• Switorik@lemmy.zip
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        4 months ago

        I swapped to ddg about a year ago. I’ve noticed their search results are not the greatest either. There is so much spam and paid articles that make it to the top search results I often end up frustrated trying to find what I’m looking for.

        The Internet really is enshittified.

        • Pechente@feddit.de
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          4 months ago

          To be fair I think DDG has improved marginally over the years while Google is simply shit now. I feel like spam sites are quite prevalent on Google but less so on DDG.

        • Trashboat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          4 months ago

          I’ve been using it for years at this point, and I really prefer it to google. For most of my common/easy searches, it gets what I want pretty reliably. Occasionally I’ll have more obscure searches where I do have to switch back to Google, but honestly Google feels less and less helpful for that as time goes on. To add, DDG has bangs which are just wonderfully handy. Turning your search into a google search is as simple as adding “!g” to your query, and it’ll redirect the search. There are tons of other ones too, it’s a really nice feature that makes DDG more convenient in a lot of cases. Very much worth trying out at least

        • Veraxus@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          It’s really good these days. Kagi is still the beat, but if you want free, DDG is the way to go.

          • Mog_fanatic@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            I’ll have to give this kagi a shot I never heard of it! DDG just doesn’t ever seem give me what I want and I’ve been trying it forever. It’s like I’m always playing this cat and mouse game with the search engine and it just gives me alllllmost what I want but not quite.

            • kbotc@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              It’s not free, but I find it worthwhile. I really hope Apple includes it as a default engine in the next update.

              Kagi doesn’t sell you shit, so if you use Google for that, you can’t get that replacement data:

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          Free Google (& other) proxy: SearXNG

          Further reading / Instances: Searx.space

          One good instance: SearXNG.site


          For basic searches (kinda a Bing reseller with disappointing results): DuckDuckGo

          Vote-with-your-wallet alternative: Kagi (who may have astroturfed or may have not, but great engine at $10/mo unlimited - have tried their free trial)

          Comments of mine RE: why everybody’s just reselling search ($1b+/yr to operate your own crawler): one and two

        • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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          4 months ago

          It struggles when you have more than one word, it will ignore context and give you results with maximum number of either word. Still better than Google at this point, though.

        • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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          4 months ago

          works fine for me, and their implementation of AI (only letting it use wikipedia and maybe some select other sources) is pretty nice IMO, perfect for answering questions like “how many people live in X Y Z cities in total?”.

      • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online
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        4 months ago

        Same, but lately Bing fucked with their pricing, and now the search results are usually garbage. I have to go re-search the query in Google way too often.

      • bluewing
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        4 months ago

        You can also look into Ghostery private search also. I’ve been using it some and it appears to be at least as good as DDG. YMMV

      • bluewing
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        4 months ago

        That’s exactly how you make money in the search engine world - by not knowing what your paying customers do.

    • dQw4w9WgXcQ
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      4 months ago

      I rarely trust top results from google, since I’m uncertain if I somehow missed the tiny gray text saying that it’s an add.

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        Yeah, that shit is illegal where I live and search engines do it anyways. Unfortunately not enough lawsuits…

  • the_doktor@lemmy.zip
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    4 months ago

    Stop using Google.

    And Microsoft. And Apple. And Amazon. And every single corporation that cares more about money and stealing people’s privacy than serving you.

      • the_doktor@lemmy.zip
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        4 months ago

        Yep!

        It’s all trash these days. We’re having to just avoid the worst of it while preparing for the rest of it to also suck so bad that we have to find even more alternatives, and then just throw our computers away at the end or at least go back to computing where it wasn’t all about stealing data, long, long ago.

    • BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I get where you’re coming from, but I also feel like I might get kind of bored and I wonder how I’m going to get that hot sauce from Alabama that I like. I’ll give up on a lot of my ideals and trade a LOT of frustration for artisanal hot sauces.

      • wanderingmagus
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        4 months ago

        Get to know people in the hot sauce community (it exists!) and then you can ask person-to-person!

    • Lotarion@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      So, do you suggest just not using computers altogether?

      Getting some cheap Nokia for the cellphone and be done with it? (Ig a refurbished IBM ThinkPad with FOSS on it is also fine)

  • Queen HawlSera
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    4 months ago

    I’m honestly amazed no one’s sued google over the site telling them things like “Jump off a bridge if you’re depressed” or that products have been recalled that haven’t

  • noodlejetski
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    4 months ago

    by using uBlock Origin, uBlacklist, and then something other than Google.

    • QuizzaciousOtter
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      4 months ago

      It might protect you from a lot of Google’s shit show but it won’t show you good results too.

      Kagi is the only usable search engine for me right now. Yes, it’s not free. I needed a whole year to convince myself to pay for searching but I finally did it and it is absolutely worth it. I’m a SE though, so searching stuff is like half my job.

        • QuizzaciousOtter
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          4 months ago

          Well, sure. If it works for you then by all means keep using it.

          I’m just recommending a service which I find very useful. I actually first heard about it on Lemmy and I’m grateful for the recommendation so I spread the word in hope of helping someone else.

      • Ibuthyr@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 months ago

        I’m with you. At first I thought it was getting shilled, but the search results are great. I also bought a 12 month subscription to Nebula. I’m giving these services a go and see if they can replace all the enshitified services.

    • jagungal@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I thought everyone was overreacting until I used Google on the computers at my college and I realised that DDG had been insulating me from all that horror. Thank goodness I switched when I did.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 months ago

    &udm=14 is a temporary fix for those who still feel the need to use Google’s search.

    Paid search isn’t the solution, as evidenced by the untrustworthiness of the CEO of Kagi search.

    What I would like to see is a non-profit search.

