I ask because I’ve been doing a lot of research the last few weeks and Google search has really let me down. I’ve been finding better results on DuckDuckGo and Bing. Is this a recent thing with Google or am I out of the loop? Any other search recommendations?

Edit: In no particular order, some recommended alternatives to Google
SearXNG
Whoogle
Ecosia
Brave
Dogpile
DuckDuckGo
Kagi
Swiss Cows
Qwant
Bing

    • corytheboyd@kbin.social
      35·
      1 year ago

      That article is about their web browser. Agree that it doesn’t exactly instill confidence that their search engine is squeaky clean. Regardless, DDG results are much more useful than Google results, as the entire first page isn’t ads.

      • Catch42@kbin.social
        8·
        1 year ago

        This. It was an interesting read and gives me doubts, but it’s undoubtably better than using google and I can set it to my default search engine in safari

        • BananaTrifleViolin@kbin.social
          5·
          1 year ago

          Iwould honestly not use Safari either. Mozilla Firefox is the way to go (unless you’re on iOS where there actually is no real choice, although the probably still better to use the Firefox front end)

      • tivasyk@fedia.io
        2·
        1 year ago

        «DDG results are much more useful than Google results» – not if one is searching in anything but english; not sure for english either (had very poor results myself whenever i tried it) but at least can’t disprove it.

        • marron12@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          The English results are pretty good from what I’ve seen. Hit and miss in some areas though, like if you want to search in quotes.

          Simple searches in other languages seem to work OK. It might depend on the language though. Google does better overall.

    • BananaTrifleViolin@kbin.social
      3·
      1 year ago

      Yeah although this is specifically the Duckduckgo web Browser rather than their search site. The only web browser to use is Firefox, set up the privacy and tracking settings correctly plus add in privacy extensions.

      Duckduckgo website doesn’t track you in the same way, but still it is a company and should not be treated as a virtuous entity.

    • Glome@kbin.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      For me searxng hasn’t been working (tried multiple instances, throws mixed errors). I’ve been using whoogle and it works pretty well.

    • FIST_FILLET@kbin.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      DuckDuckGo is not your friend

      please, PLEASE, never forget that the CEO of DuckDuckGo is also the founder of the “Names Database”. it is insane to me that anyone trusts DDG. where do you think they get all the money for marketing from? i’ve seen a DDG ad on a fucking bus stop in the middle of nowhere

      edit: throwing in an honorary mention for Qwant, which is an EU-based privacy-oriented search engine. i’ve been using them for a couple of years now and have yet to hear anything bad about the company. SearX is also supposedly a safe bet

    • enigmatic_cloud@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      I honestly went back to Google after seeing every fucking link in DuckDuckGo behind MSN. Almost every alternative search has Microsoft’s claws in them.

      Glad to see a potential alternative in SearXNG. Thanks for the info.

      • tivasyk@fedia.io
        1·
        1 year ago

        same here (concerning going back to google every time); unfortunately can’t share optimism for searxng: afaiu it’s not a search engine but an aggregator/frontend, i tend to get all the same sh*t with it no matter which combination of search engines / settings i tried. finally just gave up for the moment with an internal promise to do more testing in a year or two.