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?

  • zahel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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

    • lagomorphlecture@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • WagnasT@iusearchlinux.fyi
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        1 year ago

        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]

      • zahel@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • ribboo@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Results wise it’s just a bing wrapper. Which is not all that good in all honesty.

      • Arisu@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Ever since Microsoft nuked it a couple years back (because results included csam) search has been heavily restricted and most definitely was shot in the ankle, used to use bing a lot to find older resources for stuff I needed, now I cannot use it for that any longer

  • Monologue@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    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

  • Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Bri Guy @sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    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

  • lagomorphlecture@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So many people are saying Duck Duck Go so I’m just throwing a comment out there to make sure everyone is aware that it’s literally Bing without the personal data. People joke about how bag Bing is, and Microsoft is a bit of a monster so I think people need to be aware of what they’re actually using. That said, if it works for you then cool, since Google is garbage now and there are not a lot of great alternatives.

  • MusketeerX@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Great discussion.

    Because it’s happened gradually I’ve just gotten used to Google being less and less useful.

    It’s good to try something else.

    This thread made me try Perplexity, Kagi and SearXNG. I’ll give them all a run over the next week or so and see how they go.

  • app_priori@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I use Bing for Microsoft Rewards. You can get the equivalent of $10 a month in gift cards for your searches.

  • WildlyCanadian@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I like Ecosia.

    It does run on Bing, but I like seeing the lil tree planting counter (⁠•⁠‿⁠•⁠)