Ecosia. I like trees.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I'd use Ecosia still if it weren't for the fact that the filter is missing the "last year" setting. I'm a software engineer - 9 times out of 10, I want to find the bugs for a very specific version of a software, so having the year filter helps.
I now use Brave Search.
Fair point. I use ecosia to search everyday stuff on my phone and I've planted a lot of trees just by that. The results are fine.
At work for specific enquiries I use Google because I know how to get the details out of it at first. I don't remember doing a Google search without additional tags. F.i. At work I use visual basic a lot and since it's a shit language I have to Google everything including "vba excel". There's not a lot of logic to it, I just need to dive into the right post head on.
It points at a deeper problem though. There's sooo much garbage on the internet that I have no idea of how ordinary people are supposed to use it anymore. I'm not disenfranching anyone, but for someone like my mom. How the fuck is she ever going to get an answer of any search? Google just plain sucks by now.
Yay Ecosia!!
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I don't understand why lots of you answer with chatGPT. It's not a search engine! And you shouldn't use it like a search engine.
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I use mostly either ddg or brave search. I miss the google of pre 2010, when the majority of its results were good.
I also use Yandex whenever I'm looking for pirate stuff, the only engine that doesn't block those kinds of results.
Self-hosted Searxng. It's shared to multiple people which kills a lot of the usefulness in Google or others trying to track my instance.
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Currently down for updates, but does a great job of avoiding SEO abuse/blog spam/etc. Takes you back to the earlier days of the internet when it felt like there were more forums/individual sites/etc. They’re still out there, just hidden under all the junk.
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I run my own searx instance
As someone who's only recently heard of SearXNG, why searx and not SearXNG?
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DuckDuckGo. Google if DDG isn't cutting it.
I've been using DuckDuckGo as my main search engine for the past couple of years. I occasionally fall back to Google.
I was in this camp but find that the results I've gotten from DDG have been notably worse for the last year or so, to the point that I don't expect useful results to come out of it any more at this point. Even if I searched "site name" because I couldn't remember the URL was spelled "site-name.com" I've had no results coming from DDG, while Google had it as the first hit.
Have you experienced something similar? Are there techniques or workarounds I'm not aware of?
Sadly, yes, and instances like this have me falling back to Google. I'd happily try something else, but I'm a bit at a loss right now. What would you suggest as another search engine to try?
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Kagi. Very happy with it. Best $5 it recently invested. Gives me much better results than Google and all the others.
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DuckDuckGo, but mostly because of the !bangs. I do 90% of my searches through StartPage (!s), and the rest directly on a few websites (Wikipedia, YouTube, Arch wiki...).
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I've been using DuckDuckGo since, at least 2010, maybe earlier. If its results aren't up to snuff, I'm not aware of that because they're what I'm used to. I fall through to Google ( !g) if I think there might be more out there. The bang commands are so good. I use DDG as my main search in my search bar and then I can use the bang commands to get to whatever specialized search I want from there. It's a meta-search-engine.
@SemioticStandard Kagi. I used DDG for a long time, and Kagi is strictly better. Specifically, it’s very snappy and I trust the privacy guarantees even more since I’m a paying customer.
Kagi, hands down, is by far the best search engine I've ever used (next to Neeva, which got bought and shut down) without looking for Reddit results all the time.
Just simple searches like "Best gaming headphones" or "Realtek Driver Download" and comparing them with Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Startpage, etc. shows how the quality of the results are far superior.
And you can directly define, which sites you'd like to see higher / more results of or less - or even completely block or pin them to the top.
Also, it also shows you directly, before visiting a site, in colors if a site has a very high number of ads and/or trackers.
And they support for power users custom CSS to adjust everything, URL rewrites (e.g. change all Reddit URLs to old.reddit or to automatically open libreddit or archive.org versions), DDG and custom bangs, and much more.
Lastly, I created a so-called "Lens", which allows me to search Lemmy / Kbin content only (also still have one for Reddit).
Meaning with one click, it shows me results from only sites or keywords I've defined - see image.
Very satisfied with it, can only recommend.
(copied from another thread I replied to)
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DuckDuckGo for me personally.
DDG for everyday usage. Sometimes I try searching the same things on google just to compare results. I've tried searxng instances on and off in the past but its rarely been reliable for me and self hosting isn't really an option for me.
I'm still looking for a search engine that doesn't use data from my IP address to provide targeted results. In the meantime, I've gone back and forth between using SearXNG instances and using Startpage, but there's really not a decent search engine in existence, from what I can tell.
I am a long time DuckDuckGo user. I came for privacy and stayed because of the features.
i use brave search (even if i'm on firefox), it gives good results while having an independent index
I use my selfhosted Whoogle instance for search
I've been using Ecosia for a while and liking it. I think the results are usually better than Google and the image search is way more useful, still gives you direct links to the image files. Though most importantly I like planting trees.
Duck Duck Go is the only search engine I use. Switched away from Google for privacy reasons and haven't missed it a bit.
I use DuckDuckGo. Including using their browser on iOS and windows.
duck duck go on firefox.
Google, duck duck go when I don't want to see ads for days based on what I'm searching, Bing and Perplexity when I want to avoid doing a series of searches to learn something.
Thanks for making me aware of Kagi, I've been trialing it and getting decent results is a breath of fresh air in a world of blogspam and LLM garbage.
Are you using DDG in addition to Kagi because of Kagi's limited number of searches per month, or because DDG does something better?
I'm a bit conflicted about Kagi because $5/month is a plausible price, but the limited number of searches seems like it would add an extra step of, "Do I want to use my limited search resource on this search?" to every search, which is an unwanted extra bit of friction.
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Duck Duck Go too
I'll give a search on Duck Duck Go, and if I can't find what I need then I'll use Google.
But at this point I'm using Google Bard and ChatGPT more and more, at least at work.
DuckDuckGo for general searches
Google for image searches
Google maps for local businesses (including their website)
BingGPT for simple research answers (e.g. What door closers will fit on a Norton 1600 bolt pattern?)
Kagi on iOS and Mac. DDG w/Google on Android because my preferred Android browser, Vivaldi, doesn't offer Kagi. Anyone know how to default Vivaldi to Kagi?
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