Oh thank God. I've been having too much fun with generative technology and feeling way too safe. I need someone like Google to remind me that you have to pay for freedom. For a moment there, I almost had a happy thought! Terrifying...
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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Some of my friends just switched to DDG just because Google isn’t reliable anymore since the results became only ads
DDG isn't all that great anymore either because they get their results from Bing - which has also gone to shit. Any alternative search providers that gets their results from Google or Bing (which is most of them) are all nearly worthless now, IMHO. The ones that operate their own engines and crawlers, such as Kagi, are the ones that give results like we used to get before enshittification.
But then again, with the death of web forums and everything being consolidated into a small handful of sites, site:reddit.com is required for almost every search query I do these days. If I want to read something written by an actual human being then I need to look up via Reddit or else results are just 98% AI-generated SEO garbage. Like I wish I was making that up but the majority of search results now are actual throwaway trash; pages upon pages of completely nonsensical generated rubbish.
what a surprise, yet another search engine related post where there's someone making promotion for Kagi in the comments.
If you want some good search results give me $5 and I can get you good search results. They are way better than Google. Just give me $5 I swear I'm good for it.
haha, its really a great service. I always feel semi-obligated to mention it because I, selfishly, don't want them to go away. The more people use it the less likely that will happen. I dont want to have to go back to google.
Its a US based company so its almost certain that your data gets sold as privacy is just a suggestion in the US.
DDG uses more than just Bing, and they filter out many results from Bing.
Bing is their primary source of results for the traditional search entries, but if they’re able to determine the category of your search, they directly leverage specialized search engines instead.
I’ve been using a combo of
- https://git.lolcat.ca/lolcat/4get
- https://github.com/searx/searx and
- https://github.com/searxng/searxng
myself lately, and they can all use DDG. Being able to get specialized searches sent to the appropriate engine automatically or being able to choose the engine(s) manually is really nice. But they don’t have their own web crawler.
I’m starting to look into Yacy - which is supported by Searx - as a means to add a p2p web crawler and index under my control to the mix.
The only reason I use Bing is to play around with its chat AI.
DuckDuckGo and Kagi are both hybrid search engines, they both have their own crawlers and combine their results with results from other sources.
Friends don't let friends use a web browser without uBlock origin
Ublock Origin does nothing to stop Google's sponsored results, or SEO optimised articles which are barely disguised ads :(
If you’re seeing sponsored results in Google and you’re running uBlock Origin in Firefox then there’s something wrong. You might have an adware extension installed or some other issue on your machine, you might have disabled the filters that block those results in uBlock or might have a conflicting extension, or you might just need to update your filter lists.
Of course that doesn’t help the actually quality of results. You can use Let's Block It! - Search Engine Results to build a filter that can be added to uBlock Origin. This lets you customize the list for your search engine(s) of choice, and it has checkboxes to automatically block a lot of sites that just mirror content.
However, uBlacklist might be a better option, and Awesome uBlacklist includes a link to a list dedicated to blocking content farm links (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wdmpa/content-farm-list/main/uBlacklist.txt is the list itself that you would add as a uBlacklist subscription).
One of em installed it just because he saw me use it
Boycott Google
I'm over the era of ads dominating our lives. I know not everyone can do so, but I'm willing to pay a fair rate for a fair search and AI service. If we have to continue to live in this system then I think we should better enable competition in the tech space and stop some of these mafia business monopoly tactics.
Some companies are just disgustingly greedy. I pay for a new TV, for example, and that thing is trying to download ads and report my usage non-stop and I paid fairly to own the device. I'd support any political party that actually wants to protect consumers from the nonsense business pull.
If you'd be happy paying for ad-free search and AI experience, consider Kagi.
yet another Kagi shiller.
they are still pulling results from Bing. they are partially powered by their own engine, but it has a minor database of sites when compared to Bing.
And needing to have an account is just horrible for privacy.
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Even more reason to continue not using their search.
Alternatives? I'm using duckduckgo.
Kagi (paid)
Kagi is a hybrid with their own crawler (very small) and Bing. So basically the same as Duckduckgo.
Kagi pulls data from a bunch of different sources - including Google - but as far as I know, Bing isn't one of them. Duckduckgo like you said is 90+% Bing, without some of the tracking-related results.
But even if Kagi were pulling mostly from Bing - which is fine - the experience I've had is way different.
When I search Bing or DDG, the results I get are roughly the same (some more promoted crap with Bing, even with adblock; but otherwise really similar). And those results are.....ok. Sometimes they're better than Google's default results, sometimes not. They're usually not as good as Google's searches in "verbatim" mode, which is more like Old Google.
But the search results I get with kagi seem to be generally as good as Google+verbatim mode, or better (sometimes much better). It's generally the best results every time, and without ad blockers, or enabling certain modes, or whatever. And I've gone back and compared against other search engines a bunch just to compare and try to see if Kagi was really worth it.
Plus, the ability to easily set exclude sites, or search contexts, or a bunch of other stuff is super nice. I don't use them every day but when I use them they can be amazing.
+1 for Kagi. Started using it and never went back.
i second duckduckgo
Duckduckgo source their search queries to bing and yahoo.
Their sources:
- Other search engines such as bing
- Websites search engines such as wikipedia search
- They have their own crawlers
As per their website, queries are largely sourced from bing
So they are a metacrawler that has additional first party crawlers? That’s actually pretty neat.
Searx, or if you need Google results but proxied use Startpage.
Depending on your appetite for self-hosting, you could try searx, searxng, 4get, and/or Yacy. I copied the below from another comment I made earlier today as it relates to those engines:
I’ve been using a combo of
- https://git.lolcat.ca/lolcat/4get
- https://github.com/searx/searx and
- https://github.com/searxng/searxng
myself lately, and they can all use DDG. Being able to get specialized searches sent to the appropriate engine automatically or being able to choose the engine(s) manually is really nice. But they don’t have their own web crawler.
I’m starting to look into Yacy - which is supported by Searx - as a means to add a p2p web crawler and index under my control to the mix.
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Does Google even give results that aren't AI generated? I can only get results I want if I use my native language or add site:reddit.com in the end.
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Our planet has been through a lot this year, but we have not forgotten what is truly important... the great taste of Charleston Chew!
---- "Don't waste time!! In that situation you should immediately call an emergency, but you could also enjoy a cold Coke and Hamburger from Five-Guys, for just $7,99!" ---
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Of course they are, Google is an ad company.
The early adopters of LLM AI pay OpenAI $20/month with pleasure to use an adfree ChatGPT, but they represent a microscopic fraction of total internet users.
Google might be able to create a search product that looks like ChatGPT and partially answers the question with a relavent ad spot in return for that user NOT paying $20/month.
If Google has this would you use it and cancel your OpenAI subscription?
To the surprise of no one but the disgust of everyone.
Well, now I have another reason never to use your service, thanks!
Kind of a surprise that they took this long to include ads
Good the fuck on it.
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