(In the case that someone in Lemmy still use Google)
What to use for search engine. Even ddg is not giving reliable results.
The old saying goes: if you don’t pay for the product, you are the product.
DDG queries can’t really be written the same way you’d write one in Google if you’re after effective results. It’ll take some time to get used to it, tbh I was using DDG alongside Google until I fully switched.
Grammar, I’ve noticed I get much better results if I word things more directly instead of like a question
I keep reading that Google’s search results are supposedly much better than DDG’s when my experience is the exact opposite. I don’t even live in an English speaking country and the results I get are a vast improvement over Google’s. It has been this way for me since at least last year, but in my experience DDG had caught up to Google in 2022 already. It could also be that Google has just deteriorated a lot in the last two years (which it definitely has, judging by all the bad publicity they’ve been getting for it), so I’d urge you to give DDG/Brave Search/Bing/Kagi/SearxNG another chance.
I’d also recommend setting an alternative of your choice as the default everywhere and to use it exclusively for like a week before making up your mind about that specific product!
If you believe Google is the most reliable, you can still use it in a private way via :
- Startpage
Startpage is a private search engine known for serving Google and Bing search results. One of Startpage’s unique features is the Anonymous View, which puts forth efforts to standardize user activity to make it more difficult to be uniquely identified. The feature can be useful for hiding some network and browser properties.
- SearxNG https://searxng.org/
SearXNG is an open-source, self-hostable, metasearch engine, aggregating the results of other search engines while not storing any information itself.
There’s plenty of public instances too https://searx.space/
Get Google search results, but without any ads, JavaScript, AMP links, cookies, or IP address tracking. Easily deployable in one click as a Docker app, and customizable with a single config file.
Couple of public instances too. Basically SearxNG with ONLY google as a source. https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search#public-instances
I’m pretty sure Startpage got sold out to an ad company. I think the best option is just to use SearxNG
They do, but it’s still separated from that business. At worse, it’s more an ethical issue of using something that an Ad company own, exactly like using Google with or without proxies services. https://web.archive.org/web/20210118031008/https://blog.privacytools.io/relisting-startpage/
I use mainly Andisearch, also has AI but relay on reliable sources (and one of the most privat search out there), Startpage and Whoogle use the old Google search engine, Mojeek also is fine, Groot search has a own search index, Etools a Suiss made Metasearch engine and some more. In the Vivaldi Forum you’ll find the, maybe, most complete list of search engines you can try.
Whoa! You weren’t kidding about that list of search engines. What’s with the Germans and search engines? They sure do have a lot.
The author of th Thread is German, he icluded because of this also searches in German media sites or dictionaries. But if you want a German search engine, you can use MetaGer, not bad at all. Good privacy but freemium, in the free version there are ads, (context, anonymous) and limited on 2 search engines.
I would not use anything in Russia as Russia isn’t a democracy and does not allow freedom of the press
Do Russia have some fuck up law like USA that the government can access the data of Russian’s companies?
In a move that suprise la no one…
I have it on and use it just to see how terrible it is tbh, I get a laugh at how inaccurate it is every time 😂
I…. Don’t really get why they think this is better. Google search was good…. Other companies can copy AI technology anyway. AI is really just predicting words and wasn’t designed for search, but their old algorithm was.
Whyyyyyy
Google hasn’t understood the internet for a long time. They created an excellent search algorithm by treating the internet as a single information system that warranted analysis and indexing for convenient traversal.
These days that’s not… Something they’re interested in anymore. The goal is to collect user data for targeting advertising and resale. Their core product is still the search bar, sure, but that’s just a hook to reel you in. They’ll attach whatever buzzword to it it takes to keep it in the zeitgeist. “Ai” is hot right now so that’s the buzzword.
I don’t get the impression technical competency is something Google values anymore…
There’s been some former Google employees with stories about being told by the ad team to scrap mostly completed projects that increased search functionality because in testing it negatively impacted impressions on the “sponsored” search results.
That really says all you need to know.
Beyond that, Google is notorious for having terrible metrics for promotions. It highly incentivises creating new projects and disincentivises maintaining or improving existing systems.
Way to go killing the golden goose there Google
