu accepted the Ol Chiki query and returned results.
This is an interesting observation because Indian search platforms have an opportunity to focus more attention on the country's diverse languages, including those that receive comparatively less digital support.
3.3 Ask.com
Website: https://www.ask.com/ (discontinued)
Ask.com was another search platform included in the experiment.
It accepted the Ol Chiki search query and was included among the platforms that showed support during testing.
3.4 Petal Search
Website: https://petalsearch.com/ (Discontinued)
Petal Search, associated with Huawei, was another platform that I tested.
It was able to process the Ol Chiki search query.
Petal Search provided a search experience across different types of online information. Its performance with less widely indexed languages deserves further investigation.
3.6 Startpage
Website: https://www.startpage.com/
Startpage is a privacy-focused search engine that provides search results while emphasising user privacy.
It successfully handled the Ol Chiki query in my testing.
This makes it another interesting alternative for users who want to explore the internet without relying directly on Google's search interface.
3.7 Lukol
Website: https://www.lukol.com/
Lukol was also included in the list of search engines that showed promising results.
It accepted the Ol Chiki search query during the experiment.
However, its ability to return relevant Santali resources should be evaluated separately from basic character recognition.
3.8 Yahoo Japan
Website: https://search.yahoo.co.jp/
Yahoo Japan is a search platform primarily serving Japanese users.
It was included in the testing list and demonstrated the ability to handle the submitted Unicode search query.
Its inclusion is interesting because support for Unicode scripts can extend beyond platforms specifically designed for Indian languages.
3.9 Naver
Website: https://search.naver.com/
Naver is a major search platform in South Korea.
It was also tested with the Ol Chiki query and included among the platforms that showed support.
This demonstrates that search functionality for a writing system is not necessarily limited to search engines operating in the same country or language community.
3.10 Yep
Website: https://yep.com/
Yep is a search engine that places emphasis on privacy and alternative search experiences.
It was another platform included among those that accepted the Ol Chiki search query.
Further testing would be useful to determine how consistently it discovers Santali-language websites.
3.11 Gibiru
Website: https://gibiru.com/
Gibiru is a privacy-oriented search platform.
It was also part of the search engine experiment. Its inclusion provides another example of a non-mainstream search service worth investigating for Unicode search compatibility.
3.12 Yandex
Website: https://yandex.com/
Yandex is a major search engine originating in Russia.
It was tested with Ol Chiki text and showed promising results in the experiment.
However, its performance was also observed to be partial in another search test. This illustrates why results can differ depending on the exact query, search settings, region, and indexed content.
4.3 Ecosia
Website: https://www.ecosia.org/
Ecosia is known for its environmental initiatives and search experience.
It accepted the Ol Chiki query.
As with other search engines, the main challenge may not be displaying the script but having sufficient Santali content in the underlying search index.
4. Search Engines That Partially Supported Ol Chiki
Some search engines accepted the Ol Chiki query but did not consistently return satisfactory or relevant results.
These platforms are placed in the partially supported category.
4.2 DuckDuckGo
Website: https://duckduckgo.com/
DuckDuckGo is a popular privacy-focused search engine.
It didnt give results, when raw ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ was typed:
But returned plenty of results when, site:sat.wikipedia.org ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ was searched
It supports searching with Unicode text, including the Ol Chiki query used in the experiment. However, its ability to discover relevant Santali pages was considered partial.
DuckDuckGo is an interesting alternative for privacy-conscious users, but the quantity and relevance of Santali search results may vary.
4.4 Seznam
But returned plenty of results when, site:sat.wikipedia.org ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ was searched
Website: https://search.seznam.cz/
Seznam is a search engine popular in the Czech Republic.
It was tested using a query targeting Santali Wikipedia:
site:sat.wikipedia.org ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ
The experiment suggested partial support.
Using the site: operator is particularly useful because it allows us to investigate whether a search engine can discover pages from a specific website.
4.7 You.com
Website: https://you.com/
You.com combines web search with AI-powered search experiences.
It was tested using a query that specifically targeted Santali Wikipedia.
The results suggested partial support.
This is an interesting platform to watch because AI-assisted search may provide additional opportunities for users searching in languages with limited online resources.
4.8 Oscobo
Website: https://www.oscobo.com/
Oscobo is a privacy-focused search engine.
It was included in the experiment and showed partial support for the Ol Chiki query.
Its ability to discover Santali content would benefit from further testing with different words and websites.
4.9 Disconnect Search
Website: https://search.disconnect.me/
Disconnect Search focuses on privacy and provides an alternative way to search the internet.
It was included in the partial-support category based on the observed testing.
4.10 Yahoo Search
Website: https://search.yahoo.com/
Yahoo Search was also tested using Ol Chiki text, including a query targeting Santali Wikipedia.
The results were classified as partial in the experiment.
It is worth remembering that Yahoo's search results can depend on its underlying search technology and regional settings.
5. What About Indian Search Engines?
India has a remarkably diverse linguistic landscape. Alongside Hindi, Bengali, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, and other widely used languages, there are numerous indigenous and regional languages that deserve greater digital representation.
Santali is one of them.
For this experiment, I also explored Indian search-related platforms and resources.
iBharat.org
Website: https://www.ibharat.org/
iBharat is one of the Indian-language-related search resources included in my research.
The idea of searching for information in Indian languages is particularly relevant for communities that are not well represented in mainstream search indexes.
For Santali, however, a dedicated search experience must do more than accept Ol Chiki characters. It should discover Santali websites, understand the script, and provide useful results.
