• zingo@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      I stopped using Whoogle (Privacy engine using Google search) because of the bad search results. Google’s fault of course.

      Trying SearxNG now.

      • Mwa@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Same with startpage because google indexing becoming horrible.
        But I have some cons. with searxng, earch quality becomes horrible when adding too much sources, and I decided to go with ddg.

          • pyre@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            for me it’s much better. I don’t think they directly use Bing search by the way, just their index. the algorithm should be theirs if I’m not wrong.

          • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Using duck duck go is pretty good for me, if I go to bing.com, My results are horrible. Of course it’s the same result set, but I expect I’m getting less algorithmic shuffling on DuckDuckGo.

        • majestictechie@lemmy.fosshost.com
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          2 months ago

          Gotta say, Kagi has been great. It’s helped me a lot in work just by Being able to prioritise search Results and rank certain sites higher

        • shadowfax13@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          so much this. its summary option also lets me avoid any ad infested page. also great for searching videos and relevant stack overflow results.

      • Marthirial@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I started paying for Kagi. Works like Google in 2019. Fast, useful and customizable. One of the best features is hiding results from shit sites like Reddit, which blocks me for using a VPN. $10 well spent just to have that option.

        • joonazan@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 months ago

          It is the best on the market but unfortunately they just use Google underneath plus their own blog index. And at least to me it seems it isn’t going in a better direction.

        • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          why would you block reddit results? it’s often useful (at least when related to tech, possibly other topics too). I would recommend to install libredirect instead, which redirects reddit to a libreddit/redlib frontend

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          One of the best features is hiding results from shit sites

          I do that with the Firefox plugin “Block or Highlight Search Engine Results” from pistom (on github).
          Upside: I can see what was hidden in case I need that and it really helps with visibility.

        • boatswain@infosec.pub
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          2 months ago

          I’ve found the $5 a month tier to be just about right. There have been a few months I’ve gone over, but they make that super easy to deal with: they just change the subscription renewal date and you start your next month a few days early.

    • cmhe@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Which other trustworthy search engines are there? And I don’t mean some different frontend or a meta search engine like ddg, sp, kagi, searx(ng), etc… that mostly just use googles, bings or even yandex and beidu results?

      Ages ago I configured and hosted yacy for myself, but that was a different time… Are there any real alternatives? With mayor internet companies like cloudflare, social media sites and many others restricting the access to the net and information, searching becomes more and more impossible if you aren’t a huge corporation…

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        The two criteria I suggested were “not saturated with ads and AI trash” (technically just the latter would satisfy OP’s problem), and DDG meets both of those with no problem. Its AI “assistant” and its ads can both be trivially disabled. I use DuckDuckGo because I love its frontend and because it gives me fewer problems than Google did. I’ve only ever used alternative search engines that piggyback off the major ones (as you listed: DDG, Startpage, and SearX), so someone else would have to answer that for you.

        • cmhe@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Well, you and I just have a different understanding of “search engine” then. For me a search engine is something that doesn’t forward queries to third parties.

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Searx is fancy about it though, It queries everybody and gives you the results that came back from multiple places. This effectively eliminates ads, AI, and unless they all missed it, spam.

        • cmhe@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I have nothing against any meta search engine, they are very useful, and I use them primarily as well.

          However, they are not a true alternative, because they depend on third-party services. The same as Invidious is a very useful, but also not an alternative to YouTube itself, just a different user interface.