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.

bloopernova,
@bloopernova@programming.dev avatar

Kagi

It’s a paid subscription but it’s better than Google, I’ve found.

kagi.com

billbasher,

I like startpage.com. It doesn’t save your searches and I feel like it gives better results than DDG. Also it’s been around for awhile - it used to be ixquick

Oha,

startpage is owned by a advertising company and is propriatary as fuck

billbasher,

Oh wow that happened 4 years ago?! Time to find a new one…

LinkOpensChest_wav,

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:

searx.tiekoetter.com

search.fuckoffgoogle.net

EmasXP,

I really enjoy Mojeek. It gives you results you would not get anywhere else. I see high value in that

LinkOpensChest_wav,

Yeah, it reminds me of the old search engines in the 90s. I’ve come to love it.

cerement,
@cerement@slrpnk.net avatar

Random SearX Redirector – basically just that, sends your search to a random working SearXNG instance

LinkOpensChest_wav,

This is super rad! I’ve never heard of this, so thanks for sharing.

Mojeek,
@Mojeek@lemmy.ml avatar

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

LinkOpensChest_wav,

Nice, I’ll try it out, thanks!

shinigamiookamiryuu,

I used to be a part of the DuckDuckGo hype train until I found out they did actually track data (not an issue to me personally, but it betrayed their key marketing point), as used to be demonstrable if you had a slow internet and hovered your cursor over a link (it would show the tracking data loading). It was the one thing separating them from Ecosia, and I decided to join the Ecosia hype train, even if their own promises are themselves highly exaggerated. Every effort to do what Ecosia promises, even failed efforts, are appreciable.

sturlabragason, (edited )

Duckduckgo and (downvotes incoming) brave search.

duckduckgo.com

search.brave.com

And I disagree with you, I don’t know a single browser where you can’t change the default search engine.

frozen,
@frozen@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

I’m out of the loop on DDG, what did they do?

b000rg, (edited )

[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.

Lmaydev,

Do you have a source for that?

CmdrShepard42,

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.

OldManBOMBIN,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Lmaydev,

    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?

    OldManBOMBIN,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Lmaydev,

    That’s kind of spreading misinformation though right?

    GregorGizeh,

    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

    Swedneck,
    @Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    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

    IronKrill,

    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.

    Swedneck,
    @Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    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?

    GregorGizeh,

    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?

    berkeleyblue,
    @berkeleyblue@lemmy.world avatar

    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?

    sukhmel,

    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

    kzhe,

    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.

    PopOfAfrica,

    Kagi is by far the best search engine I’ve ever used. It is paid though.

    scottmeme, (edited )

    I run a whoogle instance personally

    Lmaydev,

    Of what?

    scottmeme,

    Of shit auto correct, whoogle, open source privacy frontend for google

    girl,

    How is an instance a search engine?

    nix, (edited )
    @nix@merv.news avatar

    kagi.com no ads, great results. It’s $5 a month but worth it imo

    canihasaccount,

    Seconding. Kagi is the only one that was able to replace Google for me.

    GlitzyArmrest,
    @GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world avatar

    This is the only true Google replacement I’ve found.

    drfuzzyness,

    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.

    graymess,

    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.

    Mr_Blott,

    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

    supercriticalcheese,

    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…

    EmasXP,

    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

    Swedneck,
    @Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    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

    ShittyBeatlesFCPres,

    I use startpage.com on desktop. They provide Google results (sort of like DDG uses Bing results) so it’s not some autonomous magic privacy thing but it’s what I want from a search engine.

    It reminds me of Google pre-enshittification.

    Kolanaki,
    @Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

    I just make a post in NoStupidQuestions and use y’all like a search engine. :P

    ThrowawayPermanente,

    I post answers to NoStupidQuestions with most of the keywords you’re looking for and a link to my AI-generated blog. Your move.

    Vilian,

    ecosia, like knowing that my searchs are helping the world a little

    deadcatbounce,
    @deadcatbounce@reddthat.com avatar

    www.startpage.com

    Owned now by a marketing company. I’ve been using it for many years and never had my results noticeable affect my advertising incoming.

    It’s a proxy for Google which is why I use it. I have really started to use ChatGPT in anger yet as the trivial don’t need it.

    I’m not connected to them in any way.

    deadcatbounce,
    @deadcatbounce@reddthat.com avatar

    Firefox allowed you to define the default search and have many many engines listed. That’s been a standard feature for many years.

    cerement,
    @cerement@slrpnk.net avatar

    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

    https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/be6e8359-dc40-4e49-a901-e906fc3482d6.webp

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