this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
11 points (92.3% liked)

Open Source

31101 readers
361 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/4448974

I've recently started using a self hosted SearXNG instance but I'm still using the search engines enabled by default (google, duckduckgo and qwant). What search engines do you have enabled or which ones do you feel you've gotten the best results with?

top 21 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used to use SearXNG until I discovered 4get

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Isn't this how all the privacy respecting search engines started?

The issue is the search index.

Afaik, only Brave uses its own search index. (It acquired Tailcat, so there's that.)

I use Duckduckgo, but it uses Bing as its base.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Recently switched to Duck Duck Go and honestly I find the results better than Google. More accurate, less "sponsored" results, ...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

DDG doesn't like to exclude words from your searches though. It lets you exclude sites using the -site: parameter, but won't exclude individual words. And it constantly gives me search results that don't include the words that I'm searching for.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I use 4get.ca

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

I've been using kagi for the last few months, I like it but due to the pricing it's changes how I use search.

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

Google for most things.

Bing in an incognito window for weird porn.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
  • Searx for piracy stuff. (occasional use)
  • Google because kinda used to UI and the direct quick answer without having to look for it in the site
  • duckduckgo is the default on Firefox and it's about as good as Google when i use it.
  • Yandex is weirdly the best one for image search.(occasional use)
  • Bing via the AI because it acts as the best teacher I've ever had. Patient, understanding and adapting to my level ( use a lot recently )
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I really like Brave search

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Doesn't work reliably in SearXNG unfortunately

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I know, I used it before but I wanted to try out SearXNG and it has some features I really like that other search engines don't have

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@Fisch DuckDuckGo and StartPage

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Brave search, it has its own index. I think it's the only one to do that in the privacy space?

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

Brave? Isn't that the crypto-scam browser? Same people?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They fixed those, I haven't seen anything from them recently and the crypto stuff is optional anyway.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

DuckDuckGo Lite. I get quick, no distractions search results.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

DuckDuckGO for the bangs, with a custom !bang made for my favorite SearXNG instance; on which most of my 'googling' actually happens.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just define my own bangs. Both Firefox and Google let you set up custom search engines easily. For example I just type d bag of holding into my URL bar and it searched my favourite D&D reference site. Faster, private and I can select whatever search engine I want for regular search.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's good to know! And I'm sure it's beneficial information for those that were unaware of that. However, (unless I'm wrong) the method you described requires you to be deliberate and precise in the placement of your own bang; i.e. bag of d holding or bag of holding d wouldn't work. As I often just start typing whatever I want to search/look for and only notice midway/afterwards that I hadn't specified where I would like to search, the built-in 'bangs' in Firefox/Chrome just wouldn't cut it unless I would try to rewire my behavior.