I’m still trying to de-Google my life, little by little. I don’t trust Bing for similar reasons. DDG is feeling shady of late. What’s the search engine you all recommend that I can inject into my daily life? Is there perhaps a search engine that is focused on code, or have we just all moved on to AI for searching?
Edit: I meant to also express my frustration that most browsers do not let you select a “default search engine” that can be used in the address bar aside from 3-5 pre-chosen engines. Seems like 2023 we should be able to customize that to our own liking.
Edit 2: Thanks for the recommendation of Kagi. I’m going to roll with it for a while. I see they have an extension for Safari that allows them to hijack the address bar, which is just what I needed.
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DuckDuckGo on Firefox. If you truly want to de-google your life avoid Chrome and Chromium based browsers like Edge and Brave
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But it doesn’t track you. So, better Privacy
ublock origin says otherwise
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How so? It existed before bing.
They have changed the way they gather results since they first launched.
Ok so it’s a bing proxy basically?
DDG uses Bing for 100% of its results.
Interesting, when DDG fails to give me anything worth while, I go to Bing and usually get what I’m looking for.
People use bing? I find the results just like a dogs breakfast. Such a mess.
I use bing more and more. It’s not fantastic but feels like it’s on track to be ome better than google.
It used to be Google search without the extras.
I’m out of the loop on DDG, what did they do?
Not sure on the shady part, but I have stopped using them simply because they give me the same crap as Bing. Web search is almost dead, I’ve been thinking of trying one of the paid options. I’ve read good things about kagi
i don’t get this, i get perfectly fine search results with ddg…
i get finding the results slightly worse but dead? stop it with this absurd hyperbole
Depends what you’re trying to do. Looking up a movie? Easy. Looking up niche documentation/issues or error codes just feels hopeless compared to how it used to be.
i mean i have no real issues finding info about various linux errors, is that not niche enough?
or have i just never seen the glory days where a google search would automatically fix your issue and bake a nice cake?
Free web search gives me a whole page of SEO pages, cached reddit content that’s been deleted when you click it, or one of like five tech giants and their crap.
Unless you are very specific and already know what site you are looking for it is extremely difficult to simply find information now, if you just want an answer you locate the relevant reddit or discord community and try your luck there, or ask a LLM to give you an answer because you can’t wade through the sheer amount of non- and disinformation out there now.
Of course, the LLM is also trained on this bullshit and not actually smart, so at best you get an idea where you can look for the information it regurgitated if you make it cite its sources, and do your own research from there.
Are you really telling me this is somehow not much much worse than mid 2000s-2010s internet, where you typed something into google and it almost always found that exact thing you were looking for?
Surely anecdotal, but I have never clicked on a Google Reddit link that didn’t let me to an actual post, most of the time with the actual info I was hoping to find and never have I been served SEO pages.
There was a slight influx of AI generated nonsense a couple months back but that stopped. On my iPhone i Use DuckDuckGo and an perfectly happy. On the Mac where I have more ways to block stuff I use google and also don’t have any issues.
May I ask what kind of things you usually search for?
I’m still using it but it was fun when they had something along the lines of “your privacy is safe with us. Also, wanna leave your email?” 😅
I am thinking of migrating to Kagi now, because search in DDG is often meh
A long ago they had drama for apparently leaking user information to microsoft— but that was a while ago. Really they were accused of having biased results.
[Edited by the commenter to remove incorrect information, see below.] I’m not sure if anything else has come up since then though, and I’ve continued using DDG, just not for any sort of news or information on current events. I mainly use a search engine for dev stuff anyways.
It’s actually the opposite. The downranked sites they considered Russian propaganda which made a lot free speech enthusiasts mad.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/duckduckgo-russian-disinformation-downranking.html
I think rather than either or, it just ranks things differently and doesn’t give the best results.
I also remember during the height of COVID, antivax people were saying to use DDG because their random blogs and conspiracy YouTube videos were closer to the top compared to google.
Do you have a source for that?
Apart from that, the results are often pretty terrible unless you use the exact terms from whatever page you’re trying to find. I’ve also seen a lot of people stating that search results keep changing every time they refresh the page as well.
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Does anyone have a source?
Probably not, because it’s a lie.
Where does that page state that their claim isn’t true? All it states is “We don’t track you” but it doesn’t say that they don’t allow other companies to track you instead.
I’ve been using DDG, and Ecosia. So I looked to see what was up with DDG. From what I’m reading, I’ll keep using DDG.
