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submitted 10 months ago by tardigrada@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

For the past few years, a growing number of users, analysts, and experts raised alarms about a truth that feels obvious to a lot of people who surf around in web browsers: the quality of Google results is in serious decline. Google disagrees.

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[-] quatschkopf34@feddit.de 17 points 10 months ago

What are those? DDG, Bing, Ecosia etc. are all not really better than Google. I haven‘t tried Kagi yet, mostly because it costs money.

[-] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 10 months ago

I'm using Qwant and it gives me better results than Google. Even Startpage does and it's using Google behind the scenes.

Google managed to fuck up their personalization so much it makes the results worse (it's almost like they only really care about tailoring the ads /s). And I'm suspecting it's by design, if the results suck the users are more likely to either press the ads or go through more result pages, therefore seeing more ads.

[-] Nyfure@kbin.social 15 points 10 months ago

I am actually kinda ok with DDG, but the results are.. not always very great and the second page is filled with weird websites related to my location..
Maybe i should try both Kagi and Searx

[-] jherazob@beehaw.org 7 points 10 months ago

Kagi went to bed with Brave, and when people protested they ignored it

[-] Nyfure@kbin.social 5 points 10 months ago

Oh boy.. guess the future will really be running our own stacks

[-] anytimesoon@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

What do you mean with "went to bed"?

[-] jherazob@beehaw.org 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Here's a Masto thread explaining a bit the polemic

TL;DR: They became partners with Brave, when people pointed out Brave's objectionable politics they responded... poorly (still read the thread, it has much more info)

Quick edit: Was pointed at this, looks like it's even worse and the Kagi owner himself might be very objectionable too

Second edit: And it keeps getting worse, of course they had to get into AI...

[-] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 7 points 10 months ago

Yikes, thanks so much for these links. I've avoided kagi for awhile now for lack of need but it had been top of list of 'things I should try'. Guess I can strike that one out now.

[-] kusivittula@sopuli.xyz 14 points 10 months ago

i was struggling with DDG too, but in another post i saw someone recommend searx and it is actually really good.

[-] Mixel@feddit.de 7 points 10 months ago

Fyi searx is deprecated or at least not maintained and discontinued Switch to searxNG which is an active fork and it is really good :D

[-] kusivittula@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 months ago

searxng.site is what i use. i didn't even know it had different forks too

[-] kosmoz@lemm.ee 13 points 10 months ago

You can actually try kagi for free. 100 searches/month should be enough for you to decide if it's worth the money to you.

(Not affiliated; just a happy user)

[-] jherazob@beehaw.org 6 points 10 months ago

Kagi went to bed with Brave, and when people protested they ignored it

[-] wahming 7 points 10 months ago

That's kinda stretching the definition of 'went to bed'. Brave is one of the result providers you can select as a source, and that's about it

[-] Mixel@feddit.de 3 points 10 months ago

Is kagi a metasearch engine? Or does it have its own crawler and so on?

[-] frog@beehaw.org 5 points 10 months ago

I'm going to give Kagi a try, thanks to this comment - I didn't know there was a free trial.

[-] Sina@beehaw.org 6 points 10 months ago

DDG is on pair with google, that's enough for me. (in some topics far better and in some far worse)

[-] lily33@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago

Not for international (non-English) results.

[-] Sina@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months ago

This is 100% true, no contest.

[-] Mixel@feddit.de 3 points 10 months ago

I agree it does suck in general One thing I tried is using a metasearch engine and for the least part I find the results better and way more customizable (for reference I am self hosting searxNG)

[-] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 1 points 10 months ago

same, just being able to blacklist content farms I dislike is worth the price (standing up a container) of admission, but there's plenty more good things.

[-] w00@feddit.de 2 points 10 months ago

You can use Kagi for free if you make an account and only use it when the others fail. Love Kagi, but won't pay for it.

this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
233 points (100.0% liked)

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