Which search engine do you use for what?
from FreddiesLantern@leminal.space to privacy@lemmy.ml on 30 Jul 10:14
https://leminal.space/post/38151045
from FreddiesLantern@leminal.space to privacy@lemmy.ml on 30 Jul 10:14
https://leminal.space/post/38151045
Someone (average smartphone user) complained to me the other day that there isn’t a clear solution to navigating the web because it’s either ai slop or the results are poor.
And I kinda agree, nowadays you do have to put in some more effort to get what you’re looking for.
And so I told them I’d compile a list of which search engines are best for what purpose.
So far I have:
Startpage: works, but does a poor job of finding product codes and whatnot.
Duckduckgo: gives more general results afaik
Ecosia: works great but relies on bing
I have tried things like qwant ect but haven’t really settled on those.
Any other suggestions?
I’d tell em to use udm14 but it’s still google so I’d rather keep that as a plan B.
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I pay for Kagi. The results are good oob and you can downrank/ban websites.
Same here. It’s great easily being able to block those shitty github/stackoverflow scrapers like codegrepper, answeroverflow etc.
Holy shit, I’ve been wanting that for years. I’ll have to check them out.
Edit: Aaaand they have a built in AI despite calling themselves “human-focussed”. That’s a turnoff. If I’m paying for a search engine, I’d prefer to have a subscription option with the AI stripped out so I’m not subsidizing it for others.
Plus, I’m thinking about it I’m not exactly on board with needing an account with a search engine. That makes it super easy to track you. Meanwhile, using noai.duckduckgo anonymously via a VPN is way more private
In my experience, Kagi doesn’t force AI down your throat. It only triggers an AI summary if you end your query with a “?”, and it does seem to be summarization of the search results.
Also, as per Kagi’s pricing page, there is a higher tier for people who want more AI features as you are suggesting.
All that being said, I use a Searxng instance 😅
I don’t even want the fucking AI summaries. I don’t get how that’s so hard to understand.
The fact the AI is in even the basic plan means you’re paying for it, regardless of whether you use it. I don’t want AI, and I especially don’t want to give money to one.
help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html
Because it’s a tool that can serve humans. Not strictly search-related, but their AI-based translation tool is genuinely great and very useful to me.
help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/ai-philosophy.html
You don’t have to use built-in AI, it only triggers when you explicitly ask for it and you can completely disable it in the settings.
They also have anti-slop filters, BTW: help.kagi.com/kagi/features/slopstop.html
Finally, not sure what models the search summarizer and the translation tool use, but the assistant lets you use open weights model like Kimi, GLM, DeepSeek et al.
I don’t care. It’s bundled in with even the basic plan, which means you’re paying for it, even if you don’t use it. And no, it’s not magically better to use open models.
I don’t get how this concept is so hard to understand.
1: I clearly established a boundary and you insisted on pushing it. Learn to take a fucking hint.
2: You know what’s even better? Not using AI at all.
I feel bad for anyone you’ve ever had a relationship with. You act like an abuser.
Edit: Seriously? You downvoted all of my comments? You just keep getting more petty
Not all, only those where you behave like a rude comment gremlin. But looking over your comment history I see that you consider it normal to call other people morons off hand, so you likely fall into the terminally online category with whom it’s impossible to have a conversation. So uhhh get ratioed, seek grass etc etc, I am not feeding you further.
you might want to check ublacklist
Yeah, this fits the bill. Thanks!
Duckduckgo for everything.
At first, after the switch years ago, I’d occasionally fallback to Google to search for solutions or explanations of technical errors but I guess Duckduckgo got better and/or Google got worse and I no longer use any other.
A few days ago I tried Qwant briefly with the idea to try to change to non-US services, don’t remember what for, and was not satisfied with the results. I did not try it for long enough to say it’s not a good choice though.
I was using Brave search for a couple of years for everything and sometimes i was switching to duckduckgo if i couldn’t find what i needed but this was rare. Now i self host SearXNG but this is not an option for an avg user. Brave search is an independent engine and privacy focused.
I selfhost searxng ¯\(ツ)/¯
I totally would but I have yet to find the time to invest on self hosting stuff in general.
I use qwant mostly
I’m not a tech person. I use duck duck go or i use Google through ten blue links to remove the AI results.
DDG for everything but especially searches in other countries (using the country toggle).
Google for images and super localized results.
Yandex for reverse image search (yes really).
Selfhosted SearXNG or ddg noai / startpage when i get rate limited
Self hosting searxng: docs.searxng.org I use it for everything. It finds results from multiple search engines, and lists every engine name at the bottom of each link to see where this “recommendation” comes from. You can configure which “engines” it should search. So I use it as my default for everything. The results aren’t always the best and there are times when I then open other search engines directly to see if its any better. But admitteley it is only hosted on my main PC. Currently I cannot access it from other computers, but that is something I plan todo in the future.
If you use Archlinux, then its quite easy as there is a package that always builds from source. Look at my instructions here: lemmy.ml/post/45955322
If self hosting isn’t your thing, then you can just use an instance from someone else who made it available in the public: searx.space It’s also a good way to see how it works before committing to self hosting, if you plan to.
Kagi. Not cheap but I seriously cant go back. Its really good for what I need - actual results at the top of the first page, based purely on what I searched for. What a concept. My needs are basic to be clear.
I love how it allows me to move domains up or down. This allows me to have wikipedia results at the very top and have all X, FB, MS domains blocked from appearing in the results.
