Someone (average smartphone user) complained to me the other day that there isn’t a clear solution to navigating the web because it’s either ai slop or the results are poor.

And I kinda agree, nowadays you do have to put in some more effort to get what you’re looking for.

And so I told them I’d compile a list of which search engines are best for what purpose.

So far I have:

Startpage: works, but does a poor job of finding product codes and whatnot.

Duckduckgo: gives more general results afaik

Ecosia: works great but relies on bing

I have tried things like qwant ect but haven’t really settled on those.

Any other suggestions?

I’d tell em to use udm14 but it’s still google so I’d rather keep that as a plan B.

  • custom_username@reddthat.com
    0·
    2 months ago

    I often add the word “forum” to my searches to help get some actual human discussion instead of ad farming AI slop articles. Seems like the only way to figure things out these days.

  • Ryo Succubus@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    DuckDuckGo is said to cooperate with Google. Brave Search doesn’t give me confidence because the browser has had many privacy violation scandals in its code. StartPage is proprietary, but has good privacy laws, since its origin is from the Netherlands, although the service has been down very frequently lately. I think the best is without a doubt SearX my dear friend. Link: https://metasearx.com/info/en/about

  • spy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Duckduckgo for everything.

    At first, after the switch years ago, I’d occasionally fallback to Google to search for solutions or explanations of technical errors but I guess Duckduckgo got better and/or Google got worse and I no longer use any other.

    A few days ago I tried Qwant briefly with the idea to try to change to non-US services, don’t remember what for, and was not satisfied with the results. I did not try it for long enough to say it’s not a good choice though.

  • Joker@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 months ago

    I was using Brave search for a couple of years for everything and sometimes i was switching to duckduckgo if i couldn’t find what i needed but this was rare. Now i self host SearXNG but this is not an option for an avg user. Brave search is an independent engine and privacy focused.

  • JWTB@lemmy.today
    0·
    2 months ago

    Ecosia

    Works very well for everyday stuff, been using it for almost 2 years now, though it does take a bit to get used to it because it gives you slightly different results for the same search queries

    It’s not worse, it just interprets your queries slightly differently

    The only time it consistently fails and I switch to google is when I need to look up something via popular references, typically text on memes, for which Ecosia instead tends to return serious/factual results instead of the funny I was looking for

    • sidebro@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I wish Ecosia started rolling out EUSP in more countries, currently it’s only available in France.

  • Admirable_Bagel_0989@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 months ago

    I use duckduckgo on Firefox and mullvad browser, I also use it on my phones, but in my ungoogled chromium I’m trying out startpage.

  • LeapSecond@lemmy.zip
    0·
    2 months ago

    DDG for everything but especially searches in other countries (using the country toggle).

    Google for images and super localized results.

    Yandex for reverse image search (yes really).

  • stellargmite@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    Kagi. Not cheap but I seriously cant go back. Its really good for what I need - actual results at the top of the first page, based purely on what I searched for. What a concept. My needs are basic to be clear.

    • Chat_mots@jlai.lu
      0·
      2 months ago

      Searxng with custom engine weights and a proper filter of upranks/downranks domains give me as good results as kagi !

        • Chat_mots@jlai.luEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          No there is none unfortunately, but i’m in the process of making one! For now my settings are these. And i made a quick tool to compare results from a searxng instance to a list of desired results, you can find it here. If you want help with that, i’d be glad to help !! :)

          EDIT: more details in my settings example

    • myrmidex@belgae.social
      0·
      2 months ago

      I love how it allows me to move domains up or down. This allows me to have wikipedia results at the very top and have all X, FB, MS domains blocked from appearing in the results.

  • Mwa@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Brave search (and Mojeek,Yandex,Mwmbl through SearXNG) for most stuff and Start page as a final resort.

  • eremophila@lemmy.zip
    0·
    2 months ago

    I switched to noai.duckduckgo when startpage went ai. It is a lot better than when I tried duckduckgo in previous years, and definitely better than startpage was. I haven’t noticed any issues with search returns.