There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

FreshLight ,

This is so true.

dotslashme ,

Haven’t used Google search for years.

DharmaCurious ,
@DharmaCurious@startrek.website avatar

Teach me your ways

ultra ,

ddg.gg

pomodoro_longbreak ,
@pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works avatar

Heh, cool.

CyberEgg ,

Does startpage.com count?

AVincentInSpace ,

Not since they got their own crawler which manages to be worse than Google’s one.

At least I assume that’s what happened. Their results are noticeably worse than they used to be and noticeably worse than a Google search, although that might be because I’m signed in

AeroLemming ,

Aren’t they just an alt frontend for Google? Maybe you’re having issues with the UI. Most of the results should be the same.

AVincentInSpace ,

I often search for things with plenty of results on any other search engine and get one or (more commonly) zero results from Startpage. I remember they used to be a proxy for Google. I’m no longer convinced they are.

AeroLemming ,

I wonder if that could be because your Google results are personalized.

PP_BOY_ ,
@PP_BOY_@lemmy.world avatar

you still go there out of habit

Speak for yourself

HowManyNimons ,

So, what, Bing then?

NateSwift ,

I’ve been pretty happy with DuckDuckGo. Some people have made the switch to using a search engine aggregate thing like SearXNG. And then there’s the one $12/month search engine I’ve heard people talk fondly of that I can’t remember the name of.

SpaceNoodle ,

DDG has Bing under the hood.

gedaliyah ,

Kagi? It’s $5 where I am, or $10 for unlimited searches and AI tools. YMMV

NateSwift ,

Yes! Definitely was Kagi. Not sure why I remembered $12 instead of $10.

pelespirit ,
@pelespirit@sh.itjust.works avatar

What’s the consensus on Mojeek? www.mojeek.com

RmDebArc_5 ,
@RmDebArc_5@lemmy.ml avatar

Mojeek has pretty bad results. I’d only use it to avoid censorship of results

Mojeek ,
@Mojeek@lemmy.ml avatar

if you’re willing to help at all we’re always looking for feedback on specific results, and also have this page for testing staging algorithms, there’s a big change on there currently. No bother if not.

nameisnotimportant ,
@nameisnotimportant@lemmy.ml avatar

Never heard of it before, I’ll test it out! Thanks for the tip

Pistcow ,

I don’t need a 27-page novel to know the temperature and time to cook something. I also don’t want to he directed to Pintrest and be required to have an account. Honestly, I’ve started using Bing more often.

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I don’t need a 27-page novel to know the temperature and time to cook something.

addons.mozilla.org/en-US/…/recipe-filter/

Mr_Blott ,

I would like a Firefox add-on that filters out sites where recipe ingredients are measured in cups and the recipes contain butter and sugar when they shouldn’t, thanks very much

Adding “UK” used to work, but doesn’t anymore

TheBat ,
@TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

the recipes contain butter

But noodles aren’t that difficult to make

doingless ,

I also don’t want to need an add-on for every niche thing I like to look at.

chonglibloodsport ,

Yeah honestly. The Google ad-based search system created a set of incentives that just destroyed the internet! I miss the days when people created their own fun little quirky websites like Ian’s Shoelace Site. That used to be every site on the internet!

EdibleFriend ,
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

Holy crap I remember that

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

But do you remember Geocities?

vrek ,

Am I old if I remember xoom?

jennwiththesea ,
@jennwiththesea@lemmy.world avatar

I had an Angel fire site

Pistcow ,

Every 3-5 years, I go and check on my Angelfire. It’s still there today.

ibb.co/WPH835P

Zink ,

Your old site isn’t just fire, it’s angelfire!

jennwiththesea ,
@jennwiththesea@lemmy.world avatar

Lucky! Mine’s gone, and I honestly can’t remember if I deleted it

Daryl76679 ,

Try Brave Search, Duckduckgo, Startpage, or Searxng. For more detail on these recommendation (that I definitely did not just steal), check out the Privacy Guides page, or The New Oil for a different, albeit overlapping, set of recommendations and take on search engines.