May 25, 2022 An article in TechRadar, and another on The Register mention an inability to block Microsoft trackers on DDG.
https://www.techradar.com/news/duckduckgo-in-hot-water-over-hidden-tracking-agreement-with-microsoft
https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/25/duckduckgo_browser_microsoft_privacy/August 5, 2022 A TEchCRunch article describes DDG’s efforts to block advertising requests and other tracking protections
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/duckduckgo-microsoft-tracking-scripts/May 12, 2023 Reuters article “No deal between DuckDuckGo and Microsoft to track users online”
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N3792HE/
“Independent experts say that DuckDuckGo blocks known tracking scripts from loading to prevent vulnerable personal identifiers from being exposed, including Microsoft-owned scripts. A separate partnership with Microsoft for advertising on DuckDuckGo’s search results page is limited to ad placements, not tracking users or building profiles, a DuckDuckGo spokesperson said.”Further, "Users sharing the headline, “Google Lite: DuckDuckGo Signs Secret Deal with Bill Gates to Track Users Online” in April 2023 can be seen (here) and (here).
The headline belonged to a story that first appeared on NewsPunch on May 25, 2022 (here), which now redirects to The People’s Voice (the two are affiliated) (here) (here).
The original article was published before DuckDuckGo eliminated, in August 2022, an exception that did permit some Microsoft-owned tracking scripts on websites to send data to Microsoft."
Links are in the article cited.
The only thing I can find is they allow MS trackers in their browser. Which isn’t great, but doesn’t matter if you only use their search.
Do you have a source?
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That’s kind of spreading misinformation though right?
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Half a dozen people in here already mentioned it, but Kagi has completely changed the search game and changed the way I use the Internet. It’s like an old school search engine with modern conveniences like a chat bot and summarizer, but without the ads and other shenanigans.
Ugh, paid. In this economy!?
It’s either your wallet or your personal information…
A surprisingly and insanely expensive to run and manage a search engine that isn’t just a reskin on bing (DDG). Even more so when you can’t mine your users for data.
Kagei is doing really good stuff and the quality of results I get are much higher. The $10/m is it easily paid off within even a day or two’s use in my normal job. Never mind all the personal research that I do.
Is a different model that is a not providing you with the best results that you are looking for. As opposed to steering you towards ads or towards partnerships. I like it.
I totally get the sentiment of saying when you pay you are not the product, however… what does any company stop from still collecting data anyway? I know that the kagi people deny that but why should anyone trust that.
Companies have fucked customers/consumers over so much, there is no trusting anyone when it comes to data collection. It is just so easy. Even if they don’t use it right now, why not just collect it anyway.
So, while I’d love to pay a little bit to support a service like that, I am so jaded by how dishonest companies have been about stuff like that, that I am not really willing to also give them money in addition.
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I know, that was my reaction at first too. But I tried it for a month and honestly it’s an amazing search engine. If it helps you to know, when you search they also use the (paid) search APIs of other search engines and aggregate the results in a way to get something better than any individual engine - so your searches actually have a decent marginal cost for them.
$5/month. Worth it.
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Cool, don’t use it then. Enjoy your SEO optimised search results
For the huge majority of people, $5 and 300 searches is plenty, and great value for actually useful results
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For that price I can just spool up a vps and run a Searxng instance.
Even better if you can get into a family plan with friends
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Sorry it didn’t work for you…
https://kagi.com no ads, great results. It’s $5 a month but worth it imo
Seconding. Kagi is the only one that was able to replace Google for me.
I need to try it out. If it’s as good as its reputation implies and stays that way, I’d be $5/mo amount of interested. But I have no idea how many times I’m going to need to search for something per month. Not a fan of that limitation.
You can get 100 searches for free to try it. I’m using it for purchases and technical queries, because the results are hugely less polluted. If I’m searching for, say, a film or a book, I use Google and not one of my paid searches
This is the only true Google replacement I’ve found.
It’s really good. The price tag is worth it imo as they buy results from a host of other search engines including Google, but the results are actually better.
For the web search I need to do it’s really not worth it. if my job required good web search results to be effective then it would be a different matter but alas I am not a software developer or an analyst…
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+1 for DDG, but i dont get it why some comments here said it is just bing
Because DDG uses Bing’s API. Basically, you submit a search to DDG, DDG submits that search to Bing, Bing provides results to DDG who repackages them as DDG, then provides that to you.
