What search engine is currently showing the most useful results? What other tricks do we have aside of adding “reddit” or whatever internet community to the results?
Most of our search result pages feature one or more Instant Answers. To deliver Instant Answers on specific topics, DuckDuckGo leverages many sources, including specialized sources like Sportradar and crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia. We also maintain our own crawler (DuckDuckBot) and many indexes to support our results. Of course, we have more traditional links and images in our search results too, which we largely source from Bing. Our focus is synthesizing all these sources to create a superior search experience.
Definitely. So many searches lately will return results that only partially match the search terms. What’s even the point of searching if you’re just going to show a bunch of unrelated results?
Even exact matches with quotes don’t seem to be as useful these days. Google tries to be helpful by matching on what it thinks I want instead of what I actually want. That plus the ads and all the other junk
They’re not trying to be helpful, they’re trying to guide you towards a product or towards content they control that they think you will be more engaged with. They also give results that will lead to more searches, and therefore more ad exposure for their business.
Plus, I used to set my new tab page to Google, but God, it’s so bad. There’s always some stupid image for some stupid anniversary like Mary F. Dinklehorn becoming the first trans-gay-librarian in Antarctica or something (not that I’m against any of that) I just want to get some work done and not be distracted by Google desperately clinging to power.
I’m using Chrome and added an extension called Empty New Tab Page that makes Chrome open to a blank page. I had to do that because the Google home page got to be so annoying. Also removing the need to fetch content makes the browser and new tabs open faster.
You seem to be misunderstanding the point of your doing your search: they got paid for the results that they delivered, and for the ad traffic of you having received it! Don't you see why this is best for them you? /s
I actually prefer Google for shopping. Just turn off your adblocker, search for a particular item you want to buy and bam your first 3 to 4 pages are retailers pushing the product with their prices listed (with a touch of scam websites that I presume pay for advertising). Anything else I add ‘Reddit’ or just watch a few YouTube videos depending on what kind of answers I’m looking for
Duck Duck Go search results are a little lacking, though, like it’s completely missing some possibilities. Looking up tech stuff for a Linux issue I’m having, Duck will miss a site that Google finds - and even if I enter the exact text of the site, it’s completely absent from Duck.
I really want to like DuckDuckGo, but the results are never right. I always end up going back to Google. But I’m a professional programmer, so it might be different for me.
More and more I have been using the Bing “chat” search. It does a search, filters through the results and summarizes the answer with links to the sites it found them on.
For certain types of search it is a huge time saver of scrolling through results to find answers on various pages.
If it isn’t open / free / private there is a % of the community that will not even try it.
Just like on Reddit lots of negative energy in some subs.
Hardly saying bing is amazing only that lately I have been drawn to trying it more since the chat based search that allows follow ups in natural language.
Google bards equivalent is only available in the US and just this last week the UK so I can’t try it out.
However over all I agree that more and more google search results have more adds and the good results pushed further and further down.
I don’t like the idea of getting answers from a search engine. That gives too much power to the company that runs the search engine. Id prefer to get a variety of links from independent sources.
Have it compile a list of sources it’s already sourced from, and keep searching for any new sources it can add. Have it list its expectations for what an expert should know about a particular subject, then have it learn about each of those points, and finally present as if it is an expert there to assist you.
I downvoted because I have literally no idea what that guy is talking about.
Bing has never been a good search engine. The results are always so terrible, plus you have to wade through all the Microsoft click-baity crap they put everywhere.
Have you tried using the Chat feature (GPT-4) to do searching? I just tried it, and it surprisingly works really well for some inquiries.
Like, use their chat AI, but as a natural language search engine. It’s integrated to Bing’s index so it can peruse it itself, so you don’t have to wade through all the Microsoft click-baits crap they put everywhere.
I recently switched to Bing after years of disappointment from Google and months of disappointment from DDG. Bing is pretty disappointing too, but less so, so far. I tried to use the chat feature a couple of days ago, but it said I have to download the app. Nah… fuck these tech companies and their apps.