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Did the Privacy Guides drama ever get resolved re: PrivacyTools. I recall one was split off from the other over draaaamaaa.

Daryl76679 ,

I mean I guess. They aren’t actively fighting or anything like that to my knowledge. I personally think the Privacy Guides is the better resource, because PrivacyTools has vpn recommendations like Nord and Surfshark with affiliate links that are not actively disclosed from my quick check.

Powerpoint ,

Best not to use brave since it’s a front for crypto. Other’s are okay

kattenluik ,

DuckDuckGo has recently become a not very useful search engine too, it still has way way better queries than Google though.

Going back usually shuffles the search results and after like 5 results there’s just a bunch of random entries based on your geolocation.

explodicle ,

I disagree! It’s best to not use Brave since it’s a front for a homophobe.

gogosempai ,
@gogosempai@programming.dev avatar

Avoid the browser but I’ve been using their search on Firefox. Really like the AI summarizer and the results are also good.

snowe ,
@snowe@programming.dev avatar

You mention brave but no mention of kagi? Kagi is way better than DDG too.

saltesc ,

The Google habit is hit the third link, scroll to fourth paragraph, your answer should be around there somewhere.

Psythik ,

No joke, Bing Chat is considerably better at finding answers than any search engine I’ve used in recent years. I don’t even bother googling things anymore. Just ask the AI.

Fixbeat ,

I just ask ChatGPT these days.

Asafum ,

I’m just starting to learn HTML and oh my fucking god do I LOVE chatGPT… Holy hell… I can’t even begin to express just how amazing it is to be able to ask basic questions and not only get a reply, but provide example code, and it will elaborate or be as concise as you like… I LOVE IT! I’m especially happy to see they don’t ask for your phone number and other absurdly intrusive unnecessary information anymore. That’s what kept me away at first.

I do know it’s not infallible and I probably won’t use it as much as I move on to more complex programming.

frokie ,

I do fairly complex programming and still use chat gpt. It will contribute to be helpful to say “write me a function that does this” rather than “how do I code this”

UltraMagnus0001 ,

me too

Angry_Maple ,
@Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works avatar

No kidding. Just earlier today, I was looking for a kind of niche tool used to wrap pallets in plastic, and I found nothing on google about it. It kept showing me everything BUT what I was looking for.

On bing, I found just about all of the information I needed about it. Turns out it’s niche partially because it’s made in my province, which I also found out from bing. Almost no one knows what I’m referring to when I mention it. It combines the technology of machine wrapping and hand wrapping, and it makes warehousing much easier sometimes. I wanted to recommend it to someone. Thanks Bing!

ColeSloth ,

Is it much different from a pallet wrapper? A big platform you can set a pallet on loaded with stuff and it spins? And you hold what’s like a yard wide rolling pin with plastic wrap on it to wrap the pallet as it spins?

LaserTurboShark69 ,

Is DuckDuckGo the best alternative?

Gemini24601 ,
@Gemini24601@lemmy.world avatar

Searxng is I think

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I would say that there isn’t currently a “best alternative” but rather there is a small group of alternatives that each seem to have “use cases” as it were (shocker, kind of how it used to be in the 90s/00s before Google dominance). But even from person to person, people disagree on what the best use case for each is.

There’s some focused more on “privacy” like DuckDuckGo and searX.

I’ve heard Bing has pretty good results for anything AI related for all Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI.

I’ve heard good things about Qwant for music searches.

Someone else here in this thread just brought up Mojeek, which is supposed to be also privacy focused but includes searching by “emotion.”

Presearch is decentralized, but I haven’t looked “under the hood” of how its decentralization works.

Startpage is Google search results but behind a proxy so Google isn’t getting your info when you search.

I mean, it seems like there’s a lot of decent alternatives. I wouldn’t be surprised if what’s left of the shell of Yahoo! started investing in trying to outperform Google at this point.

