I’ve been using duckduckgo for years now with no issues, but today I opened it and realized there were no longer any search results before scrolling. It was all ads/info cards. So I guess I’m looking for a replacement. Any suggestions?
Related: anyone know if there’s a way in the Adnauseum Firefox extension to hide ads on a specific trusted site? I like their goal of not punishing ads following the do not track standard, but DDG has crossed a threshold and I now want to blacklist them specifically.
I’m partial to ecosia.org myself. Search while helping to plant more trees!
I do wonder how they get the money to plant these trees, hmm…
edit: oh, look at that! Even ecosia started getting into AI. Truly impossible for search engines not to get into AI territory these days, funny right? Even kagi did.
Out of interest, has anyone here been using Kagi? It’s a premium search engine, which means it has reasons and resources to not suck, in theory. Kind of interested in trying it, but not sure how good it actually is.
I’ve been using Kagi for the better part of a year. I find it removes about 2/3 of the time and effort between search and goal. There are a lot of very simple quality of life things that every search should have (and would have if not for user tracking).
Some people have fairly said that paid search is inherently privacy unfriendly. You have to log in to use it. That doesn’t really bother me, and if it doesn’t bother you, it’s great to use a quality search where you are not the product.
That’s the kicker for me. It’s possible they log your entire search history which is disturbing.
I looked into it before I started using it like a year ago. They count the number of searches but claim to not hold actual search queries. I don’t have a citation handy (it has been a year…) but even if that’s untrue (which I don’t think it is, but hypothetically) and they were found to be using it to tweak their engine, meh? I search for memes, accounts for art/porn, games/reviews, etc. I’m not searching for my home address or anything of interest or value. “hey, the horny furry searched for more horny furry stuff” is like “water is still wet, more at 10”.
This is a super low-important possibility, imo.
I do. Just the feature where I block domains and they pop up in the results when I search something is a reason to pay for it for me.
And people voting down those spam sites means that you also won’t get them in your results. 5/5
I couldn’t live without it. Love being able to up/down-rate my results. I’ve been trying to de-google my life but search was always the one thing I couldn’t give up. DuckDuckGo being Bing results just didn’t have the quality. Kagi’s results are S tier. As I understand it, they’re sourced in a privacy friendly way from Google and then they apply your preferences on top of them. Definitely went in skeptical and now I can’t imagine not having Kagi.
I’ve been using it for over a year. It makes my life easier, to be honest. I’m on the 5€ plan because I don’t need more than 300 searches per month.
I like how customisable the search results are, the lack of SEO stuff and I’m a big fan of the “small internet” results.
I tried Kagi and found the results to be significantly less helpful than Google. Searches for local businesses, open source libraries, and Canadian history missed useful sites that Google provided.
I guess I’m an outlier, because other people seem to have a good time with it.
No, I have the same experience. Especially if you want to search for local stuff in my country. It is like my country (Netherlands) does not exist Kagi.
For general topics it is ok I guess. I do have premium but I am barely using it anymore. I use Qwant.
I’ve been using Kagi for a while and would not hesitate in recommending it to anyone BUT with the caveat if you want to search for a local business or similar, at least here in the UK, then it’s pretty rubbish… I find Google still reigns at that.
I am somewhat tempted to sign up and give it a shot. DDG is pretty solid for me, but it would be interesting to try a search engine where I’m not the product, it is.
I’ve been using it for a number of months now and have been really happy with it. I think it saves me time and aggravation compared to using Google.
I use it. I like it and would recommend it.
If you self host, you could try searxng
Or even just use any public instance found here. Different instances may have different defaults, but under Preferences you can enable/disable whatever search engines you want.
Startpage is good, anonymized, and respects privacy. You will encounter ads and cards, but they can be blocked. Fully usable and functional with or without an account. It is also themeable with a dark mode. Results are pulled from Google, but DDG’s results were pulled from Bing and anonymized.
Since I started using it I raaaaarely open Google’s search.
Nice this one sounds great! I actually like cards in moderation, just not so many I can’t see the results without scrolling.
I mean, Kagi is just the best. I remember trying it like a year ago and I just forgot to switch back to anything else. It’s that good.
Yeah, but for those on a budget that subscription is a pain point. So long as you can afford it easy it is good because you are no longer the product, but that will keep allot of people at bay.
SearXNG Public Instances List or self host it yourself.
I use Qwant, a French search engine. Much better.
Qwant is something I’ve been using for the past few months. I’ve been liking it personally.
OP, please reword the title to be a question. Thanks.
There is Qwant, a French search engine. it is privacy focused
Do you know if it works OK in English too?
Yes it does
Searx
and startpage aredecentStartpage is the same as Google but apparently “proxied”. There’s also that bs with system1.
This one gives crypto vibes. They talk about earning tokens for using but don’t explain what they do.
You can use it WO turn on the crypto stuff, I have like 2 years using presearch and it’s a pretty good search engine.
AFAIK it’s a decentralized search engine and they operate in a crypto system.
Ah OK gotcha