The “preview” for the chat feature requires the app or edge on desktop currently but I do find myself turning to it every time I get frustrated with a google search these days.
Less disappointing is probably the best discrimination as you said.
I use the ChatGPT feature from desktop Firefox with no problems. Maybe it specifically denies Chrome, in which case I bet you could change the user agent string and get it to work.
I just tried it again on desktop and it worked, but the reason was that I downloaded an extension a while ago and forgot about it. When I disabled the extension, it stopped working.
There used to be a way to enable installing any extension on mobile FFx Dev, but I'm not sure if that still works. The desktop extension just changes the user agent string, so that might be another route to enabling it.
I downloaded Firefox Nightly on my phone about a week ago so that I can change my user agent string to get Google to stop F’ing up YouTube pages, but it doesn’t seem to work. I guess I’ll look into that extension. Do you know what it’s called?
Yep, Google decided it was too complicated and removed it all. Dont know how it was too complicated, people just wouldn’t use it if they didn’t know about it. They felt “natural language” would be more useful. Bullshit, I search for “foo and bar” it’ll return me results for foo and ignore the rest
I frequently have to look up whether a term is a misspelling/mistranslation or an actual technical term (or a term in British English, or a British spelling for a technical word). For me, quotes do nothing. It will frequently refuse to look up the term I’m specifically hunting for, just the term it thinks I should be hunting for. Sometimes that means it’s a mistranslation… but not always.
Next time it comes up for me, I’ll keep a note of it and get back to you.
I have an even bigger problem trying to exclude terms from a search. The example I always use is try to look up “Dolphins -football”, and use any version of “-” you’d like (NOT, etc). The first results will always be the latest scores for the Miami Dolphins.
Yeah I really miss those days of logical operands. Back in the Alta Vista days I could do Boolean searches, but yeah that’s been replaced with speech recognition which doesn’t work as well. To this day I still like the Boolean search better. Newer does not always mean better. Most of the time it only means dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.
For my job and work. I use Kagi. Its not free, but the search returns are very good, you can filter domains out from your returns, it supports custom “bangs” ala duck duck go and theres no tracking of queries. There are also specific filters for things like programming, or recipes for cooking etc. Theres also no ads, you are paying and are the customer. They are trying to establish a sustainable model to run on that allows for privacy.
I find it quite refreshing. It isnt free and I generally hate subscription stuff, but this is easily one I dont mind as it pays dividends often when searching for work.
i’m also a Kagi user/fan. it looks good, is fast, doesn’t have ads, & the results appear to be better than i get using other engines. the lenses are also nice.
Hey, thanks for the recommendation. I had no idea a service like this existed. I’ve been frustrated with all of the search engines for years now. I just signed up. Hopefully it turns out to be rad.
I wouldn’t mind $5 if that tier didn’t also cap the number of searches to 250. I’d burn through that super quick, and $25 for unlimited is way too much IMO.
The tiers have changed over time. Originally $10 was 700, not its 1000.
I use search A LOT for work. I also have it on my phones etc because I dont feel like swapping engines all that often.
I find it giving me more acurate results quicker, without ads.
The only other subscription services I use are mostly Netflix for kids and family. I avoid them at most costs. But this one allows me to do my job a bit more efficiently and its privacy focused.
Where do you think is a reasonable price? Search is something most folks use daily, multiple times per day. If the quality of results is good, that seems like a small price to pay. Netflix is pushing 20 a month, and many other streaming services are in the 10—15 range.
Wow. I don’t mind paying for stuff if it’s good. But seriously $5/month seems pretty expensive, and you only get 300 searches. $25 for unlimited searches, which seems like an insane amount of money.
The free trial with a 100 searches makes it pretty easy to figure out how much you actually search online and if you’re not a power user, that 300 searches plan is pretty OK. If you work in tech, that 10$ plan is definitely enough - in searching pretty much constantly and never got above the 800 searches the 10$ plan used to offer (now that plan has 1000 searches in it).
Those prices don’t seem super horrible, but I don’t see any reason to trust that this company isn’t mining and selling my data in addition to collecting my money.