Taleya ,

Time to bring back dogpile methinks

gedaliyah ,

I’ve had a lot of issues with Bing, although it may have improved since I was really using it. AI has a tendency to “hallucinate,” which is a problem if you are interested in results that well… exist.

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I’ve heard far more people using it for helping with simple coding exercises and helping them approach coding problems than I have heard of people using it for research.

I wouldn’t be doing much of any research through AI for exactly that reason myself. It hallucinates too much.

So, like I said, it depends on what you’re using each one for. People seem to be having success with Bing and programming, but less so with Bing and anything actually human-life related.

BossDj ,

Thanks for the info.

Is DDG just straight Bing results but private and maybe minus AI stuff?

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

It’s just a bit more complicated than that:

When people search, we believe they’re really looking for answers, as opposed to just links. For many categories of searches (restaurants, lyrics, weather, etc.), there is usually a specialized search engine (e.g., Tripadvisor), content site (e.g., Musixmatch), or dedicated source (e.g., Dark Sky) that does a better job of actually answering searches than a general search engine can with just links. Our long-term goal is to get you Instant Answers from these best sources.

Most of our search result pages feature one or more Instant Answers. To deliver Instant Answers on specific topics, DuckDuckGo leverages many sources, including specialized sources like Sportradar and crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia. We also maintain our own crawler (DuckDuckBot) and many indexes to support our results. Of course, we have more traditional links and images in our search results too, which we largely source from Bing. Our focus is synthesizing all these sources to create a superior search experience.

Partners and Privacy: As per our strict privacy policy, we never share any personal information with any of our partners that could lead to the creation of search histories. When we send a request to a partner for information used in search results, the transfer of information is proxied through our servers so it stays anonymous. That means our partners see those requests as though they came from us instead of our users, and no unique identifiers are passed in that process (e.g., your IP address). That way, we can work with partners to produce relevant search result pages, while keeping you anonymous to them (and us!).

So they use some in-house tools and they source other results “largely” from Bing.

In other words:

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/de952405-5d95-4e69-8eb5-efa8d715c1c6.png

DontMakeMoreBabies ,

I fucking hate this this is a thing again... We got past this because it was fucking stupid to have to swap between AltaVista, Askjeeves, Yahoo, etc.

Now we're literally at the same point. Just like with streaming services and cable.

At this point I just think the average person is a moron and when enough of them adopt something it goes to shit.

Velonie ,

This might just be the best solution to keep things slightly more honest online though. With SEO targeting THE single search engine, it’ll forever get gamed by irrelevant/ad based results. If everyone uses different search engines then SEO starts to fall apart

pfjarschel ,

Kagi has worked REALLY well for me for all topics, but it is a paid service…

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

You know the old saying, “you get what you paid for.”

vulgarcynic ,
@vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works avatar

I am constantly evangelizing Kagi to all my tech friends. Thankfully I don’t use mint or do CrossFit otherwise I’d be 3 for 3 and lonely. That said, it is really nice to have actual search results again. I toggle over to DDG when I have more ad based results in mind but avoid Google Search at all costs.

RmDebArc_5 ,
@RmDebArc_5@lemmy.ml avatar

SearXNG has maximum privacy and results, but it’s a bit too complicated for the average person. DuckDuckGo has worse results than google because of Bing base, Startpage is similar to DuckDuckGo, but it has as good results as google. Brave search has good results and is not reliant on other search engines.

wreckedcarzz ,
@wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve been quite liking Kagi (paid). No search manipulation, no ads, good results, no tracking, no tying search to accounts, you can modify results yourself (remove pintrist, facebool results; pin Wikipedia results to the top of results; boost sites in your results that you use heavily, etc).

