So ddg is down, so I visit Google. It’s been some years.
I just can’t believe how poor it’s results are, and how it’s trying to suggest things it think I might also want (and failing miserably).
I just assumed ddg would be the lesser, but I use it for privacy. Turns out I’m wrong.
How long has Google been this bad?
since it becomes a monopoly
I did 2 searches yesterday that gave me crap on Google and then I tried Bing and it gave me what I was looking for on the first page.
A couple years ago I began getting frustrated. Last year I started to first go to Bing, google as failsafe. Now I gave up on everything so might as well go with Ecosia. When I NEED something, I’ll go with bing/bing’s chatGPT.
Can confirm. I struggled to remember the name of the ancient website vampirefreaks after the concept came up in conversation and out of the big search engines only Bing’s flavor of chatGPT could tell me what I was looking for.
Pretty sure DDG, Ecosia and Bing all use the same backend?
Always.
I think SearXNG is best.
I keep seeing this and I tried it but I couldn’t get great results consistently. Maybe I need to spend some more time looking into it again
It may be the instance you used or something else I’m not aware of, but I always get great results.
The only thing is sometimes an instance dies and I need to find and start using another one, but it’s not a big deal. You can find instances here.
I noticed it getting worse over the years. I switched to SearXNG last year when I felt Google was getting really ridiculous.
They started censoring a lot at some point, maybe because they had to, but that’s not the only reason.
DDG being down was the push for me to finally try SearXNG. Used it all day while working on code and it’s been pleasant. The search results are actually meaningful and it’s fast.
I can’t get it to save my preferences. That’s the only hurdle to me not using it.
I’m not having this issue. I’m using one of the Firefox extensions but don’t get to choose an instance. I just went with the second most popular extensions because I liked the UI better.
Are you self hosting?
Yes. That way you can create a blocklist, which is what makes it so good for me.
I didn’t realize it had a block list. That’s an amazing feature that should be pointed out more! I’m going to have to give this a try now.
I’ve been hopping searxng instances for a year now and always noticed a couple seconds delay everytime I do a search. Does self hosting help with the delay?
I’ve tried some instances and I don’t see a delay. My hosted version is a bit slower than public ones but that depends on your system, I guess.
I think it’s been years now. At least a couple of years, I was baffled too back in the day.
it’s been slowly getting worse since the 2010s. i remember talking about it back then.
I stopped using Google when they dropped their “don’t be evil” principle. Not just because of that, but because their prior decisions were going against the principle. Sure it was ~10 years ago. A couple of years ago I tried Google search hoping it was still decent, but Jesus Lord, it sucked.
dropped their “don’t be evil” principle.
It’s still there. See the final paragraph: https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct/
It’s still not the same. The current writing resembles an afterthought. In the past the moto was the first thing you would read in the Code of Conduct.
And there is also the complete lack of sense between the moto and their decisions.
Startpage (has Google search results) or Google with private browsing haven’t given me the new AI suggestions so far
i have the opposite problem. ive aways had to go back to google becasue DDG sucks so hard… and now i find out its because its bing-based. awesome.
Same here. I switched to DDG last year, but had to go back within two weeks; it was just too annoying.
Google search results have indeed gotten pretty bad, but I’ve yet to see anyone surpass them.
Feels like about 6 months or so? If I do an image search it only seems to pull items linking to a retail site. Everything is about sales and I can’t find information.
I went to StartPage personally.
That’s just a proxy for google. Same terrible results.
Google started getting really bad about a year ago
Google has been this bad since their initial IPO, when they signalled their intent to do this, and should have been stopped to protect the most useful public utility ever invented. Since that day they’ve been a pimp; the decision to become a pimp led to this.
“Do no evil”
“Don O’Evil”
I don’t know, been on Kagi for a year so forgot Google.
How do you use it on mobile? I’ve seen there’s no mobile app
Just set Kagi as default search in your browser. There is a plugin you can install that does it, easiest way.
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default.html
Looks nice, do you recommend it? Why not use ddg?
I use it, and like it. They dropped prices a while back so now you can get unlimited searches for $10 a month (they also have a $5 limited tier and a free trial).
First thing is I’d like to live in a world where search engines (and the internet in general) don’t have to be ad supported. This is a different model so I want to support it.
But also Kagi has some nice features. My favourite is how I can block Pinterest, and boost the ranking of other sites like Wikipedia. Basically you can have some control over search results.
If you’re familiar with SearxNG, that’s basically how Kagi works. They run the searches on a bunch of search engines and then present one cohesive search results page. But SearxNG for me takes several seconds to get the results, and Kagi is almost instant.
I don’t know if it’s significantly better than the free options, but I like using it and it’s pretty cheap really.
Kagi is just excellent so I guess that’s why. It’s so good I completely forgot about Google when I tried it.
I used ddg a few years back too but I always had to use Google for certain queries and never felt fully satisfied with the search results. It felt like a worse search engine that I was using because I didnt want to use Google.
With Kagi it’s the opposite. It’s a better search engine than Google. It’s Google results without the dark patterns and hostile behavior from google.
Not OP, but I copy my reply from the last time someone asked an opinion on kagi:
I use it, but to be honest I did not do a comprehensive comparison. I like it mostly for the fine grained website control. For work and some personal stuff I often look for code and can push websites like GitHub to appear more often. Or I can block Pinterest in my search results. I tried to do this in SearXNG, but this was too much of a hassle so in a way I pay kagi for convenience. I recently got a new job and will evaluate in the coming months if it is still worth the money, but right now I am satisfied. Nobody else I know would pay for a search engine, so I can understand the stance, but I am really fed up with all the advertising and enshitification so I thought why not give it a try. And yes, because it was recommended here.
It started when Search Engine Optimisation became a thing, so it’s been a while. But it really went downhill a few years ago.
Don’t think any engine is immune to SEO
