What search engine do you recommend that isn't Google or Bing?

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.

MrMobius, (edited )

I’ve been using qwant for a few weeks and it gives me quite satisfying and accurate results. Before I had been using ecosia for years but the results can be lackluster sometimes. Especially when you search very specific “niche” things (like obscure Linux problems troubleshooting). But I’m still looking for a browser which let’s you pick multiple languages for results.

TiffyBelle,
@TiffyBelle@lemmy.world avatar

I personally enjoy DDG. Their privacy policy for their search is straightforward and there’s no evidence that they’re not abiding by it. I find it tends to prioritize higher quality blogs and articles ahead of social media results.

I sometime use Brave Search as it seems to do better at giving social media/forum results as they seem to be prioritized higher by it, when I’m looking for more discussion-based content.

heyfrancis,
@heyfrancis@lemmy.ml avatar

+1 for DDG, but i dont get it why some comments here said it is just bing

StupidBrotherInLaw, (edited )

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.

crimroy,

Which is great, privacy-wise, but results-wise it is just Bing. DDG is what I use, but that’s all it is

jvrava9,
@jvrava9@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

SearXNG

jcrabapple,
@jcrabapple@infosec.pub avatar

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.

cashews_best_nut,

Ugh, paid. In this economy!?

jcrabapple,
@jcrabapple@infosec.pub avatar

$5/month. Worth it.

jemikwa,

Even better if you can get into a family plan with friends

praise_idleness,

except it’s not for me… I search way, way more than 300/month and $10/m honestly sounds a little unreasonable for a search engine.

Mr_Blott,

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

skeeter_dave,

For that price I can just spool up a vps and run a Searxng instance.

festus,

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.

douglasg14b,
@douglasg14b@lemmy.world avatar

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.

RootBeerGuy,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

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.

Cralder,

deleted_by_author

    •
    jcrabapple,
    @jcrabapple@infosec.pub avatar

    Sorry it didn’t work for you…

    joel_feila,
    @joel_feila@lemmy.world avatar

    You want a free search, Brave. Don’t like brave, then qwant. I use Kagi. It costs money but it is great.

    scytale,

    You can absolutely configure the default search engine on your browser to a custom one in some cases. I use startpage and it isn’t in the default options, but it can be added.

    Joker,

    Kagi is the best around if you are willing to pay. If I had to cancel my subscription for whatever reason, I would go back to DDG.

    cashews_best_nut,

    Do you like to swim in your cash vault like Scrooge McDuck?

    kzhe,

    Kagi really isn’t that pricy.

    ichbinjasokreativ,

    Brave search is also really good now

    cyberpunk007,

    Brave statement

    ichbinjasokreativ,

    Ican only speak of my own experience. Finding what I’m looking for and not having to deal with the insane amount of ads on google and the likes is worth it to me to make a recommendation.

    kzhe,

    People aren’t downgotinf because you’re right or wrong, but because Brave is homophobic.

    kzhe,

    brave is pretty widely disliked by people (including me) for it’s CEO’s homophobia. That’s probably why you’re being down voted.

    jflorez,

    DuckDuckGo on Firefox. If you truly want to de-google your life avoid Chrome and Chromium based browsers like Edge and Brave

    Xatolos,
    @Xatolos@reddthat.com avatar

    DuckDuckGo is Bing. It’s just stripped of Microsoft “extras”.

    TheMadnessKing,

    But it doesn’t track you. So, better Privacy

    cyberpunk007,

    How so? It existed before bing.

    imkali,

    They have changed the way they gather results since they first launched.

    cyberpunk007,

    Ok so it’s a bing proxy basically?

    kzhe,

    DDG uses Bing for 100% of its results.

    Jourei,

    Interesting, when DDG fails to give me anything worth while, I go to Bing and usually get what I’m looking for.

    cyberpunk007,

    People use bing? I find the results just like a dogs breakfast. Such a mess.

    Jourei,

    I use bing more and more. It’s not fantastic but feels like it’s on track to be ome better than google.

    LastYearsPumpkin,

    It used to be Google search without the extras.

    WeLoveCastingSpellz,

    I use stratpage. I find it reliable

    Faresh,

    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.

    CetaceanNeeded,

    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.

    Facebones,

    Somebody reply to this so I remember to spin up a container tomorrow lmao

    heyfrancis,
    @heyfrancis@lemmy.ml avatar

    Try remindme bot - github.com/PangoraWeb/remindme-bot#usage

    zip,

    Hey, remember to spin up a container!

    Facebones,

    I did, thanks! 😛 Took a few tries but was over complicating the configs apparently lol

    dumpsterlid,

    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.

    HansSlonzok,

    qwant.com

    Swedneck,
    @Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    qwant also has their own really nice map! maps.qwant.com

    it’s properly open source, based on openstreetmap, and integrates tripadvisor so it’s great for finding restaurants.

    garibaldi_biscuit,

    What about metasearch engines/ search aggregators?

    lseif,

    startpage is alright if u want a quick alternative.

    but definitely look into searx. it can be annoying to choose an instance (unless you self host!), but it can be a lot more customizable and decentralized

    KLISHDFSDF,
    @KLISHDFSDF@lemmy.ml avatar

    check out ecosia.org! plant trees while you search! 🌳

    pineapplelover,

    Downside is that it sells ads and information

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • asklemmy@lemmy.world
  • localhost
  • All magazines
    •
    Loading…
    Loading the web debug toolbar…
    Attempt #