I’ve been using it for like, 5 months now? Rarely need to use bangs, the search is pretty damn good.

gedaliyah ,

Kagi seems to be the real deal. I’d say anecdotally it cuts my searches in half (If I had to do 4-6 searches to find something previously, now it’s 2-3 max). Sometimes I will find myself accidently on DDG and I’ll think, “Wow, why are these results all over the place?” DDG still edges out Google and Bing (actually I think it uses Bing as a backend for certain tasks).

breakingcups ,

I tried Kagi for a while but it wasn’t as good as Google or DDG for me, especially in my native language. Too bad, I’d love paying for search.

sbv ,

I’m in the same boat. The results from Kagi just weren’t good.

sbv ,

I tried Kagi briefly and the results were as good as google. Searches for stuff near me, programming questions, and travel related stuff were not helpful.

I live in Canada, so I wonder if there’s some sort of regional prioritization.

wreckedcarzz ,
@wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world avatar

I have searched for stuff in AHK, VB.net (helping a friend poke at code), and Lua (game stuff for myself), and it’s been okay, but I don’t code ‘real’ things anymore, kinda burnt out as a hobby a few years ago. I’m stateside.

SpaceNoodle ,

It’s just Bing with extra steps.

keyez ,

What is this referring to? I’ve been using ddg for the last 3 years or so and never really used bing

SpaceNoodle ,

It’s powered by Bing. You get the same results if you just use regular Bing without the bird decorations.

kameecoding ,

Ecosia for planting trees

Chestrade ,

I used to have my default engine set to ecosia. I loved it, but their recent change in their privacy policy about giving information to Google was a big no-no for me.

snowe ,
@snowe@programming.dev avatar

Kagi is orders of magnitude better than DDG. I hated DDG results.

spudwart ,

This post but replace google search with the general internet.

Nearly every place that feels like the old internet is not as popular.

I used to think that was a bad thing, I’m starting to think maybe I’ve just been pushing aside the reality that when the internet was good, it wasn’t as popular.

demonsword ,
@demonsword@lemmy.world avatar

I’m starting to think maybe I’ve just been pushing aside the reality that when the internet was good, it wasn’t as popular

nah you’re just becoming older

Overzeetop ,

Not popular- commercial. The early internet had effectively no profit motive. As it aged there was a modicum of balance between use and profit - a good site drives customers. Now there are a preponderance of sites which exist only to scrape pennies off advertisers and have no useful content except that which is required to garner a click from a search engine in hopes you will accidentally create an advertising impression.

pomodoro_longbreak ,
@pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works avatar

I basically only go there when DDG hasn’t indexed the Stack Exchange/Overflow Q&A I’m looking for.

Also decentralized SE/SO when?

GrammatonCleric ,
@GrammatonCleric@lemmy.world avatar

🦆🦆👉

bulwark ,

Kagi.com is one of the best services I pay for. I know paying for Internet search seems outrageous because we’ve been accustom to our data being the payment, but I think it’s worth it. The search feature and added stuff really make it very functional plus the no adds or SEO type sites is bonus.

sbv ,

I love the idea of paying for services I use, but I didn’t get many useful results from Kagi.

Out of curiosity, do you live in the US?

bulwark ,

I do. Did you find better results on Google? I’ve used DDG, yandex, qwant, and brave search engine but I really like the add free results and I understand something has to pay for the servers.

sbv ,

Google had more relevant results for me.

troglodytis ,

But we can still get Orange Julius, right?

Right?

iAmTheTot ,
@iAmTheTot@kbin.social avatar

What are y'all searching for that Google search isn't working for you anymore? Like, genuinely, I'm baffled by this.

krudorass ,

A typical example is more popular searches crowding out actual answers to your question.

I have had this a lot of times with IT problems, I am a sys admin and google a ton of things related to my job. But 5 out of 10 times some keyword will relate to a simple problem many people have with their pc and all relative answers to my exact question get drowned out.

Google anything related to ‘laptop monitor turn off’ and you will only find results telling you how to turn of sleep when you close the lid. No matter how much syntaxing or formatting you do with your search

Nommer ,

I’m not even a sysadmin, just a power user and this infuriates me to no end. I gave up on a search just a couple days ago because I kept getting bottom tier answers. Like thanks but I already know how to use my computer, now tell me how to fix this problem.