    Google wanted to organize all the world’s information to make it useful. Sounds like a great idea destroyed by a profit motive getting in the middle. Try the same idea without the profit motive and you’ll probably end up creating something people will defend endlessly, like Wikipedia.

    What if your search engine asked you for a five dollar donation, once a year, the way Wikipedia does?

    Search engines should be non-profit, honestly, they should be an extension of Public Libraries.

    • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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      4 months ago

      I haven’t kept up on this controversy, but is this really all there is to it? People think the service is untrustworthy because the CEO tried a bit too hard to convince a critical blogger, according to the comments possibly due to neurodivergence?

      • meowMix2525
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        4 months ago

        Read the blog post. I can totally see where the writer is coming from. Vlad’s email responses are pretty laughable with that added context. Not only did they tell him they weren’t interested in engaging, but the responses he sent anyways thoroughly dodged the substance of their arguments. They did their research and came to pretty reasonable conclusions, and vlad totally talked around/failed to address the points that really matter. Kinda slimy ngl.

        I can also see from the highlighted discord exchanges why they weren’t interested in engaging with him further. Sure he “responds” to everything, but he doesn’t really engage with constructive criticism. Whether or not the guy is autistic isn’t really relevant to whether he can run the business competently and make sure questions are answered in an honest and transparent manner.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 months ago

        It’s the equivalent of doing a Google search and then clicking on the “Web” tab for results.

        Clicking on “Web” manually inserts the &udm=14 at the end of the search string. I believe udm is just classifying which type of search to run, and this is a basic “web search” with no gimmicks.

        &udm=14 is fancy for nerds who think they’re special but for anyone else it’s just clicking on “Web” results.

        • Elevator7009@kbin.run
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          4 months ago

          I did not even know they separated out Web searches until I came to your comment. Super useful, thank you.

        • tehmics@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          A URL query is pretty damn low on things that make me feel like a fancy nerd. Add it by default to your browser’s search function so it applies to all searches automatically

    • wensl@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I haven’t used Google in about 3 years. I use duckduckgo and I just eventually figured out how to use it, you have to be a little more specific but I can get what I’m looking for straight away these days. I’m aware they’re not private anymore since they got bought out but I use technology like this with the assumption any data that can be collected, is collected, and will be sold off at some point, so don’t search anything you wouldn’t want your grandmother knowing about lol.

  • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    This started to become noticeable years ago when Google decided to start censoring searches even with SafeSearch off.

    I switched to Bing at that time, which was good for a while, but eventually they have started doing the same thing.

    I can now no longer find a search engine that actually works to find me all the relevant results. I’ve tried all that I’ve heard of, and none will provide complete results.

    The easiest canary in the coal mine for this is NSFW stuff. If I search for a popular character of which I know there’s lots of porn/hentai, with SafeSearch off, and do not get a heavy mix of SFW and NSFW results, I know that search engine is messing with those results, and is also definitely doing it with searches that are not so obvious.

  • Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk
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    4 months ago

    Same with visiting almost any website.

    Then

    1. Click on link to website.
    2. Read website.

    Now

    1. Click on link to website.
    2. Click on Cookie options.
    3. Scroll down looking for ‘Reject All’.
    4. Discover there is no ‘Reject All’.
    5. Scroll back through list turning off all optional cookies.
    6. Scroll back to the bottom to click on ‘Confirm my choices’.
    7. Hunt for the close X on the ‘Subscribe to our newsletter’ pop-up.
    8. Click on the close X on the ‘Subscribe to our newsletter’ pop-up.
    9. Read the website.
    10. Discover the website is just more AI generated SEO garbage.
    11. Go outside, walk on the grass barefoot, weep for the future of humanity.
  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    4 months ago

    That’s the neat part, you don’t.

    The top results have been useless spam for a decade or more at this point, and the only difference is Google sit there hoovering up the money instead. The money is in the way of search. Any popular search engine will end up the same way.

    It’s a shite situation, but until somebody makes a non-profit search engine and filters out spammy results, we’ll continue to Google, scroll down two pages for a reddit link, and carry on.

  • joeljuca@lemmy.eco.br
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    4 months ago

    I’m currently prioritizing DuckDuckGo over Google and others for a better quality of search results. There ain’t much ads to mess your attention, and the results are quite good most of the time.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      4 months ago

      CEO of Kagi has no boundaries and doesn’t know how to take “no” for an answer. He thinks he can just browbeat other people into agreeing with him. It’s a bad look and makes me have zero trust in Kagi as a product.

      https://discuss.techlore.tech/t/kagi-ceo-s-recent-controversy/8119/2

      I said elsewhere just a few days ago: These fucking techbros need to realize that sometimes shutting the fuck up and letting your products speak for themselves is the better move than trying to browbeat everyone into acceptance of your view of your products. Prelovac’s insistence on being heard by someone who has no interest in a conversation with him screams entitlement and a controlling attitude. People who can’t take no for an answer generally are not good people. Not being able to accept someone else’s lack of consent and wanting to bully them into consent is a bad fucking look, period.

      • cybersandwich@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        When I read your post I was expecting something much worse than what you linked to.

        It wasn’t really all that bad. Imo, it was 1 or 2 emails too many.

        Maybe I’m a little biased because I love the product so much. It’s a fantastic search engine again and all of the AI extras add value and aren’t obnoxious like everyone else’s.

        I am still happily paying for kagi even if the CEO emails people that write shitty blogs about them.

      • Fugtig Fisk@feddit.dk
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        4 months ago

        It feels like this is the only bad thing about kagi that keeps getting shared every time kagi is mentioned. Somehow it feels like one person and their followers trying to promote themselves as Karen’s more than legitimate accusations.

        A CEO getting involved with the end users is not a bad thing imo