I live in a country which uses a language I don’t speak but Google defaults to regional results in spite of my language being set to English. All other engines give me really poor results (not that Google was giving good ones, the image search has really gone to shit since they started populating it with AI stuff).
DuckDuckGo 95% of the time, Google if I’m having trouble finding something.
I switched to DuckDuckGo a while ago and haven’t regretted it at all. I honestly barely notice the difference.
I made the jump a ways back, and it’s only on rare occasions that I find I need to open Brave or Chrome (whichever is installed on my machine at the time) for website compatibility.
This is the way.
Same. The heavy bias towards Microsoft-centric top hits (thanks, Bing) usually mean when I’m searching for a non-Windows tech answer I go right to !g, but otherwise it’s my default.
DuckDuckGo 99% of the time,
GoogleStartpage if I’m having trouble finding something.*Note: Startpage uses Google as their source of search result.
DuckDuckGo is using bing as source for their search results the same way startpage.com is using Google as source.
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I’ve been trying to switch to duckduckgo but I really struggle with the results. I appreciate the privacy angle but I just can’t seem to find what I want about 80% of the time. It’s like it just ignores parts of my query…
Nothing compares to DuckDuckGo with bangs, which let you change over to any other search engine with two or three characters. I usually use !g (Google), !w (Wikipedia) and !aw (ArchWiki).
I had no idea they had this feature. Thank you, I don’t think I’ll use anything ever again unless I absolutely have to now.
I didn’t know DDG introduced that feature. That’s sick honestly. They even have bangs for my more obscure wikis.
Holy shit! I think you just changed my life!
Duckduckgo as default. If I need location/region specific stuff, I will sometimes use google.
Big fan of DuckDuckGo and Startpage. Brave Search is also a fine choice, as well.
I use duckduckgo with Google as a backup for when what I’m searching for is too specific. I’ve had to use Google less and less lately though
Been using Duck Duck Go too for a while. Not heard of Startpage before.
I’ve also been using Duck Duck go. I hadn’t heard about Startpage before.
Used Duckduckgo for a while, got myself into a spiral of search engine exploration and at some point settled on Startpage for a while…but I just missed the maturity in functionality of Duckduckgo. It just always felt like I was making a usability/productivity sacrifice. So I returned and am still happy … for now :p
My own SearXNG instance. I get the best out of all search engines.
Metasearch engines are the way to go, I wish more people hosted their instances so folks wouldn’t run into rate limits so often
woah nice!
thanks for the recommendation, will need to try a self hosted setup
I mix and match.
DuckDuckGo is my main one, but I often find myself just using bangs and either throwing in !brave or !g before some searches because sometimes the results aren’t as relevant as I’d like.
I obviously don’t like Google, but if I need super quick results, they’re typically better for me, though they’ve honestly become ridiculously terrible over the last couple of years.
Not just because of promoted content, but because they don’t even seem to care about syntax anymore.
If I put quotes around a search term, Google seems to ignore it. Why? Who knows.
As much as I have… let’s say mixed feelings about Brave, I find myself using !brave more and more on DDG. More relevant results, at least in my looooong experience of using DDG as my primary.
Startpage doesn’t like me because VPN or whatever, otherwise I’d use it more.
I sometimes use a SearxNG instance as well, but that’s only if I’m really struggling to find something.
I use DuckDuckGo and Bangs to whatever I want if I am not satisfied, !g for Google for example
For the clueless, could you explain what bangs are in terms of searching using DDG?
DDG has a bangs page which explains it pretty well and lists all the possible ones.
DDG
Kagi is a great premium alternative. They focus obsessively on search result quality and adding helpful, but non invasive AI tools. One of them is even free as an experiment!
FastGPT is fun, I never play with these sort of stuff like ChatGPT before.
I’ve been a kagi subscriber for justa about a year and it’s been great.
Yes, this. I purchased a subscription and never looked back.
It looks interesting, I am not opposed to paying for search but I feel like the bar works high for me to continue to pay for it.
What makes it better then other search engines?
I finally caved and shelled out for a sub for Kagi. It’s just way more accurate when searching. I was bouncing around about five different ones and finally settled on it.
I’ve been meaning to check out this one, though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35611923
Kagi is great for me for 3 reasons:
- Great search results
- No ads
- No tracking
DuckDuckGo, if that doesn’t work then I go to Startpage.
Bing, actually. I think it has greatly improved. Mostly. Plus the new Bing and AI stuff has been great. Much better than google
I also use Bing. I like the AI features and the rewards program. The results are meh in terms of quality, but at this point honestly so are Google’s.
The rewards and AI are really the only selling parts. I guess it’s the cost of allowing them your data.
Wow, are we going to see the downfall of Google in our lifetimes?!
@SillyLilJester @Nymphioxetine
I’d rather google sees what’s going on and stop coasting on search.
The AI part really is what makes Bing great. I noticed that I save so much time by asking programming related question to Bing chat instead of going through a bunch of semi related results. And normal search results are also often fine.
I use the following search engines listed by priority:
- Brave
- DuckDuckGo
- Google / Bing
Sometimes the first two just don’t have the right results.
This is me, beyond that I don’t use Bing. I’d like to mostly live on Brave, it’s gotten very good, but Firefox mobile doesn’t support suggestions in the main url bar from search engines which aren’t in the browser by default. So I’ll continue to use DDG on mobile for now. I briefly had switched on mobile due to DDG returning very slow for me for a while. But that issue seems to have been resolved.
StartPage or DDG
I use DuckDuckGo. When I first heard about it, I tried it for a bit, found that it didn’t really give good results, and switched back to Google. Some years later I found that Google also stopped giving good results, so I figured that if my search results just aren’t going to be good, I’ll at least switch away from Google.
I use Startpage, a privacy focused search engine which uses Google powerful search engine but without sending the actual data to them. The result are pretty good. You can change both the language and region in the settings. Bad part of Startpage is it is a for profit company (some advertising will be displayed using past search history only)
I use ublock origin and block the ads
I use DuckDuckGo, because I really love the “bangs” feature. Want to look up something on the AUR? Use
!aur term. Google Images?!gi term, etc. There are tons of them!.How did I not know about bangs til now, I’ve been using DDG for years! I’ve just been relying on the @ codes in the Firefox search bar, which are super limited. Thanks for the tip!