JPJones ,

C’mon now. “Laptop monitor turn off” has never generated a good result, even in the before time. I share the question: what are these people searching for that Google is generally yielding worse results than other engines? For anything sysadmin, IT-related, or any sort of troubleshooting, I’ve always needed to be creative to get to the good stuff.

micka190 ,

C’mon now. “Laptop monitor turn off” has never generated a good result

That’s not what they’re saying. They mean that if your search contains that or is somewhat adjacent (despite being more specific), your results will be drowned in it. For example, if you had something like “laptop monitor turn off when bla bla bla”, 90% of the results will completely ignore what you’ve added.

I’ve got to deal with the same shit whenever I have to deal with complicated programming questions. Half the results will be related to some really basic mistake on the user’s side that I haven’t done, and I’ll need to spend a lot of time trying to find the magical word combination that doesn’t trigger those non-related issues and actually show me what I need.

JPJones ,

Yeah, and what I was saying is it’s always been that way since the first search engines started popping up.

scottywh ,

Stupid searches yield stupid results

Rascabin ,

You’re a Systems Administrator, but Google Tier 2 issues, do you provide break fix support? I thought as a SA you would be working behind the scenes on systems (apps), servers, etc.

DesertCreosote ,

Can’t speak for the person you’re replying to, but I’m a security engineer and stuff still makes its way to me that you would think would get filtered out by others (and isn’t my job to fix). It just takes the right person thinking “this is obviously a problem with $system, let’s just send it straight over to them so they can fix it quickly!” And then we get the fun job of proving it’s not us and has no relation to us.

We got a ticket today for packet loss between two systems, neither of which have any of our tools on them…

Rascabin ,

I think this is a training issue that needs to be resolved at the Helpdesk level. I understand that nobody is perfect but if you keep seeing tickets like that - Helpdesk managers need to update their training modules and start tweaking the Helpdesk system to have service requests go to the proper groups. Incident tickets are another story but that’s where the training comes in.

doctorn ,
@doctorn@r.nf avatar

Torrents, modded apk’s,…

Check out my results for some chinese download service called “Content Plaza” for example:

Google:

https://r.nf/pictrs/image/978b82de-961b-41df-9cf0-1f412258eb12.png

Yandex:

https://r.nf/pictrs/image/55a43a5c-91df-4c78-a0d1-9594620b8b43.png

Like, 2? On the ‘entire’ internet? 2? Right…

brbposting ,

Was Yandex respecting your query there?

Added quotation marks for “terabox” as well, and it was fascinating across providers:

Yandex agreed with your Google search…

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/96a9e479-baf2-4627-b6fa-0b59b3d2167a.jpeg

…but not mine:

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/37340e40-85ab-4118-8cf7-792de3483a63.jpeg

DDG coming in with one result:

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/192e6a4a-ff3c-49fc-a978-5e66f9846f54.jpeg

Startpage, just one result?!

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/c2edbf55-e5af-421f-a79d-315d70f181b7.jpeg

…nope, not from the “mobile site”:

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/826eb071-b503-4ce8-9deb-19365c784583.jpeg

Bing didn’t care about those silly quotation marks, here are a thousand results:

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/c5401f64-a511-4be4-ae4a-d03eee1b4cef.jpeg

doctorn ,
@doctorn@r.nf avatar

Yet if I enter something like ‘resolv’ in Google I need to add ‘-resolve’ to not get hundreds of unrelated results… Same goes for any not-too-popular software that is named a slight misspelling of their purpose… I even find it ridiculous how often first results litterally say underneath they did not contain your query…

But with terabox and “content plaza” it gives 2 results?

