this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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In the last couple of months I have noticed an increasing trend of supplying me search results that are completely unrelated to the current query and tie back to my location or previous searches. I can say this with a high degree of certainty this is without a doubt beyond the 100th instance this has happened.

My browser is configured against tracking and fingerprinting (in fact all my devices are) which would make it fairly difficult to retain any data unless they are profiling me.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (3 children)

What would we suggest as a realistic alternative? Sears? Startpage? Brave? (I am no expert by the way, just looking for tips)

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I just switched to using Kagi recently and I like it a lot so far! Theres a free tier for 100/searches a month you can use to figure out if you like it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Me too. I was so reluctant to pay for a search engine at first since there are good alternatives out there I don't have to pay for. But I just at least wanted to try the first 100 free searches and was blown away by how great it is. It has some unique features like prioritizing or blocking specific domains, lenses and custom bangs. I payed the $10 the same day for Pro tier and 5 days later (yesterday) I even upgraded to Ultimate tier with ChatGPT-4 (called Kagi Assistant). I really, really enjoy Kagi so far. Most probably it's gonna be my one and only search engine for the next years to come.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are, are you telling me that I can block Fandom’s wiki results? Because I dream of such a future!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yes, you can. You can block any domain you want to appear in your search results. Here's the documentation for this feature.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Searx sucks for images in my experience, startpage was bought by an advertising company, brave is weird for a multitude of reasons but I don't know how good their search engine is as I've never tried it

However I do think that finding a searx instance that works for you and then using another engine like ddg for images is the way to go... You could add a shortcut like ".ddg garbage truck" for easily searching with for example ddg on firefox

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

How does searx suck for images exactly? 🫠

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Also a bit confused by this. I thought the point of searxng is to combine your preferred search engines. So couldn't I just configure ddg for the image results?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Maybe their point was that you cannot filter the images, like by color, size, license, etc

But anyway, if I want to show somebody a picture of something it works perfectly As for the results, they are pretty comparable between searx, ddg, and googlag.

I would even say searx wins on this one because 1. It's easier to navigate and open images 2. The nojs version of the search looks so much better than any other search engine

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Brave's search engine is... fine. I only use it by accident sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I've been using metager for some while and really like it. They're also part of an initiative pushing for a free as in freedom search index, so that's nice