Not sure where you are, but there’s practically no place in the US you get a lunch for that. In flat terms it’s quite cheep. It’s only expensive relative to free.
And when you think about it, your search service really is your internet. It shapes your whole internet experience. If that’s not worth $5/month to make sure it’s good and not polluted with ads, I don’t know what to tell you.
I felt similarly about this, but upon reflecting, if the searches actually worked and didn’t ‘come in groups of 5’ due to SEO trash, it probably works out?
Haven’t tried it myself yet, but I have been finding myself in increasing frustration with Google and degenerate article sausage factories…
I felt similarly about this, but upon reflecting, if the searches actually worked and didn’t ‘come in groups of 5’ due to SEO trash, it probably works out?
Haven’t tried it myself yet, but I have been finding myself in increasing frustration with Google and degenerate article sausage factories…
The problem here is so many people are used to tech running at a loss on the books and/subsiding operating costs by selling customer data and analytics.
The reality is running tech companies is hard and expensive. The money here goes straight back into development. It’s just out of beta since march, and they have increased their quotas since I have been a customer.
But people are spoiled by free where you aren’t a customer. You are the product. If you are cool with that it’s fine. This isn’t the product for you.
For me, I like the idea and the searches are better than DDG/bing and startpage/google. So it’s worth the cost personally. I would rather pay that than say…Amazon prime where I’m both the customer and the product.
It’s not a paywall on information. What you’re paying for is a better search engine and better privacy. People have to be paid to provide you with that and, if you don’t want to pay them with cash, you can go and pay another search engine with your time and data.
Ah, the old paywall with extra steps. So let’s take that further… In the future google has devolved even more than it has now. So it’s just basically a misinformational mess riddled with ads. I guess to have access to reliable and non-predatory links/info you gotta now have the money for it. How much money will of course increase as any company gets established of course further pushing lower income people out.
And don’t even pretend this is far stretched. People struggling to get by get boned by shit like this all the time.
It’s too abusable. I don’t like it at all. I also don’t like the idea of the government having full control of the internet/information either. I don’t know what the solution is but locking information behind money, even if it’s in a roundabout way, is not a good solution.
I mean yes I agree with all your points. But I stand by the assertion that it’s too expensive. I could handle $5/month, perhaps, but 300 searches is waaaay too few. That’s 10 per day. I did 10 searches this morning before I got out of bed.
For unlimited searches it’s twice the cost of a streaming service. Yet it has negligible bandwidth costs, and significantly less storage cost, probably less development cost. Sure a small user base too, but at that price they’re really going to struggle to grow it!
But the problem is that this is what it costs for a search that doesn’t sell your data or advertise to you. Search is expensive.
Fortunately you do get into the habit of just searching sites directly, like wikipedia, MDN, archwiki, etc., rather than using up your general purpose searches.
It’s this, or sell your data to Google for free searches.
And maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s just not sustainable for searched to be paid, but Kagi is really transparent about their pricing. It’s just expensive unless it’s subsidized by ads or data collection.
They phrased it weirdly, but Bangs (same before that for free when I was a DDG user for years) are a killer feature. I don’t need the indirection if I know where I’m searching for something. !caniuse, !mdn, !imdb, whatever. I’d not use a search engine without bangs again, and if Kagi didn’t support all the DDG bangs, I’d never have even tested them.
At $10 it’s 1000 unique searches. I search a ton and have it on my phone etc. haven’t exceeded the limit. I am at 600 searches right now, with a renewal due on the 24th.
They are writing a search engine from scratch. They don’t just randomize bing or google searches. So I think you may be underestimating the operating and especially development costs, probably hosting costs too.
But to each his own. Also those streaming services you mention. They don’t really turn a profit, and definitely don’t on subscriptions.
I think my point is for me and in my specific use case, I actually search less.
For example if I am debugging a process or working through some setup, I will often have to iterate through a series of searches with tweaks in DDg and sometimes even google. Using tweaks like site:some site.com, quoted portions of queries to reduce useless returns etc.
