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?
I used to use SearXNG until I discovered 4get
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.
Recently switched to Duck Duck Go and honestly I find the results better than Google. More accurate, less “sponsored” results, …
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.
I use 4get.ca
Ecosia!
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.
Google for most things.
Bing in an incognito window for weird porn.
- 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 )
I really like Brave search
Doesn’t work reliably in SearXNG unfortunately
Works fine on it’s own
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
@Fisch DuckDuckGo and StartPage
Brave search, it has its own index. I think it’s the only one to do that in the privacy space?
Brave? Isn’t that the crypto-scam browser? Same people?
They fixed those, I haven’t seen anything from them recently and the crypto stuff is optional anyway.
DuckDuckGo Lite. I get quick, no distractions search results.
DuckDuckGO for the bangs, with a custom !bang made for my favorite SearXNG instance; on which most of my ‘googling’ actually happens.
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 holdinginto 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.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 holdingorbag of holding dwouldn’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.
