this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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Data on search engine market share is available, but I wonder what that looks like for Lemmy users in particular, who I would assume lean more technical than the average user, so probably use DuckDuckGo and alternates more than Google.

I use a mix of DuckDuckGo and Kagi. I'll also use ChatGPT, which can be good if you're careful to verify the answers it gives you as a check against hallucinations. It's useful for short, direct answers without ads or SEO bullshit.

This article on Ars (and if you're not a subscriber, you absolutely should be, as they are the best tech journalists out there) inspired the question: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/google-admits-reddit-protests-make-it-harder-to-find-helpful-search-results

Fucking Reddit. Enshittification ruins everything.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Kagi on iOS and Mac. DDG w/Google on Android because my preferred Android browser, Vivaldi, doesn't offer Kagi. Anyone know how to default Vivaldi to Kagi?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'd use Ecosia still if it weren't for the fact that the filter is missing the "last year" setting. I'm a software engineer - 9 times out of 10, I want to find the bugs for a very specific version of a software, so having the year filter helps.

I now use Brave Search.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Fair point. I use ecosia to search everyday stuff on my phone and I've planted a lot of trees just by that. The results are fine.

At work for specific enquiries I use Google because I know how to get the details out of it at first. I don't remember doing a Google search without additional tags. F.i. At work I use visual basic a lot and since it's a shit language I have to Google everything including "vba excel". There's not a lot of logic to it, I just need to dive into the right post head on.

It points at a deeper problem though. There's sooo much garbage on the internet that I have no idea of how ordinary people are supposed to use it anymore. I'm not disenfranching anyone, but for someone like my mom. How the fuck is she ever going to get an answer of any search? Google just plain sucks by now.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

DuckDuckGo. Its results are much better than Google's in my experience. Whenever I Google something, all I get is a list of online stores I've never heard of, and they have nothing to do with my search input.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Google and ChatGPT, I tried DDG several years ago, but the results were not good, might try it again

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I use DuckDuckGo on my personal stuff, but my office has the work browser set to Google and Bing still.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Self-hosted SearXNG. Very easy to self-host, and (for the most part) works just fine

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I'm interested in that. Does it take a lot of resources (ram, cpu, disk ) ?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

DuckDuckGo, and before that, I used ixquick(which is now StartPage).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I tried DuckDuckGo for quite a while, but I consistently failed to find things that I knew existed, so would switch back to Google anyway.

example: I am publishing a serial over on Royal Road, and one of the things an author there with any amount of traction does is search for links and possibly re-hosts of their materials. Links are fine, but re-hosts are obviously a no-go and you want to report sites that do that and/or take other measures. Google would find sites tracking and linking when I searched, but DuckDuckGo did not find any of them.

Heck, DDG didn't even find most of the tech sites that my title happens to overlap phrases with. ("No Need For A Core?" manages to trip over conversations with server cores, which is hilarious for a high magic fantasy series). I just can't trust that it finds enough stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Brave Search

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (5 children)

The only correct answer here is to use an instance of SearXNG because it's open source, utilizes privacy, and queries every kind of search engine that exists on the internet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This.

Plus some instances like searx.tiekoetter.com replace links to page that contain ads and trackers with their alternative (twitter with nitter, YouTube with Invidious, reddit with libreddit, etc).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Do you know of a way i can implement that on an instance i'm self-hosting?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I use SearXNG and Ecosia.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

DuckDuckGo for general searches
Google for image searches
Google maps for local businesses (including their website)
BingGPT for simple research answers (e.g. What door closers will fit on a Norton 1600 bolt pattern?)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

DDG, Google maps, and lately I have been using chatGPT for some technical stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I exclusively use AltaVista.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Google. As much as I'd like to use other search engines, their search results are all severely lacking and not adequate for my needs (often pertaining to research) and they're generally not as great on the multilingual front or in searching pdfs.

I also have some keywords set up in my browser so I can directly search sites I use (e.g. Wikipedia).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I use DuckDuckGo, but mostly as a "terminal to the internet". In a few keystrokes i've opened a new tab, navigated to the homepage (https://start.duckduckgo.com/), then used a Bang to do a direct search inside the particular site or thing i need. For many things specially tech questions i do fall back to Google though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Are you using DDG in addition to Kagi because of Kagi's limited number of searches per month, or because DDG does something better?

I'm a bit conflicted about Kagi because $5/month is a plausible price, but the limited number of searches seems like it would add an extra step of, "Do I want to use my limited search resource on this search?" to every search, which is an unwanted extra bit of friction.

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