Kagi, again for me, had helped reduce that. I can’t often find a very quality source in the first query or two.
So the limit wasnt hugely a problem. I was actually VERY concerned like you because above 10 dollars is pretty steep. I initially signed up at 10, set limits not to exceed 15 and figured I would cancel and either submit a request at work for an annual or just ditch it.
Luckily two things happened that retained me. The first I already mentioned. The second was they bumped the quota to 1000.
Again I may still jsut see if I can get work to pay it out. But at 10 bucks it’s digestible, for me, for the value add. I also do no filtering. Just search whatever random shit I think of n the shitter in addition to curated work searches.
I’m not trying to sway you. Idgaf if you use it or not. Just trying to help provide useful information because for me, it was more “ehhh let’s see how it works out”
Finally, I have reached out to Vlad about suggestions and even corrections on things, both in the product and ancillaries (like their documentation). He’s responded each time and even corrected some of the issues. Which is really nice.
I could actually see myself paying for the $25/mo option and leveraging that into a “free” alt-google that slurps up all your data for me to monitize however I can. Be sure to keep an eye out for it! :D
Arguments like this would only be relevant if a subscription service’s cost decreased globally as enrollment milestones were reached by their user population. Economies of scale kick in and you’re not paying the same account… But we never see those sub cost decreases for some strange reason?
Theres also no ads, you are paying and are the customer.
This is a fallacy. Just because you’re paying doesn’t mean you’re the customer. Whoever pays the most money is the customer; everyone else is the product and is merely paying for the privilege of being the product. Examples: Microsoft Windows, most Android phones, cable TV.
I’m also a kagi user and share the same feelings about it. Definitely worth it. Specially since I know my search data is not used to bias search results or sell ads on the search results.
Having to pay for a limited number of searches really takes away a lot of freedom. I would really have to think about my search query and be upset if it didn’t give me the results I was looking for. I would need unlimited searches just for my peace of mind. And I’m definitely not paying more then a couple of dollars for it. Might sound cheap but I really really hate subscription services.
They have quota controls as well. A soft limit that will send you alerts when you hit them and you pay 1.5 cents per search and a hard limit that will stop searches from being run.
Personally I went to a tier that I dont exceed (10/month). I ahve considered going to the annual subscription which is also unlimited but the same as the 25/month, just discounted a bit. I could probably write that one off for work too, definately could with taxes.
My God, 5$ for unlimited searches would have been expensive, but you only get 300! This thing would have to literally read my mind, and even then I don’t think it would be worth it
I’m using Kagi, which aggregates search results from several search engines (including their own), but without the ads, with less crap and with features like searching for literal strings and promoting/demoting certain websites. It’s a paid service, though, but I like it enough that I’m ok with that.
Use a decentralized SearXNG instance and have it query every search engine that exists on the internet, or host your own of you're really actually worried about privacy, and never look back.
I just tried two of the instances listed with a search for “how to filter mineral spirits”, and they both gave me errors. Both Google and DDG gave me an answer. Is there some trick I’m missing here?
+1 for SearXNG… I run my own instance in docker, and host it through a cloud flare tunnel. I set all my “web browser bars” on all my devices to auto use its address, so I don’t even have to think about it, and all my searches are auto routed through my instance. It’s Great!
I think the features I’m missing are easily adding more engines (haven’t looked much into it), and automatically blacklisting domains from coming up in searches.
I've been using https://www.ecosia.org/ because they plow some of their profits into planting trees. They use bing results and I generally find what I need quickly.
Topics like this remind me of the pre-Google era. If Google can’t see the damage they’ve done, they deserve to vanish like the ones they’ve vanished in the early years.
Probably the new Google search that uses Bard. It’s not public yet, but you can ask for access.
Edit: It’s currently referred to as “generative search”, and you can use it on Android if you sign up for the beta version of the app on the play store.
Oh shoot. I actually use it. That’s bad. But then again, what isn’t? What do I switch to? It’s all shit, but at least with Brave search, I actually get results for <insert obscure Linux issue here>.
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