I've stuck with DuckDuckGo for years. It's mostly gotten pretty good if you search in English. Other languages can be iffy.
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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I can't be bothered to self host a search engine. I just stick to duck duck go and I've tried some whoogle instances but I just prefer ddg at this point.
SearXNG, it was fairly easy to get used to coming from duckduckgo because !! uses the same !bang search as ddg. (honestly !bang searches were the only thing keeping me on ddg)
I'm already using SearXNG. The point of my question is to find out what search engines I should enable in it.
oh sorry, I guess my reading comprehension skills are a bit subpar
DuckDuckGO for the bangs, with a custom !bang made for my favorite SearXNG instance; on which most of my 'googling' actually happens.
DuckDuckGo, I'll switch to SearXNG as soon as it comes to Windows
https://coalition.blue :), hosted by your bud lol
Does a public instance ID or log users? I never even considered it because it seems risky, like I'm asking for backdoor access to my network
It does forward your real IP to the search engines so that google doesn’t flake out on me. But otherwise I am not logging anything haha
There are public instances you can use, or if you want it locally hosted, there is wsl2. (Alternatively, join the dark side and install linux!)
I just did some tests on DDG (sorry OP, not related to SearXNG). If you use it normally, they put a lot of images from URL like improving.duckduckgo.com/t/we?monitor=you&spying=secretly&id=etc (supposedly for improving DDG by gathering statistical blah blah). Their no-JavaScript version is much less invasive.
Solution(s): 1) uBlock is highly recommended, 2) if possible disable JS, 3) try Tor Browser, which is just an anonymity version of Firefox
I used to use searx for a couple years but it got too unreliable where it would fail to load results all the time randomly. Tried DDG and consistently ended up having to manually switch to google after the results on DDG just weren't good enough (think troubleshooting linux issues and stuff, DDG would never find the obscure answer in a forum but google would).
Anyways, ofc the goal wasn't to end up back at google so now I've been using startpage for the last few months and it seems to work great with no issues.
Presearch. I don't care for the crypto features. (I already got Monero anyway) but the concept of a decentralized search engine is interesting.
uBlock + (MetaGer or Searx or DDG/html[no JS]), via Tor 24/7. Onion available. Individually, hit and miss. In total, good enough for me. While DDG is okay (the default search engine for Tor Browser, Tails), intuitively I don't fully trust it. Its no-JS version is acceptable.
Daily driver: Qwant
Niche searches: kagi
Not privacy friendly— Ai: perplexity.ai
Qwant for work and DDG for personal stuff
I am testing both for personal use right now, can you share your experience and how you came to the decision which to use for personal use and which for work?
Qwant has very similar search results to Google which I need for work. DDG is IMO more private so I use it for personal stuff.
Also Qwant has better results than DDG is languages other than English.
Brave Search and Startpage.
ecosia.org It care about my privacy and It also plant Trees from ad revenue.
Me too, though unfortunately I systematically ignore search results with the ad mark, so it's not really helpful..
Qwant. And occasionally Google and DuckDuckGo
I need Google results, in my experience they are the best. That's why I'm using startpage.com That's the best alternative I have up to today
I'm planing on self hosting a Searx instance. But right now I'm very happy with DuckDuckGo. I find I get less biased results and a lot of the time I prefer it's results to google. And for the odd time I want an image and DDG isn't giving me what I want I use bing, which is probably the best search engine for images from my experience.
Unfortunately DDG blocks piracy related searches and torrents, that's why I don't support them anymore, also they plan on banning "misinformation" whatever that means. I don't like it anymore.
Good to know thank you
What search engine do you use or if Searxng what engines do you pull from?
Google and DuckDuckGo mostly, I guess if they are pulled from Searxng, then they can't track you and all that.
I currently use searx.org instance of SearXNG which for me works decently, and I can still use the ! searches of DuckDuckGo in it, just adding another !, like !!wikipedia
I am using https://4get.ca/ It's a metasearch engine, I can search in various search engines anonymously through it.
Sorry, this question was SearXNG specific, so MetaGer was irrelevant. I’ve never self-hosted it, but I’d say Brave. It’s supposed to have its own index (correct me if I’m wrong), so one can expect some diversity.
As for DDG, there shouldn’t be any problems if used via SearXNG. In general, there are a few comments about DDG here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1164105.html and I quote:
Negative:
~1-2 years back they collected data on which search results their users clicked on by default with their own link-forwarder. After some outcry they removed that. Their "privacy browser" allowed third party cookies by Microsoft to track their users because DDG made a deal with them without telling anyone. When it came out Gabriel Weinberg released some BS statements.
Positive:
DDG doesn't even have a Linux browser, but I love their Android browser. The DDG search engine provides results that are quite fine
Brave is surprisingly good
It is but unfortunately it doesn't work in SearXNG most of the time
I use it daily. Just their account system with that fucked up login-by-email sucks hard. Especially since I have to refresh my session in multiple browsers on multiple devices.
(I use Premium for ad free search.)