we all know Google’s usefulness has diminished if you’re searching for something the algorithm doesn’t have it’s nose on, personally i don’t feel searxng (i used the nicfab.eu one) gives the best or most useful results either, what’s out there?
Been using duckduckgo for years and generally gets the job done. If I want more local specific results then I’ll just add !g to my search which’ll do a Google search
Duck Duck Go is literally just Bing without the personal data. If it works for you then it works for you, but it’s good to know what you’re really using.
from wikipedia: DuckDuckGo’s results are a compilation of “over 400” sources according to itself, including Bing, Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, and its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); but none from Google.[62][3][63][64][53] It also uses data from crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the search results.[64][65]
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I’m quite aware of that fact. Not sure where I gave the impression otherwise. When it comes down to it, pretty much all the options are just proxies/aggregators for other search engines - that introduce privacy.
DuckDuckGo/Brave + Kagi.
Others, more specific uses:
I like the paulgo.io searxng instance for most queries its fine. As for truly novel search engines that dont just scrape google, theres search.marginalia.nu and yacy.net
DuckDuckGo works in 98% of the time for me. If I can’t find something on DDG, I’ll switch to Google. But that’s only rarely needed.
SearXNG is the king
I like Ecosia.
It does run on Bing, but I like seeing the lil tree planting counter tick up(•‿•)
Kagi is good.
Seconding Kagi. The pricing model is a little rough, but if you’re serious about getting the most out of a search engine, Kagi is the way to go.
Imo, paying is worth it to be completely free of Google’s services.
Kagi is great but I feel they’ll struggle with their current pricing. I have a discounted rate for their pro tier, $10 for 1500 queries, and I think even that is expensive.
duckduckgo is the most useful and straightforward to use, brave isn’t bad either although it struggles with non english searches from my experience. searx is powerful but a bit overkill and it is not the most intuitive
oh there is also startpage if you want google results but don’t want to use google, it does not allow vpns though
DuckDuckGo
searx.be is my favorite by far. You can get results from DDG, Brave, Startpage, etc. all in one place and it’s self-hostable
Kagi
Ah found url. Primo!
Dang. Another subscription model. I will stick with the less great but free brave and DuckDuckGo.
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I also use Startpage and have been happy with it. It uses Google’s search engine as the backend but cuts out the tracking and personalized ads so I feel like it is the best of both worlds.
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I use Yandex when I suspect Google isn’t telling me everything.
eh, i’ve been doing a mix of duckduckgo or brave’s search engine. tbh it works for basic things but i’ve yet to find a better search engine for more niche or specific queries
I know DuckDuckGo has its own issues, but surely it’s better than Google at least?
Results wise it’s just a bing wrapper. Which is not all that good in all honesty.