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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[–] ian@lemmy.sdf.org 6 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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[–] Kir@feddit.it 5 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.

[–] NeonWoofGenesis@kek.henlo.fi 1 points 1 year ago

I can see a usecase for where you don't know where to start or search with, and then verify with actual searches.

I recently used it to explain for a friend what is the difference between wheat and ale beer, and it gave a very good summary. With DDG I might not get a direct explanation and would need to read a few articles and then word them in a comprehensive way.

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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 4 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.

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

I run my own searx instance

[–] Silejonu@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (4 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...).

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

What are !bangs and how do I use them?

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[–] sorchist@beehaw.org 4 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.

[–] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 4 points 1 year ago (2 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.

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[–] newtraditionalists@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Ix9@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Same here. I know a lot of folks don't like the results, but to be honest, I don't find Google any better these days.

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

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

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

DuckDuckGo. Google if DDG isn't cutting it.

[–] 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.

[–] Gimletson@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

DuckDuckGo for general searches
Google for image searches
Google maps for local businesses (including their website)
BingGPT for simple research answers (e.g. What door closers will fit on a Norton 1600 bolt pattern?)

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

I use my selfhosted Whoogle instance for search

[–] 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 (3 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)

[–] PeterBronez@hachyderm.io 1 points 1 year ago

@Nankeru @SemioticStandard ohhhh can you share your Lemmy lens?

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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.

[–] QuestionMark@vlemmy.net 2 points 1 year ago

Currently DuckDuckGo, but I will switch to SearXNG because of this.

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

Qwant (but I hate all search engines nowadays)

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

Are you using DDG in addition to Kagi because of Kagi's limited number of searches per month, or because DDG does something better?

I'm a bit conflicted about Kagi because $5/month is a plausible price, but the limited number of searches seems like it would add an extra step of, "Do I want to use my limited search resource on this search?" to every search, which is an unwanted extra bit of friction.

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

I use DDG because I'm still not decided on whether or not Kagi is worth it. If there's no significant difference in the results returned by DDG, why pay for Kagi?

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[–] thatonedude1210@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

DuckDuckGo here.

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

DuckDuckGo for me personally.

[–] kalipike@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

I'll give a search on Duck Duck Go, and if I can't find what I need then I'll use Google.

But at this point I'm using Google Bard and ChatGPT more and more, at least at work.

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

DDG, Google maps, and lately I have been using chatGPT for some technical stuff.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 year ago

Duck duck go. Google for maps

[–] BaroqueInMind@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (6 children)

The only correct answer here is to use an instance of SearXNG because it's open source, utilizes privacy, and queries every kind of search engine that exists on the internet.

[–] Anarch157a@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

This thread inspired me to stop procrastinating and deploy my own instance. On a brand new Debian 12 install (an LXC container in Proxmox), the process is absolutely simple and painless.

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

duck duck go on firefox.

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

Duck Duck Go too

[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@beehaw.org 1 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.

[–] 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

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

I use DuckDuckGo on my personal stuff, but my office has the work browser set to Google and Bing still.

[–] 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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[–] Usernameblankface@kbin.social 1 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.

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

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

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

I typically use StartPage, sometimes DDG. Occasionally I pop in and check out how Brave Search is progressing, out of curiosity.

I would love to use Searx, but I've never found an instance where functionality wasn't breaking all the time or it just randomly goes offline. As much as I want to be, I've learned that I'm not much of a self-hoster. So, yeah, every time I try Searx, I wind up back at StartPage. If anyone has any solid, reliable instances they know of, I'd love to check them out.

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

I am a long time DuckDuckGo user. I came for privacy and stayed because of the features.

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