we all know Google's usefulness has diminished if you're searching for something the algorithm doesn't have it's nose on, personally i don't feel searxng (i used the nicfab.eu one) gives the best or most useful results either, what's out there?
I use Perplexity.ai. It was so good, I ended up buying the Pro version. Google ain't got shit on Perplexity. On the other hand, Perplexity is most useful for information that requires some sort of synthesis. It's less useful for a basic search like definitions or where to find something nearby.
I just tried it to find some simple info that I struggled finding last night because I had to shovel through so much crap with Google. It definitely did a better job than Google did.
Been using duckduckgo for years and generally gets the job done. If I want more local specific results then I'll just add !g to my search which'll do a Google search
Duck Duck Go is literally just Bing without the personal data. If it works for you then it works for you, but it's good to know what you're really using.
from wikipedia:
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.[62][3][63][64][53] It also uses data from crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the search results.[64][65]
I'm quite aware of that fact. Not sure where I gave the impression otherwise.
When it comes down to it, pretty much all the options are just proxies/aggregators for other search engines - that introduce privacy.
Kagi is great but I feel they’ll struggle with their current pricing. I have a discounted rate for their pro tier, $10 for 1500 queries, and I think even that is expensive.
Ever since Microsoft nuked it a couple years back (because results included csam) search has been heavily restricted and most definitely was shot in the ankle, used to use bing a lot to find older resources for stuff I needed, now I cannot use it for that any longer
duckduckgo is the most useful and straightforward to use, brave isn't bad either although it struggles with non english searches from my experience. searx is powerful but a bit overkill and it is not the most intuitive
I like the paulgo.io searxng instance for most queries its fine. As for truly novel search engines that dont just scrape google, theres search.marginalia.nu and yacy.net
eh, i've been doing a mix of duckduckgo or brave's search engine. tbh it works for basic things but i've yet to find a better search engine for more niche or specific queries
I also use Startpage and have been happy with it. It uses Google's search engine as the backend but cuts out the tracking and personalized ads so I feel like it is the best of both worlds.
So many people are saying Duck Duck Go so I'm just throwing a comment out there to make sure everyone is aware that it's literally Bing without the personal data. People joke about how bag Bing is, and Microsoft is a bit of a monster so I think people need to be aware of what they're actually using. That said, if it works for you then cool, since Google is garbage now and there are not a lot of great alternatives.