this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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I'm kind of tired of Google sending me to the same 3 sites whenever I search for something. If not the same 3 sites it's 7 others that are so generic and boring I just feel they're useless. It's always makeuseof, androidauthority, or whatever other sites that have useful information but I rarely feel like they are saying anything new.

I want to see the results from those small blogs that are sometimes linked here. I can't come up with one since... you know that's why I'm asking how to find them, but you know them; they talk about nerdy stuff and are not afraid to get technical in whatever topic they discuss.

Also duckduckgo and qwant do the same thing. If there is a way to curate the results to better fit my needs then that'd be great too!

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[–] BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 26 points 1 year ago (8 children)

been using kagi for some weeks and so far I am satisfied. It has a subscription cost after 300 searches though. But I guess getting rid of advertisements and tracking has a price

[–] tombuben@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I've read around their documentation and they have a pretty compelling reason why one should prefer search engines where you directly pay to the search provider instead of relying on third parties such as advertisers to pay for your search usage.

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In the end, a subscription service ensures your incentives align, even if you need to pay for it.

[–] wahming@monyet.cc 6 points 1 year ago

Usually. Other times you end up with Netflix.

[–] RadioRat@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

It’s been worth it for my spouse and me. Happy to pay for a product rather than being the product.

[–] fckgwrhqq2yxrkt@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

I save way more than I pay for Kagi because it doesn't give me sponsored results and other garbage trying to make me waste money.

[–] baggins@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

Yes, I tried that and have now got to the susbscribe or move on phase.

Went back to DDG and results really are not in the same league as Kagi so I may just cough up.

[–] spookedbyroaches@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

That actually looks really amazing! I really want more services to actually compel users to pay to support them, and make it a good decision to do so. I think this is the best suggestion so far. Thanks mate!

[–] HeavyRaptor@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The search results are good but the limited searches make me anxious for running out. If it grows enough to the point where they can sustain themselves by offering the unlimited tier for $3-5 I might switch but not with the current pricing.

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[–] lori@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My problem with Kagi is that they're still running at a loss and they think AI will be their savior.

And their AI currently gives extremely wrong information but the devs think that's fine because the point of their AI is to be fast not accurate.

I liked it as a search engine but at this point I can't see it surviving. If they raised the prices to where they lost a lot of customers and still can't get to positive numbers they aren't going to fix it by having AI give you wrong answers.

[–] BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 2 points 1 year ago

Do you have any sources for this info. Didn't get the vibe that they are leaning on AI that heavily. Never seen anything about it actually

[–] AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Google for work + kagi for personal use has been pretty cheap for me.

[–] detalferous@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Kagi is really good

You need to pay for it but the free search allowance is enough for me.

[–] SamVimes@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

By free search allowance, do you mean the one time trial of 100, the 300 per month if you're paying $5, or something else?

[–] detalferous@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I mean the initial 100... it lasted a long time, for me

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[–] silentdanni@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

Kagi is the only one that consistently gives me much better results than google. The fact that it's not riddled with ads on the first page was a big incentive for me to give them some cash. It actually improved my productivity at work a whole lot. This actually made me think how shitty google has become when I was preferring results given by an error prone AI compared to just searching for it. Now with Kagi, I can actually find the stuff I'm looking for and only use AI in case I can't find it there for some reason. Totally worth the monthly subscription for me.

[–] tiago@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

I hit the threshold in a week, but it was because I got engaging results.

Ideal search engine for falling into unexpected rabbit holes. It's scratches the itch of really exploring the web.

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[–] smpl@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 1 year ago

Marginalia Search perhabs.

Also these are worth mentioning:

  • Mojeek have their own index. The results are occasionally a bit of a mess, but they are very open to input and have an account on Mastodon.
  • Infotiger have their own index and the results are good.
  • Alexandria which use the Common Crawl index.
[–] wintrparkgrl@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I love duck duck go but theres one key thing I've been missing (or don't know how to do) with google you can just throw -word or -"a phrase" and it will ommit any result with them

[–] xc@artemis.camp 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have to blacklist the AI farm sites though

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do you that? They've been getting on my last nerve.

[–] sandriver@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Firefox has uBlacklist, might be on Chrome too.

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the recommendation. Looks like it only works with Google text search, and I don't use Google search.