TIL thanks
Someone posted this neosearch thing recently that I’ve enjoyed :
https://neosearch.org/
Kagi. Once you try it you’ll never go back.
I never understood the hype about it. I tried it for a while then my trial expired. I cannot say I miss it. It was okay, nothing that blew my mind
same here, never found anything on kagi which I cannot using any other search engine.
If you only searched without exploring its various options and features, that makes sense. When you start blocking, boosting, and pinning domains; start exploring lenses and everything, it’s benefits become obvious.
I use Qwant as my daily mostly because it’s European and I can turn of AI.
Yandex for reverse image search or piracy content
The noai DDG for everything else.
Unfortunately I have notice for the last couple of months that some simple things I can’t just find the answer and the shit AI suggestion baked in the google search is giving me better results and I don’t think that is the AI that got better.
Kagi for regular searches, DDG for incognito mode because I don’t care to enable Kagi every time I use incognito windows.
I still use udm14. I’ve got most of the searches listed installed in my firefox and I jump between them a lot.
I have been using Brave Search for a couple of years and have been very satisfied with the results. It uses its own index instead of relying on Bing or Google like most search engines. The summaries are also one of the few cases that I have found AI to be useful for some more obscure questions.
The image results are very poor though, so I still use DuckDuckGo for that.
I use marginalia search and wiby to find “small web” content. Good for finding more human created resources deeply buried in most search indexes.
noai.duckduckgo.com is a decent way of avoiding some ai generated junk.
They should have turn it into the default and remove AI or make it opt-in.
DDG is my goto, I always have a SearXNG instance, but it’s relatively slow and runs into problems too frequently to be my goto
qwant for basically everything, tineye for reverse image search and google for that 1 out of 100 searches that i cant get an adequate qwant search of
I use Brave Search all the time and like it a lot.
I use Kagi for personal devices. I wish there was an open source alternative, but there’s not. So I’m stuck.
For work or other devices, I use Qwant.
Kagi.
I hate that it sounds the same as Italian “caghi” meaning “you shit”
google for porn. brave-search for everything else
Selfhosted SearXNG for everything.
Is your instance public? Wouldn’t it need to be to anonymize or privatize your usage?
I’m a software engineer so I search quite a lot.
99% of my search is on duckduckgo and it provides me the best answers. Even if I’m using someone else’s device to show them something for example, and their default search engine is google, I will switch to ddg because it genuinely provides better answers.
DuckDuckGo is said to cooperate with Google. Brave Search doesn’t give me confidence because the browser has had many privacy violation scandals in its code. StartPage is proprietary, but has good privacy laws, since its origin is from the Netherlands, although the service has been down very frequently lately. I think the best is without a doubt SearX my dear friend. Link: metasearx.com/info/en/about
I used DuckDuckGo in the past, it’s pretty nice but it’s proprietary and the company is a little bit too much pro-AI. They made a poll about AI approval and despite the majority of people were against, they kept it on their regular website and launched DDG No-AI instead.
Now I’ve moved to SearchXNG (searx.ononoki.org), and it’s very good but the Bing search engine has a weird bug where doesn’t give relevant results. You can fix this by using DuckDuckGo and Brave engines instead.
Brave search works best for me. Even use Leo for ai results.
I often add the word “forum” to my searches to help get some actual human discussion instead of ad farming AI slop articles. Seems like the only way to figure things out these days.
Ultimately duckduckgo is the best.
Bing and Google are out for obvious reasons. Startpage kept asking me to prove I’m human. Qwant blocked me whenever I enabled a VPN with an exit in a region they couldn’t run ads to. Ecosia is a non-profit so I’d feel bad blocking ads, but I don’t want to see ads. Mojeek returned garbage results. Kagi is ridiculously overpriced and restrictive. Brave Search often didn’t return the results I was looking for. And SearXNG I don’t remember what the problem was.
Running all my queries through SearXNG in normal windows and DuckDuckGo in private ones.
Brave search (and Mojeek,Yandex,Mwmbl through SearXNG) for most stuff and Start page as a final resort.
Mostly DDG when I can. It’s terrible with Slovene searches, so I occasionally still have to use google.
Also our local najdi.si is just stupid.
I use duckduckgo for every of my web searching needs. 85% of the times I get relevant or somewhat relevant results. The rest… well, I acknowledge that I may search for super nieche things and move on.
Only thing I don’t kinda like in duckduckgo though is that the result list may change if I navigate to somewhere and go back, but I can live with it.
Normally I find what I search for
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.vgy.me%2FWpME3n.png">
Iirc ecosia uses google and Startpage is the same. I generally just use ddg unless I can’t find something, then I try Startpage
I’ve been using degoog.org for a few months and frankly the experience has been flawless. I’m thinking of self-hosting it.
github.com/degoog-org/degoog
I pay for Kagi and use it for everything. Very happy with the service.
I use duckduckgo on Firefox and mullvad browser, I also use it on my phones, but in my ungoogled chromium I’m trying out startpage.
I use noai.duckduckgo.com I used startpage for a while but I kept having captcha pop ups when I’d use a vpn and I got sick of it. While I really wish DDG didn’t push AI as much as they do, it’s at least nice that they offer a completely AI free version too, I guess. There’s definite give and take with all of the search engines.
Download of searxist on my phone that rotates instances to confuse fingerprinting.
Ironfox rotating DDG, Startpage, Searx and sometimes a fork of Chromite rotating 4get, Searx, etc.
I am interestwd in self-hosting Hister, to make my own results over time. I’d like to make privacy centric ones.