my lil trick is I’d just add “Reddit” after most searches to find others in a similar situation or maybe a solution
It’s pretty amazing to search for something and actually see things you searched for.
Does this work any better than DuckDuckGo? People praise DDG, but imo it’s results are pretty shit and I could never end to sticking with it. It can’t even get basic quoted text syntax correct.
Yeah ddg is as bad as google imo. This works like the net used to be.
Damn, I’ve gotten so many good alternatives lately. Thanks for posting that.
Oh fuck man, that’s a great find! Thank you for sharing that. It’s actually providing really substantiative results which I haven’t seen from Google for at least 5 years.
I have definitely bookmarked that website, even though I use duck duck go I will probably use that as an alternate now.
Another good search engine that’s less useful for searches but for providing information is of course Wolfram alpha
Literally the only time I still use reddit
2 months ago that was fine.
Now I don’t have an app for that, the website on my mobile doesn’t open my search and instead tells me to download the official Reddit app, or the subs are nsfw or private.
Sigh, so much for easy answers at a type of the finger :(
Not that I’m recommending anyone give reddit any more traffic or leverage, but I’ve been using Stealth app at the recommendation of someone else on here. It’s downloadable through f-droid and specifically is meant to keep you anonymous and avoid any trackers and other trash normally found when opening reddit links. You can’t even log into an account. I use it on the rare moments I’m looking for stuff on there, it makes me feel a bit better about it.
Solid advice m8, I downloaded that 1. Funny thing that the 1st thing I saw on the app once I entered was a message saying “in a few weeks Stealth will end due to end of free API”. Sigh, these last months all these huge internet companies are making such a mess.
Maybe that does work again after the thing with subreddits going nsfw has been somewhat resolved but not sure. It was my thing too. I heard good things about bing of all places. In general search just got worse over the last 5-6 years.
I used Bing chat to plan my itinerary for my next vacation. These LLMs are the new best way to search, although the recent stories of their results becoming worse doesn’t bode well
People talk about Bing and duck duck go like they’re good replacements, and I’ve given them honest good faith tries.
I always switch my search engine back to Google after simply not getting the results I’m looking for
you can use Google or Bing from duckduckgo using !bangs. g! (for google) or b! (for bing) then whatever you are searching for. I use g! all the time for non privacy related things. and since duckduckgo doesn’t use trackers and all that the results can be terrible so sometimes I just resort to using g!
Using DuckDuckGo to search through Google seems pretty damn pointless if you ask me. If the search engine is shit and I am just roundabout using Google then why even bother?
I know you said the thing about trackers, but a lot of us don’t really care about that. If the end result is just using Google anyway then I’d rather just start with Google and not use another site to use Google.
oh yeah. if you don’t care, there really is not a point to use duckduckgo. I should say IMO because I’m sure a much more technically minded person will have a better answer.
I disagree. A lot of the Google search results are based on your previous search history and your advertising profile the company has generated for you, which skews and promotes most of the front page Google search results as advertising links. And unless you’re searching for an actual product, they are not so useful.
Like if I want to search for comments, and all my search results are advertising me telescopes and astronomy software that’s not so helpful.
I think something broke with Bing’s advanced search. It doesn’t seem to respond at all.
Up until the API debacle, that was my solution too. Now even that doesn’t work. It’s so bizarrely hard to look something up on the internet now.
I use chat GPT 4 for a lot of things instead of Google now.
Same here, for the reason that I don’t have to scroll through crap pages that only exist to show ads.
This is especially frustrating when trying to find parts for vehicles or machinery. Used to, one could search for something like “1988 Suzuki Samurai Oil Filter” and get the answer for all the common filter brands. But now all you get is links to an auto parts website, where you have to use their shitty search function and hope they have what you need.
I know your pain, I’ve skipped it entirely and always go for the part number. There are great resources for BMWs with sites like realoem.com, but what about other manufacturers?
I have been experiencing exactly this with a Suzuki in the last week. It gives me links to parts stores that don’t even have the part I’m looking for. Come on Google, get your shit together!
Nah.
What the average user is looking for is almost certainly gonna be near the top of a Google search.
I used to work for Google. Now I pay for Kagi.
Wasn’t seo revamped like decades ago because it was prone to spam? And now is best bid get to be in the first pages/results?
There’s actually a lot of theory and early work out there on the topic of federated search. While existing search aggregators like Searx and YaCY certainly qualify as federated, search infrastructure built from the ground up with decentralization in mind would look very different. All that to say this isn’t necessarily the end of the line.
