I’d like to start a thread for people to share what they’re using for search now that quality & relevance of results are in steep decline on all major search engines.

I’m doing this for selfish as well as altruistic reasons, mostly because my “stack” has gotten a lot less useful over the past year, because the search engines I use repackage Bing, whose ability to return relevant results at all seems to be cratering.

My (shitty and getting worse) solution:

  • DuckDuckGo as default search engine mostly for bang commands, in my personal opinion DDG’s relevance has been shit for its entire existence
  • StartPage as where I direct most of my general searches (by appending !sp on DDG)
  • currently attempting to tune the Ublacklist extension to remove most of the clickbait results; this works, but it’s not easy to set up if you don’t use Google which seems to be the main search engine the developer tests with

The problem with this approach is that increasingly, Bing simply doesn’t return hits on topics I know should have plenty to choose from. Filters only solve the issue of too many hits, not too few.

BTW I tried Qwant, but their claim of having their own index seems to be bullshit, the results look like repackaged Bing to me. And, the UX is terrible in Firefox for Android.

I’d love to hear suggestions.

tl;dr pls share what you are doing for web search these days in order to work around the rapidly declining quality of major search engines

    • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      19 days ago

      Last time I checked Kagi didn’t have an option for people who just do a few searches a month so it ended being too expensive for me.

      I might have to check again though😇

    • ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      0·
      19 days ago

      I forgot to include in the post that I’m too broke for Kagi, otherwise I’d have tried it already :(

  • paequ2@lemmy.today
    0·
    19 days ago

    currently attempting to tune the Ublacklist extension to remove most of the clickbait results

    This is one of the killer features for me in Kagi. The ability to buff or debuff websites in the results. Whenever I encounter an AI slopsite, I immediately block it in Kagi and it’ll never show up again. Other websites are annoying, but occasionally return good results, so I’ll just debuff them in the search results.

    Arch Linux forums? Guix mailing list? Max buff!

    That being said, I do wish there was a more open source friendly alternative or a search engine that didn’t just rebrand Bing or Google results. Maybe SearXNG or Mojeek?

  • Special Wall@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    19 days ago

    I also use Kagi. It has the option for AI but doesn’t shove it down your throat like other providers.

    One feature I especially appreciate from Kagi are URL redirects. I can have it automatically replace parts of the URL from any search result. For example, I have YouTube results redirect to Invidious, and Reddit redirect to redlib, without me having to replace the domain myself

  • Tenderizer78@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    19 days ago

    I’m gonna comment on my personal experience with a few search engines.

    • Startpage I stopped using because, and it took me a while to notice this, the searches aren’t included in the URL. This means if I want to bookmark a startpage search for later or find a startpage search in my browser history I can’t. This is a dealbreaker for me.
    • Qwant didn’t have advanced search tools of any kind, and it also didn’t work in Singapore (where I occasionally set my VPN to).
    • Mojeek … is not ready yet.
    • Kagi I tried for a bit but I’m not paying a subscription to an American company for search.

    Ultimately I ended back up on Duckduckgo. I think perhaps we should go back to web directories instead of search engines.

  • Im_old@lemmy.world
    0·
    19 days ago

    I selfhost searxng. It’s good enough even if it’s just a meta-search (but at least removes AI generated answers).

    I’ve looked at yacy (https://yacy.net/) some time ago. Nice concept but I had technical limitations at my side to properly peer with others. Maybe I’ll try again as I resolved them.

  • zap12344@feddit.it
    0·
    19 days ago

    I grew tired of all of them and I’m using mullvad leta. Too bad they don’t support images but it’s the only one without ai. It’s not perfect and it crashes if you use “site:” but so far it’s working for me better than the others.

  • Raccoonn@lemmy.ml
    0·
    19 days ago

    I switched to using Ecosia a while back, and have had no problems with it. The results are generally relevant enough for everyday use, and it feels good knowing that my searches contribute (at least in some small way) to reforestation projects.

    It’s not perfect, of course… It still relies partly on bing’s index, but the experience has been stable and consistent for me. I also like that the interface is clean and privacy-focused without trying to upsell the search experience.

    In the past I’ve tried alternatives like StartPage and DuckDuckGo, but Ecosia has quietly become my default. It just works well enough without much fuss, and that’s something I really appreciate right now.

    • xpey@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      19 days ago

      Rooting for ecosia with it plans to create their own index, but unhappy with the direction they’re gping specially with AI

      • Raccoonn@lemmy.ml
        0·
        17 days ago

        I feel the same way. I’d love to see them move toward developing their own independent index. I also really hope they stay true to what makes them different and don’t get caught up in the whole “AI-everything” trend. Search doesn’t need to be artificially padded or reworded by a chatbot, it just needs to be genuinely useful, transparent, and connected to reality. If Ecosia focused entirely on building a clean, human-centered search experience powered by their own index, without the AI noise, I think that would be far more valuable than following the same path other major engines have taken…

  • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    19 days ago

    I use Kagi. Paying for a search engine isn’t something that I ever saw myself doing, but I do honestly believe it’s the only way they can exist that means the users are the customers instead of the product.

    • ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.orgOPEnglish
      0·
      19 days ago

      Yeah, I meant to say in the post but forgot… I’m currently housing insecure, food insecure, etc… so I’m looking for a non-Kagi solution. But it’s definitely on my radar to try when I do have $ to spare.

      • NKBTN@feddit.ukEnglish
        0·
        18 days ago

        Sign up and you get 100 searches for free, plus unlimited !bangs. Worth making an account for when you can’t find what you’re looking for on the others.

    • Steve@communick.newsEnglish
      0·
      19 days ago

      Second for Kagi
      Not only solving the customer vs product problem. It really does have a number of great customizable features that easily make it the best.

      • Derpgon@programming.dev
        0·
        18 days ago

        Also can be purchased via crypto for maximum privacy. They also offer something I eould call “AI Studio”, where you can easily switch models, and the chats are fully private and don’t share context. You can customize which domains to promote, demote, block, pin, and they have some nice bangs functionality.

        I stopped paying for all streaming platforms, and Kagi is hands down the best bang for my buck as I already use it every day (in contrast of binging a show every two months).