Despite how bad Google Search had become, DuckDuckGo and Bing are somehow still worse. While Google displays the result in the first few, DDG and Bing have no idea what I’m looking for.
Gotta try Kagi sometime.
I hear this a lot, but I changed from google to DDG about a year ago and haven’t even considered looking back. I can find everything I need quite easily and can only think of maybe a handful of times that I have had to resort to using a bang to try and find something using another search engine. I’m very curious what the difference is between my experience and that of others who have problems DDG.
On technical stuff, I find DDG better than google since I don’t have to wade through their sponsored ad and results. Google is getting unusable that way. I try it every few months when I can’t get an answer on DDG and it doesn’t work any better.
I totally agree with that. I’ve also found Google worse about being influenced by SEO tactics (probably just because it’s targeted for that) and so you get bogus results like GeeksForGeeks that are often really poorly written and irrelevant, sometimes even wrong, up at the top.
Anecdotal evidence, but I swapped out Google for DDG about 5-6 years back and haven’t missed it. I do use Google sometimes but it’s once in 4-5 months when DDG fails me, which is acceptable to me.
Same here, I can usually find everything within the first 3-4 entries unless it’s a bit too abstract than it ends up at the bottom of the 1st page. I don’t understand people complaining about it so much as I depend on search engines for day to day and work related stuff so literally several times everyday. Although it’s possible I got used to how it works but if so then I would have had to swap between ddg and google alot if the quality actually was that low.
DDG just kinda sucks for basic information. When I took up a business, google gives me the location, phone number and some relevant information about the business. DDG gives me their website.
Personally I’m noticing the opposite.
I tend to do a lot of technical-related searches. I’m finding I’m getting consistently better results from DuckDuckGo / Bing – what I’m looking for is usually available on the first page without having to faff around.
With Google however, it was drawing parallels to what I’m looking for but not what I explicitly queried. I had to either enable verbose search, or manipulate the search to look for specific words. Even then what I was looking for was in the 3-4 page.
On google, I started seeing too many of the first results tagged as “ad”. It became even more concerning when those tag dissapeared but the same websites showed up.
I used to able to trouble shoot nearly anything I needed to, but now I come across completely unrelated posts more than I come across solutions.
I was iffy about bing, I still kind of am, but at least I find what I’m looking for most of the time. I’m personally going to wait a bit before trying out other browsers, when there’s a bit less risk of them selling. I remember a good android launcher that used to be trusted before they sold to another company
I don’t know much my opinion matters: but the unique features in kagi honestly really help me find what I need. I can lower domains, or raise other ones, it can search archives and has a general set of features that make digesting and finding relevant results easier. It’s like a breath of fresh air, I can search and find not just endlessly search.
Try a Searxng instance. It’s a meta search that pulls form multiple engines (incl. Google).
Instances here: https://searx.space/