I want to search for recipes that are not blog posts
This is a pretty good aggregator
This is amazing. Thanks for that. Usually when I’m looking up a recipe I don’t want to scroll for miles about the history of the recipe, so this solves that nicely.
oh, cool, thank you!
I’ve had good luck with whisk.com.
bbcgoodfood.com is another good one I check often
Often you’ll find a ‘print recipe’ button somewhere near the top of the page. Click on that, it’ll take you to what you’re looking for without all of the crap nobody cares about.
100% what I do. Print to pdf and then never go to the site, because they’re so over loaded with ads and pictures that will load and cause the page to bounce around.
Firefox+AdNauseam
Watching the numbers on each page go up is entertainment enough. Best part is that it stops the ad popping in the background so your page rarely jumps
How’s that compare with Ublock.origin?
It’s different from the technical end but it works by clicking the ads and filling them with junk to cost. It essentially removes the ad for you
AdNauseam integrates with UBO, so you’d get both. Basically, it virtualizes clicks on ads so ad sellers get charged for the click but it’s all hidden in the background from you.
That said, I kinda have mixed feelings about it. Ad clicks will help support sites you like, so even if you’re blocking ads you’re still getting ‘served’ and ‘interacting’ with them. On the other hand, it tells sites 'hey all these ads you’re serving aren’t making your website shitty and unusable (but they generally are) so keep it up! And it tells ad agencies and the industry ‘oh yeah we sure love clicking ads keep slapping them in my face at every corner’. And if ad buyers are realizing their clicks are all ghost clicks, they’ll stop buying ad space. Which just means shittier lowest common denominator ads in more places.
Yeah, I despise that every fucking recipe is a blog post. I don’t care that little Becky loved this soup, I just want to know how much salt I should add.
Half the time I look at a website or article it is just AI generated crap anyway. Oh you want a product review? Here are a half dozen articles that have summarised the Amazon reviews of an item, with no first hand experience.
Google “Best vacuum cleaner”
Top 6 hits: “We evaluated the 5 brands that paid us the most and found that they all suck up your dirt. We can’t really speak ill of any of them because this is an ad and we signed a contract. Please use our embedded links so we can have more money.”
And the website is called something like Best-Vacuum-Cleaners-Blog.com
What’s worse is most of what comes up isn’t even a hands on review, it’s literally someone doing what I just did, which is type “vacuum cleaner” into Amazon and see what came up. Then they give it reviews based on the bullshit in the description.
I want a review from someone who sees these everyday and has a deep hatred of every vacuum in existence. He’s the one who knows that such and such used to be good until they replaced this part with plastic because they have a new CEO, and now it’s no better than a dirt devil.
At least with vacuums however, there’s a few guys out there with carpet swathes, children, and dogs at home that get to take vacuums from work and do youtube tests with them. Unfortunately they usually don’t try to game the algorithm so they’re pretty deep in there.
That’s why I use Kagi. It’s a paid search engine and the results are actually really good.
Do they already have their own index? Last time I used it (when it was still beta) it was quite okay, but it was basically yandex or whatever with a different front-end and site-pinning
Look at https://kagi.com/faq .
They basically query other search engines and APIs in a privatized manner and they use their own indexes as well. I used Google, Ecosia, StartPage, DDG, a self-hosted SearXNG instance and then Brave. I liked DDG and I kinda liked Brave Search, as well. But in comparison to Kagi, they’re all not that good in my opinion.
The image search of Kagi is especially what blows me away. It just shows relevant results for my queries and I’m satisfied.
I love kagi. I use it mainly for work, where it gives much better results. It even has a programmer lens so that it shows results that are relevant to programmers. But its image search didn’t work that well for me. Not sure if I’m just not formulating the queries right though.
I just started my trial, so far it’s looking good!
This whole thread reads like astroturfers
deleted by creator
When we’re talking about the issues of search engines, and a whole bunch of people come in and “organically” promote a paid service, then my astroturfing detection rises up. This is how modern advertisement works and it fucking sucks.
I haven’t used kagi, but the service being paid is not the red flag you think it is, as long as the privacy policy and ToS make sense.
deleted by creator
Literally every person in this subthread who said something positive about Kagi is very clearly just a normal user who has recently posted things completely unrelated to it, judging by their history.
Yes, this is exactly how it works. This behavior is well documented.
Not saying 100% all these users are astroturfing accounts, but I’m just pointing out this looks like it
It’s tough, because people also like to recommend things they like. If a friend in real life told you about the new CastX® Iron Extreme™ cast iron skillet that they got and how they love its rich iron flavor, you would just think they just like their new pan.
deleted by creator
That’s why I use brave search, it’s a free search engine and the results are actually really good
Even if it’s good, their long term goal will always be to appease their advertising customers, not you. Google has the ability more than anyone else to make the perfect search engine but they’re not spending their time and resources on that because that’s not what will increase their revenue. That model is just fundamentally broken.