Which is great, privacy-wise, but results-wise it is just Bing. DDG is what I use, but that’s all it is
Firefox allowed you to define the default search and have many many engines listed. That’s been a standard feature for many years.
even simpler – Firefox will auto-detect a lot of search engines – right-click in the search/address bar and if Firefox can detect it, bottom option will be to add that engine to your list
I’m pretty sure most browsers can. Pretty sure OP’s complaint’s a big misplaced on that one.
All of them do allow it, but not all of them make it simple. There are times it will change the search in the address bar but not everywhere else in the browser as well. Of the web browsers I use, Firefox is the most friendly to change.
The complaint here is the “address bar” search. I’ve found that most browsers will allow you to use other search engines, but you have to prefix the search with a letter or abbreviation. I’m finding that a lot of browsers will restrict your raw address bar search to their chosen search engines.
I’m aware of the complaint, and stand by my comment.
Which browsers don’t let you change the default search? Firefox does. Chromium-based browsers do. I believe that alone covers “most browsers,” though I’m curious if any actually don’t allow that to be changed.
Kagi. Nothing else even comes close. Kagi is what Google used to be, before they decided they’ll show you whatever is profitable, rather than what they know you’re looking for.
Not sure I’m ready to pay for search especially not at $5-10/mo.
Yep. Like $1.99 or $2.99 I can easily justify but $5/mo for only 300 searches feels too steep to me reguardless of result quality. I’ll just go through the other pages of results from any other search engine.
$10 gets you unlimited searches now. Idk about you, but I was continually frustrated with the results from all of the other search engines. I figured $10 is a small cost for my sanity, and privacy.
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I haven’t heard of that service before, so I can’t say.
If you’re not spending some money then you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Would you really prefer the web continue to be supported by ads and people who sell data about you?
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If you’re not spending some money then you’re not the customer, you’re the product.
- BSD (e.g. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, …)
- GNU/Linux (e.g. kernel, Ubuntu, Mint, Arch, …)
- GNU/FSF/FOSS software (e.g. LibreOffice, Vim, Emacs, , Compiler Collection, Gnome & KDE desktop, GIMP, VLC, Wine, Python, …)
- Misc. (e.g. Wikipedia (& Kiwix), Gutenberg (& Calibre), Archive.org, CreativeCommons,org, OpenStreetMap, Lemmy, R, …)
- Plenty of public schools, public library, charities, …
Would like to argue with you. However, supporting these projects directly, if you can afford to, is something of a personal responsibility.
That statement didn’t give you the money to pay for it though
People can do without search. Most will find better uses for 10$ an hour. Those who can’t probably won’t buy search. So, lose-lose for you who tries to convince people in every post.
$10/mo, not hour, god that would be an insane search bill
Funny i understood it meant $10 per month but made the mistake typing.
People can do without search
This post is specifically asking for a search engine recommendation.
Yeah but they aren’t coming in here for the lack of options. They wanted to hear what’s everybody else on. I suppose you can make the argument that demand is there for paid search… but that’s because people have trained helplessness. Apart from 1 paid company i am not sure if people will have appetite for more companies in this space… because enshittification will happen here too.
It’s $5-$10 per month, not $10 per hour. LOL
I appreciate the non-ad-funded option, even if it is expensive, but I’m not sure it’s even better than Google, looking at their sample results.
For example, Steve Jobs (again, to be clear, this is the result they specifically provide as an example of why you should pay) has two different links to the same Wikipedia article in the first five results. https://kagi.com/search?q=steve+jobs
Not to put you on the spot, but I’m still open to be convinced - do you have any examples of when Kagi did a great job to compare?
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I use SearXNG. It is a meta search engine so it use results from various other search engines and you can specify which with
!. It does the job for me.Honestly I feel like searxng is way better than it gets credit for. It clearly isn’t as powerful as google but it isn’t drowning in SEO crap so that difference is entirely negated and then some.
My favourite feature is that you can host it yourself, you can even set it up to search over tor or VPN if you’re super privacy conscious.
I was a bit wary when I first spun up an instance, but it’s very low maintenance and mostly just works.
Does it choke in some edge cases? Yeah, but far less often than I had expected. For my own use case it’s low resource and does exactly what it says on the tin - nothing more, nothing less.
It’s my default across a variety of devices, and is perfectly happy behind basic auth and a minimal nginx conf.
