Time to ditch #duckduckgo

In the last couple of months I have noticed an increasing trend of supplying me search results that are completely unrelated to the current query and tie back to my location or previous searches. I can say this with a high degree of certainty this is without a doubt beyond the 100th instance this has happened.

My browser is configured against tracking and fingerprinting (in fact all my devices are) which would make it fairly difficult to retain any data unless they are profiling me.

ksyko, (edited )

deleted_by_author

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    DetectiveSanity,

    This was first page. Around 10-15 mark.

    elias_griffin, (edited )

    Looks like you are using Firefox. Use arkenfox sure, but cut Mozilla off it’s 115 server network it uses to track you via FF by using a host deny list, FOSS git clone harden-firefox. You’ll have to disable to update ublock origin or remove the extensions line, but it’s better to just cut the adverts and tracking by removing it from the networks than by browser interception (slower, loss of performance, still hits your computer). Links included to do that in that repo.

    Alternative browers are Librewolf and Qutebrowser. When you really don’t want to be tracked for some things use Lynx.

    A great search engine replacement is Grasp. It’s being funded by Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator and although you only get 100 free searches a months, it can come in very handy. The search results it gives you, unlike Kagi which is just a reformat of DuckDuckgo yet with AI, it’s results are completely different than any other engine and imo, on point, surely for anything technical.

    My general search engine is an envs.net free hosting of Searx. envs.net is a free Linux shell community with many services like blogs, email, matrix hosting, etc etc. If you do end up using their German Searx as main search donate to them, I did.

    skozzii,

    On DDG I can type in an exact company or product name and not get a proper result, it’s crazy. Google seems to find the stuff no problem, it’s really quite frustrating when the search engine isn’t even capable of basic queries.

    random65837,

    The time to ditch DDG came when they started gatekeeping during the first Russia thing, COVID, etc.

    possiblylinux127,

    Try ddg lite

    TheAnonymouseJoker, (edited )
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    As someone who is a data hoarder/curator and dives into the deep ends of web abyss, I use Searx, Startpage and Yandex. I do not mind Startpage only because I no longer use search engines that much anymore. If something truly needs to be searched, Yandex is the absolute, untouchable king for web, image and reverse image searching, and is better than Google for privacy (very low bar but > Google/Bing).

    Searx usually does deliver for the common use cases, and Startpage gives Google results minus SEO and sponsored trash.

    If I were to rank them for results based on years of experience, Yandex is easily a 10 (ignoring its unbeatable image search), Searx with “default/all” language results a 7, Startpage a 5 (censors Russian/Chinese sources since it is based on Google), Qwant probably 3.5-4 (unavailable in many regions), Google 3, DDG and Bing 2. I am not sure how Metager, Mojeek and Kagi fare, but they probably perform somewhere between Searx with “default/all” language results and DDG.

    Why Yandex is so above Searx metasearch is because its indexing is a lot faster than once a day, besides giving the experience of what Google was around 2009/10 and with no SEO crap. You will find the most obscure personal blog and website there, and DMCA bullshit does not work in Russia, which would work on any of these other search engines or metasearch instance owners.

    PlatypusXray,

    I feel like Qwant has become the best when it comes to the quality of the search results. My experience with kagi is limited, though.

    rab,

    I feel like ddg has never had good search results

    electric_nan,

    I get the same shit at work where I can’t use a VPN: like 7-8 relevant results then basically just ads for local businesses after that.

    mojo,

    Nah it’s still the best

    ShortN0te,

    I have still the same good results in ddg, no matter what device or browser. I have noticed that they have some location bias when ddg (and any other search engine i have tried) has non good results globaly but good resulta locally.

    Still better then anything i have tested. Just because there are minor anomalies i will stick with them.

    ForestOrca,
    @ForestOrca@kbin.social avatar

    I use DDG, tho' it's with a VPN. And it seems to work just fine. shrug

    MigratingtoLemmy,

    I turned JS off other than for specific websites. This includes DDG. It gives me accurate results, although the other commenters don’t seem be facing your problem either

    TheHolyChecksum,

    Yes, I have the same issue with DDG for something like a year now. I can’t use it anymore for basic searches, I feel like the bing api they are using is getting worse and worse.

    I_Miss_Daniel,

    It might be blindly searching for websites that contain any of the words scan, mark 2, pro.

    It seems to do that when it can’t find a page with all of the words, and the only way I know to fix it is put the whole thing in quotation marks.

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