I used it before and unfortunately, it sucks in comparison to Kagi.
Idk, I found it to be quite good but it may be just me knowing how to search stuff (even tho Google just gives shitty results and DDG is hit or miss)
I also know how to use keywords, etc. And maybe I went a bit overboard when I said Brave Search sucks. It doesn’t suck, but with Kagi, I don’t feel like a product any more and the search results make sense again, like with Google a couple years ago. Most free search engines just don’t work that good any more.
If you would’ve told me 2 years ago that I’ll be paying for a search engine in the future… Well, I would’ve thought that you’re crazy. But here I am now.
Search engine protocol:
Ignore first few results (ads)
Ignore next few results (bullshit spam comparison farms)
Ignore really annoying site you think is ok but is a usability nightmare
Ignore subsection of reddit links
Find 0-1 useful links on first page
Regret
Trying to find the tiny “show more results” button sandwiched between the first page of shit results and the weird AI bubbles of shit results just to find semi-decent shit on pages 2-3 makes me wish i was dead every single time.
Could be worse. Could be infinite scroll
The sad thing is the Reddit Links probably contain the most useful answers that google will show you
I know. But I’ll use them as a last resort
Use them, costs bandwidth and CPU cycles.
Yes but it will be offset by traffic boosts for advertisers
Junk data that costs the advertisement without a return on investment
That’s not how it works. Reddit is able to even get interest because of traffic counts. Same for IPO values
If you’re blocking their ads and not logged in, you are costing them.
Use an adblocker. Unless, you mean people go on the internet without using protection?
They do. Either due to technical ineptitude (like approximately everyone’s parents) or, and that might be worse, with the conviction of doing “the right thing,” like a friend of mine.
That won’t make a difference. Reddit knows how much traffic they get and they use that number to sell ads
It really winds me up how results that match every search term aren’t prioritised any more. I often search for very specific pieces of hardware, and it’s been a nightmare since the late 2010s. You now have to pore over each result to check that it’s 100% what you’re are looking for.
SEO exacerbates the problem, but I’d say the root cause is the algorithm itself.
Have you tried putting your search between " " ? It usually helps improve my results.
Thought I’d add for people that may not know, the quotes mean exact match for what’s between the quotes and only give results if it includes that term (unless I mixed something up). Whenever you click on Google’s ‘must include’ it puts quotes around the term. Can be handy or make things worse depending what you’re looking for. Worse is while programming and tracking a specific issue, unless they used the exact words you won’t get a result. Better for part numbers if they never get changed.
Been awhile since I went into the nitty gritty of the searching functions so if this is incorrect please reply with the correct info, been awhile since I really had to think about what quotes does behind the scenes.
That used to work, but these days seems to do little other than sightly change the order of the same useless results.
I swear sometimes it feels like a superpower to have grown up in the 90s and learned the ground rules for multiple OSes, search tools, and file systems - the descendants of which are nearly all still in use today.
I defer of course to any oldheads who can still bang out a long .bat file or compile and configure Linux; I just mean it’s a very useful quirk of the era that skills learned on windows 3.1 or OSX are still broadly applicable, even in fields where ‘using the computer’ is a minor task of one’s workday.
I agree so much. It feels like I “understand” how a computer talks and interacts as opposed to most people I work with just learn processes by heart and have no clue what to do once their process breaks.
If you have avoided learing how to use the internet/search engines till now you probably couldn’t learn if you tryed
wait until the AI chatbots are optimized with SEO spam.
How do we find information these days? I still default to my search engine, which is often google. I moonlight over to DDG often, but usually an operating system upgrade gets me back on Google for a while.
I used to just use Google but add reddit to the end of the search, and it’d usually pick up several relevant posts/conversations that would have the answer I wanted somewhere in the comments. I’ll still keep doing that for a while probably, but given how reddit has been going, and with people erasing their accounts, I doubt that will last long. I’m holding out hope for a good search functionality on lemmy, since reddits own search was pretty unusable.
I use DDG and think it does a great job, at least as good as google these days. There are certainly times that it falls short when compared with other search engines, but at that point I just use bangs and that effectively solves any problems I have had with it.
Duckduckgo is basically just bing results. But, I still use it for the bangs and lessened tracking. Being able to search any engine from the same search bar is remarkably convenient.
