I know it’s been getting worse over time, but I could still find what I needed after some digging.
Recently it’s been like 10 minutes of adjusting search terms, still getting completely useless or irrelevant results, and me just giving up afterwards. Other search engines seem just as bad.
They all suck anymore. Google fell the furthest though.
And it seems like it completely disregards search modifiers like quotes or the minus sign at this point. The modifiers are overridden by the algorithms pushing preferred sites, or Google just gives few or no returns as if there are no sites featuring your search criteria, which is completely false because it’s perfectly happy to return paid sites with the same but incorrect search term.
The results are usually the most clicked, not necessarily the factual links. Others have recommended kagi. I haven’t tried it yet. I remember when the internet started and you had to use them all!
Got some bad news about Kagi, folks…
Hmm maybe Dogpile it is then!
I was just about to try Kagi out and then ran into this post of a bunch of different search engines. Dogpile is not on there, so maybe I need to look it up now!
Not if you used Dogpile. Also it still exists somehow.
I’ve used Kagi’s free trial. I’d turn to it when nothing else was helping and it did really well, but recently it hasn’t been helping either. It’s probably still fine for most things, but I’m often searching niche developer/programming things that are too burried under SEO/AI spam to find anymore.
FWIW, the default “programming” lens works quite well in Kagi, you can also create your own lens if you have a set of websites from which you routinely search info, and there are tons of bangs already (which can also be mapped to lenses BTW). In addition, you can downrank AI/SEO stuff when you find it (it is downranked by default in kagi), so that over time your results are quite clean.
I’ll have to try kagi some time
Is that the one that costs money? You can’t have a true incognito search if that’s the case.
You can’t have? Or you can’t be sure?
Because you certainly can have. Just because you pay, doesn’t mean they will log your searches. In fact Kagi claim they don’t. And since their only income comes from paying users. If anyone ever found out they’re lying about that, they’d quickly loose a big chink of subscribers and income. As well as get sued for fraud. So it’s rather unlikely they do.Unlike every other search provider, Kagi is the only one with a business model that ensures it’s users are the customer, not the product. When actually using it every day, that’s quite obvious in the results. Even when you search for a company directly, it’s Wikipedia entry is usually the first result. The the company site is the second.
I wouldn’t be so sure of Kagi doing the right thing…
Not being sure was part of my point. We can’t be sure. But all their incentives are aligned in the right way. That’s the best we can hope for. And better than any alternative right now.
I understand the sunk cost fallacy, but I truly think you should read that entire page, friend… That’s all I’ll say though! :)
How many times are you going to post that link? We have seen it, and at this point you’re just spamming.
We get it, you don’t like Kagi. Stop spamming the thread.
Incognito is on your client side browser in that the browser doesn’t retain any trace of the current session once you close the tab. The search engine still knows what you whacked off to.
True, but worth reading their about page and privacy page. Not saying it’ll stay this way, but the way they are running is something that makes more sense then being sold as a product to Google. And you aren’t getting much of an incognito these days with all the fingerprinting they are doing.
I will admit kagi search isn’t the highest performer, but it’s viable. DDG, Start page, etc. Might give you more privacy, or not (hard to tell with DDG these days), but it might be worth trying a different model for a while.
I miss the days when the internet was truly free, but in lieu of that we have to have something better. Kagi is a start.
Then != Than
Might want to look again…
True Incognito mode is a myth, it only stops keeping a history in the tab of that browser. Everytime you use a browser to go to any site ever, the browser logs you went there. So does your ISP and the site your connecting to. No matter which mode or browser you use, if you go to Google, then Google knows you went there and logs your searches.
The closest you can come to browsing the web anonymously would be with a mix of dedicated privacy OS like Tails and either a VPN or Tor as a middile man, but that assumes those proxys are not corrupted. Free VPNs make money by selling your “secret browsing” habits.
The internet is nothing more than wires, if you connect your wire to someone elses, every intermediatary knows.
You can use uBlock Origin and other privacy add-ons to block tracking and a VPN to hide your IP address but if you’re logged in to a search engine’s account then everything you search is tied to you no matter what you do.
If you’re logged in a vpn that’s also true of the vpn, and all these measures are not stopping FAANGS
Good VPN providers take certain measures to ensure your anonymity.
A vpn is not a proxy and cannot do anything to protect you beyond changing your exit point. You are not anonymous using a vpn, especially not with any vpn that has servers in a five eyes country.