[–] sandriver@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use it with DuckDuckGo and startpage, it can be configured for a few search engines.

Oh wow! Ok! I'll see if it works for me, too. Thanks!

[–] anzo@programming.dev 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm running searxng on docker locally, and set that as my search engine on Firefox. It's been awesome! I will probably start a blog and post instructions... Adding the custom search engine into about:config was kinda difficult. Other web browsers should be easier.. (e.g. Vivaldi)

[–] oxideseven@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can add search engines to Firefox in the address and search bar.

Go to the site you want to add, click the address bar for the drop down to show, then there will be an icon for that site with a green plus to add it.

If you use the search box it's even easier. If you're on the site the icon on the left will have the green plus symbol for it.

[–] anzo@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yup. That smart recognition didn't play for me on 127.0.0.1:8080

[–] Tin@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

There's a Firefox addon called "Add custom search engine" which will allow you to add a local instance of searx.

You'll want to give it the full search query, with %s where the search string goes. for you, it'll be something like:

http://127.0.0.1:8080/search?q=%s

[–] thegreekgeek@midwest.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does Google constantly shit the bed on a local instance like it does on public instances? I tried using searXNG and it kept happening regardless of the instance I used.

[–] anzo@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's precisely what made me install it locally. So far, I had no issues. I guess the rate-limiting comes from the fact of being public. And you can aggregate results from many providers, add filters, etc. I only had one issue with duck, but solved it after updating the container.

[–] oxideseven@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

I need to add one to my inside server. I'll have to find a guide.

Are you able to access it remotely?

[–] reka@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If you're a programmer, might I suggest the brave new world of ChatGPT enhanced search via Phind.com

Even if you're not, it's fantastic. It basically takes your input and processes it like ChatGPT but then is trained to run web searches to grab further information and uses that to progress its own internal monologue. The result is a natural language response with search engine like results down the side which are cited within the main response.

[–] lemmyingly@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is it better than Bing-GPT search?

It feels like for the most part, Bing just parses your query for keywords and performs a search with them. Then it parses the first page and spits out the result. On the surface it looks like a regular web search I would do myself.

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[–] agent_flounder@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Kagi has been working out pretty ok for me. Quality of searches is good. No ads, no promoted listings; it is fee based.

[–] strudel6242@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

Happy paying customer here, it's great to see the innovations they're making and their interactions with the community.

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

I too am a happy customer. The ability to tweak individual site ranking especially makes searching the internet so useful again.

[–] sculd@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Qwant

Try it. It has pretty good results even outside the US and is much more private.

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[–] amphetaminisiert@feddit.nl 5 points 1 year ago

I've been using qwant for a while now and I think it's nice

[–] yoz@aussie.zone 5 points 1 year ago

There's no such good search engine. I do all my using bangs (duckduckgo terminolgy) or whatever its called on brave and others but maily brave.The reason I use brave is that because they dont pull results from google and bing.

[–] Spudger@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 year ago

One of the problems I have with search engines when looking for tech solutions is that the results are incredibly out of date. I don't bother any more and just go straight to the product's own support forum. Where possible I add the forum's own search entry to Firefox's search box. At least I no longer get answers to a problem no one has had since 2018.

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

I did Startpage, then self-hosted searx for a while, then switched back to Startpage, and recently subscribed to Kagi, which I very much enjoy. I do not mind paying a provider for search built with the user in mind rather than their advertisers.

[–] odium@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Maybe try stract, try out the different optics it has. My favorite is the discussions optic. Lots of lemmy/kbin results with that. Hacker news optic might be closer to what you're looking for.

[–] doctorn@r.nf 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've been using Presearch for a while and often forget I'm not on a common one. But when I really need something more obscure or hard to find due to most engines' algorhytms, I sometimes go for Yandex, which doesn't filter out most stuff Google, Bing,... do, but it leaves you filtering through a bunch of Russian stuff... 😅

My search-engine test for this is quite simple, though. Look for something specific nobody wants to see (like known scam sites like bitcoin doublers), there's plenty of those still around, but they usually are part of the great search-engine filters, so if I look for those specifically and find them first entry on a search engine, that usually means the engine results are not tweaked and I'll have more chance finding what I need rather than what it thinks I should find/need...

[–] hruzgar@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

brave search

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