Indian alternatives to Google and Bing
There are also discussions and lists of Indian alternatives to Google and Bing, including the following resource:
Best Indian Alternatives to Google & Bing 2025 | Indian Search Engines
However, being developed in India does not automatically mean that a search engine supports every Indian language.
It is important to test each platform independently.
An important observation: There is still a need for more dedicated research into how Indian search platforms handle Ol Chiki, Santali content indexing, and multilingual search.
6. What About AI-Powered Search Engines?
Traditional search engines generally return a list of websites based on their indexing and ranking systems.
AI-powered search engines take a different approach. They may summarise information, interpret questions, and provide answers using information gathered from different sources.
This creates new possibilities for languages like Santali, but it also introduces new challenges.
Perplexity AI
Website: https://www.perplexity.ai/
Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine that provides responses with references to online sources.
I also explored its capabilities in the context of Santali.
One of the observations recorded during testing was that it did not adequately understand images. This is a limitation noted from that particular experiment and should not be treated as a comprehensive assessment of its current image-understanding capabilities.
For Santali, the larger question is whether an AI search service can understand Ol Chiki queries, retrieve reliable Santali sources, and provide meaningful answers in the language.
An AI tool might successfully recognise a word without understanding its linguistic meaning. Similarly, it might generate an answer about Santali without actually using reliable Santali-language sources.
Therefore, AI search should be evaluated on three separate levels:
Text recognition: Can it read and process Ol Chiki text?
Language understanding: Can it understand the meaning of Santali words and questions?
Source discovery: Can it locate authentic Santali resources and provide reliable references?
These three capabilities are essential if AI-powered search is to become genuinely useful for Santali speakers.
7. Why Do Search Engines Give Different Results?
You may wonder why one search engine returns good results while another produces very few results for exactly the same Ol Chiki query.
There are several possible explanations.
7.1 Web indexing
Search engines use crawlers to discover websites and add their pages to their indexes.
If a search engine has not discovered a Santali website, it cannot reliably return that page in response to a search query.
This is particularly important for smaller languages, where the number of indexed pages may be limited.
7.2 Unicode support
Ol Chiki is represented in Unicode, which makes it possible to use the script across modern digital platforms.
However, accepting Unicode characters is only the first step.
A search engine must also process, store, match, and retrieve those characters correctly.
7.3 Language processing
A search engine may recognise an exact sequence of characters without understanding what the word means.
For example, searching for ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ may return pages containing that exact sequence.
But a more advanced search system should ideally recognise related Santali words, variations, and relevant content.
7.4 Ranking and regional settings
Search results may differ depending on the user's country, selected language, region, and search settings.
A search engine might return different results for the same query in India and another country.
7.5 Quality and availability of online content
Ultimately, search engines can only discover information that exists online and is accessible to their crawlers.
If Santali websites, digital books, and articles are not published in sufficient numbers, even the best search engine will have limited results to show.
This means improving Santali search support is not solely the responsibility of search engine developers. Content creators, translators, publishers, and the Santali-speaking community also have an important role.
8. How Can We Improve Santali Search Results?
There are several practical steps that can help improve the digital discoverability of Santali.
1. Publish more content in Ol Chiki.
Blogs, educational materials, news articles, dictionaries, and digital books should be published using proper Unicode Ol Chiki text.
2. Improve Santali Wikipedia and Wikisource.
Collaborative projects such as Santali Wikipedia and Santali Wikisource can provide valuable, structured, and publicly accessible information.
3. Use proper page titles and metadata.
Websites should include meaningful titles, descriptions, headings, and language declarations.
For example, webpages containing Santali content can use the appropriate language code sat.
4. Create multilingual resources.
Where appropriate, websites can provide Santali, English, Hindi, and Odia descriptions to help users discover the same information through different search queries.
5. Encourage search engine developers to support Ol Chiki.
Developers should be encouraged to improve Unicode handling, language identification, tokenisation, and indexing for Santali.
6. Build more Santali digital resources.
Dictionaries, searchable book collections, educational websites, and language technology projects can increase the amount of useful information available online.
Every new Santali webpage creates another opportunity for someone to discover something in their own language.
9. Final Thoughts: Is the Internet Ready for Santali?
The experiment demonstrates that searching in Ol Chiki is possible on several popular search platforms.
However, there is a considerable difference between accepting a search query and providing a genuinely useful Santali search experience.
A search engine may display Ol Chiki characters correctly, but that does not necessarily mean it understands Santali or has indexed enough Santali-language content.
Google provided a useful reference point for this experiment, while platforms such as Qmamu, Startpage, Ask.com, Petal Search, and others demonstrated varying degrees of compatibility.
The partially supported platforms also show that there is room for improvement in discovering Santali websites and returning relevant information.
For the future of Santali on the internet, we need more than Unicode support. We need better indexing, more digital publications, improved language technology, and greater participation from the Santali-speaking community.
The internet should not be limited to a few dominant languages. Every language deserves the opportunity to be searchable, discoverable, and accessible.
Now, a question for you!
Which search engine do you use most often?
Do you use Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Qmamu, Perplexity, or another search engine? Have you ever tried searching for Santali words using Ol Chiki?
Share your experience in the comments. If you know of another search engine that supports Ol Chiki, let us know so that it can be included in future testing.
Let's work together to make Santali more searchable on the internet!
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Reviewed by Prasanta Hembram
on
Friday, October 30, 2026
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