It is half okay, but only if they are not getting paid to screw up your results. It is a coup against democracy where freedom of information is freedom of the press and is an entire fundamental pillar of democracy. Google’s entire business model has always been neo feudalism. A web crawler and search engine is like a library, it must be neutral, objective, and publicly funded as a non profit. Much the same with YT, it is our digital public commons and the most efficient form for information sharing in the primary form of human communication.
yes. use any of the following, in no particular order:
- ecosia.org - A non-profit certified B corp that plants trees by serving ads in your search results. Bing search underneath.
- duckduckgo.com - A privacy friendly search engine. Primarily sourced from Bing but mixes in a few other sources.
- any SearXNG instance - A self-hostable search front-end to various search engines.
- marginalia.nu - specifically ‘random’ - An independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren’t aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.
Aside from DDG, these are all new to me. I’ll take a look this week, thank you.
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You can’t actually believe the default search engine in most configurations isn’t used.
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You honestly though the most used search engine has been abandoned by everyone? Maybe share what you’re using instead of just being pretentious?
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Lmao. Don’t kid yourself, a vast majority do. Id bet 80-90%
Probably 99%. This question was only meant to be taken as “I am above the common pleb, those idiots”
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This is what I call the linux bubble. People who use linux and are used to alternate solutions, which may offer better performance than the norm. Then they surround themselves with other like minded people. So much so that they begin to forget that they are using alternatives rather than the norm. Despite what benefits they gain from alternatives, some people can’t grasp that they are, in fact, alternatives.
Twitter has 368 million monthly users. I find it to be a cesspool of hate, racism, and right wing agenda.
So you would think mastodon or bluesky would have equal or better numbers.
Bluesky has 9.7 million monthly users, which includes a huge recent boost because of brazil ceasing twitters ability to operate. I think that alone was 2 million users.
And mastodon has 975,000 monthly users.
So yes, despite it’s flaws, twitter is still the default in microblogging. By a LOT. But I’m sure the feeling around here is “who still uses twitter???”.
Everybody. Same way everybody uses google. Same way everybody uses instagram. And it’s not even close to being close.
The fact I’m most flabbergasted about is that only a third of people use password managers by default. An independent American surveysource: bitwarden over 2000 “random” Internet users shows 34% use a password manager. The randomness of this survey is probably skewed, which would make the total percentage even lower in actuality.
Which is insane since they’ve mostly been using iOSs or Androids built in password manager for as long as that’s been a thing on both. Doubt they even realize that’s what it is though.
I read on here (I think) a couple months ago that adding “before:2023” to your search terms improves results a lot. I’ve found it to be true. Unless I’m looking for something specifically from the last couple years.
Unfortunately, I’m usually searching software development issues and half the results are a decade old (and are no longer relevant for the language anymore). Assuming “after:xx” works too this night help, thank you!
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It is. It also is the best thing to find something on Reddit. And as much as I hate what it has become, it still is the best source of information. But this changes rapidly, sadly. I give it until 2027, then the information on Reddit is garbage too.
If you use Firefox you can add a Search Engine that removes the google cruft.
In about:config browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh Boolean, hit the plus sign to add. Exit out of that screen. Then go to Search engines in Settings and “Add” [ whatever name you want to call it ] as a new search engine. And paste this URL and save it. https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14
You will see that it deletes everything but search when you use it. You can also just use the url but you must replace the %s with your search term, like red+espresso. Example: https://www.google.com/search?q=red+espresso&udm=14
I’m sure this works for other browsers, I just use Firefox.
Ooo I haven’t heard of this, thank you! The amount of garbage they’ve added is absurd.
I have tried many times to do exactly what you said, and I still am not getting the option to add a custom search engine.
Any advice you have is appreciated.
This is correct (your screen). Now go to your Firefox Settings, click on Search on the left side, scroll down to the Search Shortcuts section and below that box is a button labeled Add. You will get a box to add a search engine, the Alias field is optional. Make sure after you add it, there is a blue check in front of it on the list in the box or it’s invisible.
If you’re going to use it as a one-off, you can put the udm part first, making it much easier to type into:
I love you.
I’ve already added a new search engine like this, but what does the about:config setting do?
Returns the add custom search engine button. Which for some reason, has been hidden by default.
