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.

SplashJackson,

I like AskJeeves but a case can be made for WebCrawler

brenno, (edited )

Another option is SearXNG. It’s meta search engine, which means that it aggregates other search engines like Google and Bing but without tracking or logging, because your searches are proxied using a public instance, that will mix your search with the ones from other people.

And about default search engine, don’t know what you’re talking about, both chrome and Firefox allows this, in mobile and desktop.

searx.space

Dehydrated,

Meta search engines:

  • SearX

    Open source, self hostable meta search engine.

  • SearXNG

    Better version of SearX. A list of SearX and SearXNG instances is available at searx.space

Also meta search engines, but different:

  • DuckDuckGo

    It’s very privacy friendly, but it gets all the search results from Microsoft’s Bing.

  • Startpage

    Basically the same thing but it uses Google results. They are really focused on privacy too, they even are on Mastodon: mastodon.social/

    They’re based in the EU (Netherlands) so they are also subject to the GDPR.

Independent:

  • 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.

  • Mojeek

    A small privacy focused search engine, that uses its own index. They’re also on Mastodon: mastodon.social/

  • 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.

Bebo,

I am generally switching between Google and duck duck go on Firefox. When Google gives shitty results (which is frequently) I switch over to ddg.

ani,

Bing is the best

Anticorp,

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.

MSids,

Not sure I’m ready to pay for search especially not at $5-10/mo.

TonyTonyChopper,
@TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz avatar

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?

MadhuGururajan,

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.

RvTV95XBeo,

$10/mo, not hour, god that would be an insane search bill

MadhuGururajan,

Funny i understood it meant $10 per month but made the mistake typing.

Anticorp,

It’s $5-$10 per month, not $10 per hour. LOL

kilgore_trout,

People can do without search

This post is specifically asking for a search engine recommendation.

MadhuGururajan,

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.

ArdMacha,

That statement didn’t give you the money to pay for it though

blurg,

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.

COASTER1921,

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.

ReallyActuallyFrankenstein,

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. 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?

Wahots,
@Wahots@pawb.social avatar

I use a mix of all 3 search engines on firefox

iturnedintoanewt,
@iturnedintoanewt@lemm.ee avatar

How would you go about setting searxng for search suggestions? I’m not sure i understand the documentation.

kzhe,

Kagi if you’re willing to pay. Otherwise tryaS Searx instance.

KLISHDFSDF,
@KLISHDFSDF@lemmy.ml avatar

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

pineapplelover,

Downside is that it sells ads and information

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

garibaldi_biscuit,

What about metasearch engines/ search aggregators?

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.

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.

WeLoveCastingSpellz,

I use stratpage. I find it reliable

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