diff --git a/plugins/searxng-search/README.md b/plugins/searxng-search/README.md
index 90c3083..cdbb4a8 100644
--- a/plugins/searxng-search/README.md
+++ b/plugins/searxng-search/README.md
@@ -115,8 +115,8 @@ Both are handled, both are worth understanding because they fail silently.
 
 **1. `categories` is additive, not a filter.** If you pass both `engines` and
 `category`, SearXNG takes the union: the named engines *plus* every engine
-enabled by default in that category. A careful `engines=bing,360search` becomes
-`bing,360search` + whatever the category contributes. The plugin therefore
+enabled by default in that category. A careful `engines=bing,yandex` becomes
+`bing,yandex` + whatever the category contributes. The plugin therefore
 sends `categories` only when the caller explicitly asked for a category, never
 alongside an engine list it chose itself.
 
@@ -156,8 +156,10 @@ SearXNG 2026.10.7-6671d89be, `docker.io/searxng/searxng:latest` (built
 | Engine | Status |
 | --- | --- |
 | `bing` | Active. Needs `base_url: https://cn.bing.com`; `www.bing.com` blocks scraping from this network. |
-| `360search` | Active. |
-| `yandex`, `naver` | Active and reachable, but no useful Chinese index — left out of the plugin's default engine list. |
+| `yandex` | Active. Best measured relevance here on both Chinese and English technical queries; first result for a V1→V2 migration query is the migration doc itself. Default. |
+| `bing` | Active, but needs `base_url: https://cn.bing.com`; `www.bing.com` blocks scraping from this network. Default. Supports neither paging nor `time_range`. |
+| `naver` | Active and strongest on English, but 0/9 relevant on a Chinese query, so it is left out of the defaults rather than allowed to dilute them. Pass `engines=naver` explicitly for English lookups. |
+| `360search` | Active, and the **worst** engine on both query types: 0/5 relevant on a Chinese query, where it splits on "V1"/"V2" and returns Android and CANN version-difference articles. Removed from the defaults. |
 | `baidu` | Disabled. Answers with a CAPTCHA and suspends the client IP for an hour. |
 | `sogou` | Disabled. The upstream engine raises `AttributeError` in this release. |
 | `mojeek`, `ecosia`, `marginalia` | Dropped by `keep_only`; not reachable from this network. |
diff --git a/plugins/searxng-search/index.ts b/plugins/searxng-search/index.ts
index 5c7766a..5552a3a 100644
--- a/plugins/searxng-search/index.ts
+++ b/plugins/searxng-search/index.ts
@@ -24,11 +24,27 @@ interface PluginConfig {
 
 const DEFAULT_BASE_URL = process.env.SEARXNG_URL ?? "http://127.0.0.1:39217"
 
-// Engines verified reachable from this network. yandex and naver were removed on
-// purpose: they have almost no Chinese index, so on a Chinese query they return
-// unrelated pages that pollute the merged result list. baidu is left out because
-// it answers with a CAPTCHA and suspends the client IP for an hour.
-const DEFAULT_ENGINES = "bing,360search"
+// Engine default, chosen by measuring relevance on this network rather than by
+// assuming an engine's index is uniform. Same two queries, results mentioning
+// "opencode" out of returned:
+//
+//                        zh "OpenCode V2 和 V1 区别"   en "opencode v2 migrate from v1 plugin api"
+//   bing                          10/10                     missed the doc entirely
+//   360search                      0/5                      4, unrelated (sohu/toutiao)
+//   yandex                        14/15                     15, migration doc ranked #1
+//   naver                           0/9                     15, migration doc ranked #1
+//
+// yandex was previously excluded on the assumption that it has "no Chinese
+// index". Measured, it has the best Chinese relevance of any engine here and
+// the best English relevance for technical queries. 360search was previously
+// the default and is the worst on both: it splits the query on "V1"/"V2" and
+// answers with Android and CANN version-difference articles, which is where
+// the first round of noise in this plugin's history came from.
+//
+// naver is strong on English but returns 0/9 on Chinese, so it is left out
+// rather than allowed to dilute Chinese queries. baidu stays out entirely: it
+// answers with a CAPTCHA and suspends the client IP for an hour.
+const DEFAULT_ENGINES = "bing,yandex"
 
 const DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_MS = 20_000
 const DEFAULT_MAX_SNIPPET = 300