Hm interesting. I guess that is part of why tenbluelinks.org even needs to exist. Because a custom one is now a PITA. Thanks.
Oh my god, thank you for this. You solved a year long sufferfest for this internet stranger because of that greyed out button. Every god-damned guide online points you towards that button and I could not find the solution for it. What the fuck Mozilla
You can right click the URL bar for sites that support the OpenSearch XML standard. Which I guess is what they wanted to replace it with. But I don’t really know why they removed the button to a about: config setting. Could at least be a checkbox or something to enable.
HAHAHAHAHAH no. Google Search has gotten so much worse in the last couple of YEARS more like.
The reason behind this is not a bug but a feature. Google wants the trip from search to result to take longer as they can show you more ads that way.
The internet has gotten worse in general, and it’s accelerating.
The vast majority of online content is now AI-generated.I use Ecosia instead of Google, but I know that Google recently added a “forums” category to the top of their search. Have you tried that? Hopefully it will help bring back to life independent forums.
Try finding old band photos. Basically impossible
I recommend Kagi, I’ve been using it for about six months now and results - especially small web results like blogs - are so much better. I also have a pretty good time image searching compared to when I was on Google.
Yes it’s paid, but that to me is the price of resisting enshittification. Find a company that isn’t a publicly traded for-profit world-burner and pay them for their service. Is the idea of paying for email and search an alien concept to me? Yes. But I’m either paying Google whatever €120 a year in eyeballs on ads and an increasingly worse experience, or I’m paying €80 a year and getting a markedly better experience.
Now it’s up to Kagi and Proton to not turn into shitty companies while other competitors catch up and we have a thriving ecosystem again.
I second kagi. Have been using it for almost a year now and I will stick with it. I switched from google to ddg some years ago to ddg before, but kagi is simply better.
A colleague also uses it and is also very satisfied with it.
Kagi is amazing. I absolutely love its’ filtering features and I use that forums toggle all the time. It feels like such a more relevant experience for me. I tried it out with the 300 searches limit, but that wasn’t even close to enough, turns out I easily use 4 times that in a month and even though it’s not cheap it feels like it’s worth it.
Got some bad news about Kagi…
I’ve read it, I read the discussion around it, idk man. One guy’s thoughts on a company and it’s founder isn’t enough to move me off of something without better proof, better alternatives, and worse crimes than maybe having a bad long term vision.
Hopefully every company outgrows it’s founder and becomes a system. We’ll have to see, right now I’m satisfied and that gets me off Google and signals to others I’m willing to pay.
It’s okay if you don’t care, that’s on you and the others who don’t care.
I was about to pay for the thing, and stumbled upon that website that provides quite a bit of substantial “what the fuck?” Reactions from me.
Just throwing the knowledge out there for people like me who do care. :)
That article is quite dense with inaccurate information (e.g. they own a T-shirt factory), and a lot of guesses. There is no need to listen to a random guy idea about kagi’s AI approach when they have that documented on their site.
Also, the “blase attitude to privacy” is because of a technicality of GDPR? (Not having the ability to download a file with your email address) I am a big fan of GDPR, and their privacy policy is the best I have seen (I read the pp of every product I use and I often choose products also based on it), so really I don’t care about the technical compliance to GDPR (I am not an auditor), but the substantial compliance.
All-in-all, the article raises some good points, but it is a very random opinion from a random person without any particular competencies in the matter. I would take it for what it is tbh
EDIT: To add a few more:
- They achieved profitability (BTW, 2 years of operation and being profitable with 30k users, they really don’t know what they are doing /s)
- Their price changed twice. It was raised once, and the change was reverted later on, with unlimited searches. For me that is a great sign, especially considering the transparency of telling exactly how much each search costs for them.
Source: see https://blog.kagi.com/what-is-next-for-kagi (published ~1 month after the linked post).
Inaccurate about the factory, even though it was posted on their own blog…?
I understand the sunk cost fallacy, but standing up for a corporation that says no one but a few deserves privacy, is a little whacky to me.
They don’t own the T-shirt factory. It is a simple sentence, they used a small Serbian (I think) company. The business entity is to import goods.
It’s a formal difference but shows how sloppy that post is.
I stopped using it last year it got so bad, I ended up using DDG but that’s gotten shit and I’ve found myself back on Google. To me it feels 10% better than it was when I stopped.
Although everyone’s experiences with Google are so different we’re probably all being A/B tested.