Occasionally I’ve even surfaced some oddball results that give me unexpected perspective on a topic.
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Try remindme bot - https://github.com/PangoraWeb/remindme-bot#usage
Hey, remember to spin up a container!
I’ve been incredibly happy with Kagi. All of the listicles and blogspam get shunted off into their own sections. Kagi also seems to do a pretty good job at finding “deep” results. Like, when I want to find out more information about some home automation gizmo, Kagi does a good job of finding some random blog post where someone has torn the gizmo apart and analyzed every strength and weakness it has. I still prefer Google for looking up restaurants and stuff, but I hardly use it anymore. I don’t at all regret the $10 a month I pay to use Kagi.
Edit: I also like that Kagi lets you define rules. Occasionally I’ll be forced to go to Reddit to get some information (I really try to go elsewhere first). I deleted my account, so I go to new Reddit by default (which I hate). I don’t want to add an extension to redirect to old Reddit, but I can just replace the
wwwwitholdautomagically for all Reddit search results. Works great.Kagi is by far the best search engine I’ve ever used. It is paid though.
I’ve been paying for it for a couple of months now, am pretty happy with it. Feels weird to be paying for a search engine, and as it still only has a finite number of searches every month I still have to get used to not being reluctant to use it, but its results are indeed great. More focused than DuckDuckGo, less bullshit than Google.
Are you sure? I had been paying for a higher tier, but I remember they sent an email that they were changing or removing the search metering a while ago.In US it’s $5 for 300 searches or $10 for unlimited.
Unless they changed something very subtly and very recently, there’s a cap on searches on the lower tier and unlimited search on the higher one.
You’re right. It’s $5 for 300 searches or $10 for unlimited. It used to cost more and still have a limit. I didn’t realize there was still a cheaper tier.
The best I’ve found is Mojeek. The results take some getting used to because we’re all used to Google’s fuckery, but I’ve been using it for months, and it’s quite good.
There’s also SearXNG, though I’m not sure if that fits your needs. A couple public instances I’ve liked are:
Random SearX Redirector – basically just that, sends your search to a random working SearXNG instance
This is super rad! I’ve never heard of this, so thanks for sharing.
Thanks, friend. My main problem with using SearX was that instances kept dying on me and I would have to track down a new one every week or so.
I really enjoy Mojeek. It gives you results you would not get anywhere else. I see high value in that
Yeah, it reminds me of the old search engines in the 90s. I’ve come to love it.
Thanks for the shoutout, it’s always much-appreciated. If you’re looking to test new things/ help us out in other ways, we’re testing a new algo :D
Nice, I’ll try it out, thanks!
Coming back half a year later to see this comment. Thank you for thank link. I would love to help out!
It’s not currently got something live on it to test (you can use it but it should be the same results across both). If you wanna help out then let us know how you find Mojeek via this survey please!!! https://blocksurvey.io/mojeek-user-survey-2024-mJmJ2bBcQDy9QtByOmJX7A?v=o
check out ecosia.org! plant trees while you search! 🌳
Downside is that it sells ads and information
Duckduckgo if you use a vpn, everyone else throws speedbumos at VPN users… Prove your a human…
Been using Qwant for maybe a year or so. Recently found Swisscows too. I am not sure if Qwant uses their own index. I remember that they said that they were to create their own index, but the results looks suspiciously similar to Bing. Swisscows for sure runs their own index, and I find the results to be rather good
if nothing else qwant has a good map, based on openstreetmap but with a vector renderer and with tripadvisor integration so it’s really easy to find restaurants
Meta search engines:
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SearX
Open source, self hostable meta search engine.
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SearXNG
Better version of SearX. A list of SearX and SearXNG instances is available at https://searx.space
Also meta search engines, but different:
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DuckDuckGo
It’s very privacy friendly, but it gets all the search results from Microsoft’s Bing.
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Startpage
Basically the same thing but it uses Google results. They are really focused on privacy too, they even are on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@StartpageSearch
They’re based in the EU (Netherlands) so they are also subject to the GDPR.
Independent:
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Brave Search
They recently stopped using Google and Bing and created their own search index. It appears to be privacy friendly, but the company behind Brave is not ideal.
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Mojeek
A small privacy focused search engine, that uses its own index. They’re also on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@Mojeek
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Kagi
I’ve seen many many people recommend it, but I have never really used it myself. It’s not free, they charge $5/month for 300 searches and $10 for unlimited searches.
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