6mo ago

What search engines do you use?

Tired of duckduckgo using MSN's amp thing for news or blocking some websites, and it's now adding shit AI too. Don't want to spend any money running a searxng instance for the time being and most public instances are too overwhelmed.

Any suggestions? Doesn't need to be perfect, just not too annoying.

34 comments

I’ve found Kagi has been good enough to justify the subscription price. I like that I can block certain sites, pin and promote others. It has some neat AI features but they only activate when requested and never replace actual results.
- I tried it out after getting a referral code from somebody I know granting a 3 month trial. I've been hooked. It's the first search engine that has rivaled Google search, it's so good. I'm often disappointed with DDG (switching to Google later to find what I need), and Mojeek never finds anything. SearXNG has been very close, but is essentially an aggregator, not exactly a Google replacement.
  Kudos to Kagi for getting it right.
  
  Mojeek never finds anything.
  Got any examples we can look into?
- I wish they'd just stop wasting their time on ai
  
  I use the assistant, because it has so many models to choose from. I hope they can make a mobile app for it in the future
selfhosted searxng instance
I use DuckDuckGo. AI isn't bad inherently, just the proprietary, censored, corporate stuff. DuckDuckGo's AI isn't forced on you, is private, open weights, and less censored than the main players.
- Their results are just bing…
  
  Ddg is more or less a proxy, but yes
- It used unethically collected databases, you seemed to miss that on your list.
when people say searx, i want to know.. is it duckduckgo or google or both?
- Like the old Dog Pile
just started using Firefox with ublock origin for the same reason. I run the kagi plug-in on Firefox so I can tailor my search engine preferences (https://kagi.com/). I go back and forth between those two mostly.
Kagi seems to be really good, according to John Gruber. I don’t do enough web searches to need an alternative or justify paying for a subscription, so it’s all third-hand for me.
Disroot’s searxng
I like the SearX search engine. It gives old-school, relevant search results, not google ranked ones.
https://search.inetol.net/
It's also spread out over many separate instances, so you can pick the one that best suits your search needs:
https://searx.space/
I've been kind of liking Brave Search lately, even though I'm not really a fan of the browser.
@AlbigensianGhoul I would recommend @Mojeek as a fully independent engine without any of those "bonus" features.
I've been using the Lycos search engine lol
- hotbot ftw
  
  AskJeeves for classy results
Brave search, not my browser, but reasonable engine.
Ecosia
Quackquackyo
Self hosted SearXNG

34 comments