• TheTechnician27
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    18020 days ago

    Using a search engine that isn’t saturated with ads and AI trash also solves this problem.

    • @[email protected]
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      2520 days ago

      I stopped using Whoogle (Privacy engine using Google search) because of the bad search results. Google’s fault of course.

      Trying SearxNG now.

      • fmstrat
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        1120 days ago

        SXNG has been great for me. Submitted a PR to add more quick-answers, too.

      • @[email protected]
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        19 days ago

        Same with startpage because google indexing becoming horrible.
        But I have some cons. with searxng, earch quality becomes horrible when adding too much sources, and I decided to go with ddg.

          • @[email protected]
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            418 days ago

            for me it’s much better. I don’t think they directly use Bing search by the way, just their index. the algorithm should be theirs if I’m not wrong.

          • @[email protected]
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            118 days ago

            Using duck duck go is pretty good for me, if I go to bing.com, My results are horrible. Of course it’s the same result set, but I expect I’m getting less algorithmic shuffling on DuckDuckGo.

      • @[email protected]
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        919 days ago

        I started paying for Kagi. Works like Google in 2019. Fast, useful and customizable. One of the best features is hiding results from shit sites like Reddit, which blocks me for using a VPN. $10 well spent just to have that option.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 days ago

          why would you block reddit results? it’s often useful (at least when related to tech, possibly other topics too). I would recommend to install libredirect instead, which redirects reddit to a libreddit/redlib frontend

        • @[email protected]
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          319 days ago

          It is the best on the market but unfortunately they just use Google underneath plus their own blog index. And at least to me it seems it isn’t going in a better direction.

        • @[email protected]
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          219 days ago

          One of the best features is hiding results from shit sites

          I do that with the Firefox plugin “Block or Highlight Search Engine Results” from pistom (on github).
          Upside: I can see what was hidden in case I need that and it really helps with visibility.

        • @[email protected]
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          118 days ago

          I’ve found the $5 a month tier to be just about right. There have been a few months I’ve gone over, but they make that super easy to deal with: they just change the subscription renewal date and you start your next month a few days early.

    • @[email protected]
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      620 days ago

      Which other trustworthy search engines are there? And I don’t mean some different frontend or a meta search engine like ddg, sp, kagi, searx(ng), etc… that mostly just use googles, bings or even yandex and beidu results?

      Ages ago I configured and hosted yacy for myself, but that was a different time… Are there any real alternatives? With mayor internet companies like cloudflare, social media sites and many others restricting the access to the net and information, searching becomes more and more impossible if you aren’t a huge corporation…

      • TheTechnician27
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        820 days ago

        The two criteria I suggested were “not saturated with ads and AI trash” (technically just the latter would satisfy OP’s problem), and DDG meets both of those with no problem. Its AI “assistant” and its ads can both be trivially disabled. I use DuckDuckGo because I love its frontend and because it gives me fewer problems than Google did. I’ve only ever used alternative search engines that piggyback off the major ones (as you listed: DDG, Startpage, and SearX), so someone else would have to answer that for you.

        • @[email protected]
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          420 days ago

          Well, you and I just have a different understanding of “search engine” then. For me a search engine is something that doesn’t forward queries to third parties.

      • @[email protected]
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        418 days ago

        Searx is fancy about it though, It queries everybody and gives you the results that came back from multiple places. This effectively eliminates ads, AI, and unless they all missed it, spam.

        • @[email protected]
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          418 days ago

          I have nothing against any meta search engine, they are very useful, and I use them primarily as well.

          However, they are not a true alternative, because they depend on third-party services. The same as Invidious is a very useful, but also not an alternative to YouTube itself, just a different user interface.

  • @[email protected]
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    5419 days ago

    Google search engine is much worse than it used to be and seems to be getting worse.

    udm=14 doesn’t seem to improve Google search results by a significant margin.

    Bing and DuckDuckGo seem to perform better than Google at present.

    Google itself is failing. I’m not going to speculate why.

    uBlacklist is my current extension for removing spam results.

  • @[email protected]
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    4920 days ago

    To add it to Firefox search, open about:config and add a boolean value browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh set to true. This will allow you to manually add search engines. Then open the search settings and click add. Set the URL to https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s, give it a name and click “Add Engine”.

    • @[email protected]
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      2920 days ago

      I still like the idea of not using google search as my defacto standard, however once a month I may do an actual google search and this is a nice backup.

      Thank you for your work

    • Alatarius
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      420 days ago

      Tried this and it returns as site not found

    • @[email protected]
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      219 days ago

      Thank you! I’ve been looking for a way to to do that (for a different use case). Works like a charm!

  • @[email protected]
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    20 days ago

    Lots of talk about which search engine to use; surprisingly little talk about extensions.

    Block or Highlight Search Engine Results is my personal recommendation. Whichever SE you use, when you see a result that’s AI slop or a garbage website like Forbes, just add bullshit.com to the filter, set to hide, and you’ll never see that trash in a search result ever again.

    Be diligent about it for a good week or so, and your search result quality will absolutely explode, whether your using Google, DDG, or several others.

  • TimeSquirrel
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    1620 days ago

    As in, forever for good, or the “Microsoft” “for good” user settings paradigm?

  • @[email protected]
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    20 days ago

    Anyone know how to add it to mobile Chrome?

    Edit: go to the udm14 site, then open settings/search engine, it’ll be in there. I’m not sure if you have to do a search through the site first for it to show up.