What search engine do you use? What terms might you use to filter out junk?
Over the past few years I’ve gotten into the habit of using Google and reddit for general information. When searching I append “reddit” to the terms and tend to get good results. Without appendjng I often don’t get back anything relevant. It sort of works if I’m searching for a particular product or company by name but doesn’t show me relevant reviews or guides. For something not by name it is just a ton of blog spam and useless articles.
Sometimes YouTube can have reviews but with the way content creation works I have reason to take positive reviews with a grain of salt most of the time. For review sites or reviews on stores I just assume 95% are not/paid.
I have had some success appending something for particular sites. Way more specific to a topic though like board game geek or stack overflow. I’ve tried “forum” but that doesn’t seem to do much.
Edit:
People seem to mostly be suggesting things like DuckDuckGo. There is also a paid option that seems like it could be effective, Kagi.
Also this exists.
Yeah, I totally get that. Made me feel a little unwell at the beginning as well, but considering that search is one of the main, key features I use daily, multiple times, it is totally worth it.
I pay for a search engine, because:
- High-quality search results
- No ads
- High customizability
- No weird SEO optimized Website results which help me not at all, and I lose hours in a year clicking them, going back and looking for another result
- Did I mention no ads or sponsored content?
