I’ll go first. I’ve used a lot of search engines, I used duckduckgo for quite some time but found their search results kinda bad. I’m currently using ecosia the search results are similar to ddg’s but at least I’m planting trees, so there’s that.
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DuckDuckGo
I also use Firefox search bookmarks for searching specific sites.
Search Bookmark: You prepare the URL with a
%splaceholder and give the bookmark a tag, and you can typetag searchtermand it’ll open it.I’m using it for opening word definitions, word translations, searching reference documentation, searching specific platforms/websites/media types, etc.
Duck duck go first, and if results are shit, I default back to google
duckduckgo primarily, but have been starting to dabble with a self hosted Whoogle.
I usually switch between DDG and Bing. I usually get what I’m looking for between these two guys.
Bing because I’m getting paid for it
Kagi. Yes, it’s paid and the pricing structure is really meh, but:
- Actual privacy
- No BS like with DDG
- AI features (like a “quick answer” feature that’s really useful)
- Has its own index along with others
- Search results are great, probably better than DDG’s
- “Lenses” (basically narrow results by a set of sites)
- Devs are pretty cool
I was using DuckDuckGo and it was giving me pretty ‘eh’ results, only marginally better than google on the surface level, but both weren’t really usable for deep older searches. (and ddg starting to add sus ads/promoted) Brave is better, but Kagi has been fantastic when I’ve really needed to find something specific, technical, or very old. I think the best way to come about the pricing structure and limited search results is that I think it’s not supposed to be your only search engine from then on. There are times when you need what kagi gives in terms of producing quality and relevant results, and times you just wanna search “[company name] reviews/is a scam?” that using kagi wouldn’t serve you better than anything else, so it’s more of a tool that you bring out when you aren’t finding what you need with free search engines. On it’s own page it doesn’t try and oversell you on it, they admit that the majority of people don’t need paid search most of the time.
I haven’t approached if it’s an early netflix thing where you could split the bill with others for one login/family plan, that might make it more feasible.
For some reason the thought of a paid search engine has never even crossed by mind before. I’ve been using DDG but this has peaked my curiosity. Thank you.
Edit: The pricing is… very… meh.
It is very meh. But I think if you’re able to, it’s well worth the price. Just don’t get the standard plan. That one is god awful.
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So you’re basically paying for a proxy for Google and Bing search?
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I find Ecosia’s results to be the better than other privacy-focused search engines, sometimes even better than Google. It struggles with searches in Turkish tho.
I’ve been using presearch.com and and quite happy with the results it gives for any question. Yes, there are one or two sponsored links, but the rest consists of great results
Oh wow, I checked it and for people simply lurking by, you can click on a website icon and instantly go do the research on that website
I’ve been using SearXNG. It is a fork of SearX, a popular open source metasearch search engine. Basically SearX allows you to use multiple search engines for a search, and only the results are there, no ads. SearXNG changes the UI to be better, adds some other engines for a variety of things to search, like images. Currently I’m using ericafteric.top as my instance; it is the fastest US instance with search suggestions support since I can’t selfhost.
I run my own SearXNG instance too. I set it up to a Hetzner box, then blocked all ports from the firewall except on the Tailscale network. This means the machine which wants to use the search needs to be connected first to the same Tailscale network. It allows me to prevent being blocked by the search providers for too much traffic and is been working great. I just open http://SearXNG from my browser and start searching.
Ecosia on my tablet because of nice integrated browser and DuckDuck+Firefox on the PC
Am also checking out Brave on PC at the moment
I hate adds. I was using Neeva. Just switched to Kagi. After nearly 3 weeks, it looks like 300 searches/month will work for me. So $5 a month is fine.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo. I wanted something privacy-respecting, but Startpage was blocked in my country and SearX had problems with my language. Anyway I’ve heard an advertising company bought Starpage so I wont use it. Also bang shortcuts are great!
(Also is it just me or DDG doesn’t approve new bangs now?)
Google. Sue me, I really only care about results when it comes to search. It’s mostly just Google and Bing actually providing results and Google’s are better.
I moved away from Google because of the results