Startpage I have no idea, but I’m guessing they, like many, use the Google API for webcrawler results… 1 result? Those are pretty common words,…

girl ,

Google straight up lies to me about movies an actor has been in, almost every time. “Wow, I had no idea Robert Downey Jr was in Mean Girls! Who did he play?” checks imdb “no he fuckin wasn’t wtf google” (this is an arbitrary example I just made up because I don’t feel like finding a real one right now)

TrickDacy ,

That is a dumb feature that shouldn’t be trusted.

girl ,

I mean if they got it right it would be a handy feature lol, but yes it clearly can’t be trusted so I stopped bothering

TrickDacy ,

Right. I just think it was overly ambitious. It’s right just enough to earn trust and wrong just enough to burn you. I had a really, really dumb argument once because of that feature

iAmTheTot ,
@iAmTheTot@kbin.social avatar

Ah, yes, arbitrary examples. I can make those up too.

girl ,

oh okay, you wanna be like that

girl ,

google claims Alan Tudyk is in Andor, he isn’t

google search

imdb for andor

imdb for alan tudyk

iAmTheTot ,
@iAmTheTot@kbin.social avatar

Is he not slated for season two? I thought that robot he voiced was going to be in it, I remember reading some article months ago though I admit I only have a passing interest in the show.

girl ,

I see speculation but nothing solid. I think google is pulling from the rumors, which it really shouldn’t. If he is slated then that’s fine, let me know if you find anything

iAmTheTot ,
@iAmTheTot@kbin.social avatar

I don't actually care enough to go looking into it, I was just mentioning what I remember reading.

girl ,

yes that’s why I made up an arbitrary example of something I had experienced firsthand

iAmTheTot ,
@iAmTheTot@kbin.social avatar

Me not caring enough to confirm if Alan Tudyk is going to be in the second season of a show I haven't even watched is not a good excuse for you to just make up shit to try to make a point.

girl , (edited )

you are spreading made up shit as we speak to prove your own point, and you’re very rude. you have reached a conclusion and think anyone who disagrees with you is either a liar or stupid. bye

iAmTheTot ,
@iAmTheTot@kbin.social avatar

I don't ever remember calling you a liar or stupid, but okay. Also not sure what made up thing I said, or what point I'm trying to prove. I kinda think we are having two completely different conversations.

Tetsuo ,

I use DDG and if the result is not what I’m looking for, I add !g to forward the query to Google.

80% of the times, I need to add !g because DDG is clueless.

I wish I could say otherwise but Google search results are still better overall than DDG.

Sure, for some specific thematics, DDG will do better. But that’s for quite niche subjects.

Very surprised to see people talk about DDG like it’s at the same level or better than Google.

TrickDacy ,

The latest in hipster rants. apparently not easy to find on Google ;)

mindbleach ,

Open Watcom is a compiler for DOS. Every search engine will try ten ways to politely tell you that you obviously meant Wacom tablets, you illiterate goblin, and then shrug and direct you to the project’s own single-page FAQ.

Asking questions about DOS itself is even worse. Say you want the scan codes for arrow keys. Then say it a hundred more times, with increasing specificity and occasional vulgarity, because you are getting nothing but “how to use a terminal window in Windows.” Or at best, Ralph Brown’s big fat interrupt list, rearranged into the most Geocities-ass jumble of pages, where you can easily look up what any specific hex code does, once you already know which code to look for.

Schadrach ,

Say you want the scan codes for arrow keys. Then say it a hundred more times, with increasing specificity and occasional vulgarity, because you are getting nothing but “how to use a terminal window in Windows.”

I just tried “ASCII scan codes” or “DOS scan codes”. Both gave me what you asked for in Google in the top three results, with the first one including tables that listed both ASCII values and scan codes for reference.

3ntranced ,

I made the switch to DDG a few days ago and it actually is insane how much more relevant the information is compared to google.

scottmeme ,

I use a self hosted whole instance because I still enjoy the Google SEO

SpaceNoodle ,

ITT: people who don’t know that DuckDuckGo is just Bing with a bird on it

keyez ,

And without a key part like having to use bing

brbposting ,

I think that’s an oversimplification. I get different results.

Wiki claims (with five sources I didn’t check):

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.

SpaceNoodle ,

Last time I did a comparison, I got identical results from DDG and Bing run in sandboxed browsers.

cmgvd3lw ,

I feel that, cause most news links are of msn. But atleast it wont send data to ms for just searching.

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