this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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Data on search engine market share is available, but I wonder what that looks like for Lemmy users in particular, who I would assume lean more technical than the average user, so probably use DuckDuckGo and alternates more than Google.

I use a mix of DuckDuckGo and Kagi. I'll also use ChatGPT, which can be good if you're careful to verify the answers it gives you as a check against hallucinations. It's useful for short, direct answers without ads or SEO bullshit.

This article on Ars (and if you're not a subscriber, you absolutely should be, as they are the best tech journalists out there) inspired the question: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/google-admits-reddit-protests-make-it-harder-to-find-helpful-search-results

Fucking Reddit. Enshittification ruins everything.

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[–] Kir@feddit.it 7 points 1 year ago (9 children)

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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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] newtraditionalists@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] eight_byte@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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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[–] ian@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://www.marginalia.nu/

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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[–] kamen@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've been using DuckDuckGo as my main search engine for the past couple of years. I occasionally fall back to Google.

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[–] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] copylefty@lemmy.fosshost.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I tried this, but it kept saying 'Engine failed' or something on every other search. I never could figure out why. I might try again

Edit: Actually it was Searx I used. I'll spin up Searxng and see if it's improved

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[–] mollusk@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I run my own searx instance

[–] jadenity@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As someone who's only recently heard of SearXNG, why searx and not SearXNG?

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[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] sorchist@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Usernameblankface@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Silejonu@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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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[–] kscutsforth@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Duck Duck Go is the only search engine I use. Switched away from Google for privacy reasons and haven't missed it a bit.

[–] JeSuisUnHombre@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] kuchaibee@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] PlushySD@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Duck Duck Go too

[–] PeterBronez@hachyderm.io 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@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.

[–] Nankeru@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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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[–] Max_UL@lemmy.pro 1 points 1 year ago

+1 for Kagi, seems a great value to me, well worth the price to not have any ads, no tracking (leap of faith here) and great search results.

[–] nachtigall@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Qwant (but I hate all search engines nowadays)

[–] LordChaos82@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

I use my selfhosted Whoogle instance for search

[–] lentilhoarder@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] crab@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

duck duck go on firefox.

[–] xray@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

DuckDuckGo. Google if DDG isn't cutting it.

[–] smellythief@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

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?

[–] rnd@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

DuckDuckGo for me personally.

[–] explodingkitchen@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

DuckDuckGo, and before that, I used ixquick(which is now StartPage).

[–] ViolentBadgers@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Google and ChatGPT, I tried DDG several years ago, but the results were not good, might try it again

[–] Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I use the Librex instance running on my homelab.

[–] LoafyLemon@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

DuckDuckGo. Its results are much better than Google's in my experience. Whenever I Google something, all I get is a list of online stores I've never heard of, and they have nothing to do with my search input.

[–] sab@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For me the main thing that makes me stick to DDG is the bangs - adding for example !wiki in the beginning of a search term to search directly in Wikipedia. It is a game changer, especially as I often need to search in specific sources for work. For example, !scholar for direct access to Google Scholar is great.

Whenever I think Google will provide better results it's as easy as !g - but I am also experiencing that the results are increasingly unhelpful (often geared towards shopping rather than information).

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