I suspect that this is the direct result of AI generated content just overwhelming any real content.

I tried ddg, google, bing, quant, and none of them really help me find information I want these days.

Perplexity seems to work but I don’t like the idea of AI giving me “facts” since they are mostly based on other AI posts

ETA: someone suggested SearXNG and after using it a bit it seems to be much better compared to ddg and the rest.

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1524·
    2 个月前

    they’re pretty bad, but ddg at least feels like I’m getting actual results.

    • Fizz@lemmy.nzEnglish
      502·
      2 个月前

      Yeah DDG is great. The only thing I find is its not good at local results but a quick !g on the end gets me the local results im looking for.

        • Lvxferre@mander.xyzEnglish
          35·
          2 个月前

          Redirects your search to Google. You can put it anywhere in the search; for example !g how do i shot web, how do i shot web !g and how do i !g shot web will all land you into Google.

          There are other 13k (yup) bangs like this. Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Yahoo, Quora, most gaming wikis, etc. A few sites (like Google and Bing) have multiple bangs, that land you directly into a specific page (e.g. !bv searches Bing videos). More info here.

        • zante@lemmy.wtfEnglish
          9·
          2 个月前

          If you’re using ddg without !bangs - you’re only having half the fun.

        • pyre@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 个月前

          !w Wikipedia

          !imdb IMDb

          !gi Google images

          there’s tons more. if ddg is the default search engine these bangs save you the time to go to the site first and click the search bar. basically changing your default search into a specific search.

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        2 个月前

        oh, good tip. I didn’t know about that.

        you tack !g to the end of whatever the resulting search URL is?

        • reev@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          10·
          2 个月前

          Can be anywhere in the search.

          “cute dogs !g” “!g cute dogs” “cute !g dogs”

          Those all work the same, though clearly one is more cursed than the others. They have those for a bunch of other sites as well, for example if you want to search YouTube specifically/directly you can use !yt but I can’t kick the habit of just going to those sites first and then searching directly on there.

      • randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
        1·
        2 个月前

        Holy shit the bangs work at the end of the search query too!? I’ve always painfully pressed Home on my keyboard to add a !g whenever I realise I had better searched this on Google

      • MTK@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        87·
        2 个月前

        That’s how I felt until about a month ago, now ddg is really useless

    • pHr34kY@lemmy.worldEnglish
      253·
      2 个月前

      I prefer DDG, but I hate the news search. 90% of the results are paywalled.

      Oh, and sometimes the image search will return a pile of porn for a seemingly clean search request. I once searched for “R34 Skyline” expecting Nissans, and got VERY different results without safe search.