I suspect that this is the direct result of AI generated content just overwhelming any real content.
I tried ddg, google, bing, quant, and none of them really help me find information I want these days.
Perplexity seems to work but I don’t like the idea of AI giving me “facts” since they are mostly based on other AI posts
ETA: someone suggested SearXNG and after using it a bit it seems to be much better compared to ddg and the rest.
You know what I miss? Search engines that honored Boolean operators. I am often looking for niche results and being able to -, ! and NOT is incredibly useful. But that’s just not a thing anymore. I know part of it is that SEO includes antonym meta data that ruins this but it would still be helpful on occasion.
I’ve been using Mojeek lately and it looks like their advanced search can do some of that.
https://www.mojeek.com/advanced.html
Reminds me of early Google search.
I have it a test with some operators from the search bar instead of using the form and it did exactly what it was supposed to. I’ll keep this on hand. Thank you.
let us know if you find anything which could be better also, we’re always looking for ways to improve
It’s not just you. Search got worse, and it did so intentionally.
Ed Zitron lays it all out really well, with all the receipts, but the basic version is this; Google has an incentive to make you search more for the same things, because then they can show you more ads. And google is, first and foremost, an ad delivery company. Every “product” they own is an ad delivery vehicle. It’s not just AI slop that made search based; Google made search bad, and everyone else followed suit, to a greater or lesser degree.
they’re pretty bad, but ddg at least feels like I’m getting actual results.
Yeah DDG is great. The only thing I find is its not good at local results but a quick !g on the end gets me the local results im looking for.
What does !g do? Add Google results?
Redirects your search to Google. You can put it anywhere in the search; for example
!g how do i shot web,how do i shot web !gandhow do i !g shot webwill all land you into Google.There are other 13k (yup) bangs like this. Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Yahoo, Quora, most gaming wikis, etc. A few sites (like Google and Bing) have multiple bangs, that land you directly into a specific page (e.g. !bv searches Bing videos). More info here.
*how do i shot web
It’s an older meme, but it checks out.
I’ll fix it! I forgot that this is like “an hero”, one of those memes where the error is part of the charm.
If you’re using ddg without !bangs - you’re only having half the fun.
!w Wikipedia
!imdb IMDb
!gi Google images
there’s tons more. if ddg is the default search engine these bangs save you the time to go to the site first and click the search bar. basically changing your default search into a specific search.
oh, good tip. I didn’t know about that.
you tack !g to the end of whatever the resulting search URL is?
Can be anywhere in the search.
“cute dogs !g” “!g cute dogs” “cute !g dogs”
Those all work the same, though clearly one is more cursed than the others. They have those for a bunch of other sites as well, for example if you want to search YouTube specifically/directly you can use !yt but I can’t kick the habit of just going to those sites first and then searching directly on there.
Yes DDG Bangs are a great fast way of getting around the web. Works really well with LibRedirect. Here’s a Full List of DDG Bangs.
Holy shit the bangs work at the end of the search query too!? I’ve always painfully pressed Home on my keyboard to add a !g whenever I realise I had better searched this on Google
That’s how I felt until about a month ago, now ddg is really useless
I prefer DDG, but I hate the news search. 90% of the results are paywalled.
Oh, and sometimes the image search will return a pile of porn for a seemingly clean search request. I once searched for “R34 Skyline” expecting Nissans, and got VERY different results without safe search.
Searching for R34 is on you. Naming something R34 is on Nissan. The popularity of R34 is on all of us.
R34 is also short for rule 34 - “if it exists, there’s porn of it on the internet”
So if you search R34 and anything, you’ll get porn.
Now I want to see some skyline porn
Here you go!
spoiler
Thanks for making me feel inadequate…
according to Architecture Today, that structure is sexual in nature.
Drake might have the Six, but I have the Eight, if you know what I mean
I mean my dicker
Oh that’s naughty
I was very worried about zooming in on this expecting something bad. My innocence is lost… wait no I never had any. My bad.
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News orgs clinging to tradition.
i use archive.is for anything I really want to read.
most news is fluffy bullshit anyway.
Agree. It’s an important part of media literacy these days.
For political news, I’m only interested in what was actually said, not what is reported to be said .
It’s just that Bing/DDG seem to promote news from these sites as if they’re sponsored links… but without the disclosure.
I’m pretty sure here in the states, a site is obligated to identify ad content and sponsored content, so when a big company like Microsoft or Alphabet is doing it (Bing and Google) it makes me wonder if there’s been a recent carve-out or relaxation of the reg.
That makes the return adversarial to the end-user, hence the point of the regulations.
bummer.
I see all the labeled sponsored links on Bing, but I generally get high quality results outside of those.
Every search engine I’ve encountered is weird about porn. At first it decides whether or not you’re looking for porn or not looking for porn. If it assumes you are then all the actual porn hits are promoted to the top, where non-porn hits are down-ranked. Vice versa, if it decides you’re not looking for porn.
Once of the fun search engine games is to find out what sets of ambiguous words trigger the porn flag. Pure tended to be one due to a brand name, even when I was looking for pure minerals at the time. Siri created some conflicts, since there’s both a well known LLM digital assistant, rule 34 for the same and a popular porn star.
I’d really like a search engine that let porn sites fall in the hit list without deciding first whether I was trying to look for porn, since I sometimes do metasearching.
You know that’s just Bing, right?
is it? that kind of makes sense, because I still use Bing occasionally while Google is completely out of rotation, although I don’t find Bing as good as duckduckgo.
edit: it is not! looks like the DuckDuckGo search engine is an aggregate of hundreds of search engines, including their own duck duck bot, excluding Google but including some Bing results.
Their FAQ hems and haws about that, but (in the past) I’ve done side-by-side tests and found identical results. Maybe something’s changed, maybe it hasn’t.
it must have done by now, then, I get different results from identical prompts in DuckDuckGo and Bing although both are usually relevant.
“DuckDuckGo’s results are a compilation of “over 400” sources according to itself, including Bing, Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, and its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); but none from Google.”
are you having trouble finding something specifically or you just don’t like the quality of the search results you’re finding in general?
definitely if you’re still on Google, stop using it.
It’s completely useless at this point.
DDG often gives me results for individual words of the search but not results for all of the words in that order for which to have contextually relevant results.
I often find myself forced to brave the shitshow that is google search.
that’s weird. the search results should still prioritize your search as is over variations, but not limit it. do you try searching in quotations to force the specific search exactly?
have you tried the duck assist thing yet?
If you’re trying to talk to the search engine more like a chat assistant, that sort of response might be what you’re looking for.
Fuck Duck Assist all my homies hate Duck Assist and I keep having to turn it back off again.
Whoever made it should get cancer and not have their children show up or call them back.
haha, whaaat why?
I just saw it for the first time today, it seems to mostly quote incredible sources rather than amalgamating responses.
you got some issues huh, poor fella?
I’m sorry I hurt your feelings and made you want to defend an LLM that approves copy pasted wikipedia snippets, but maybe you should go eat some ass?
“I’m sorry I hurt your feelings”
I feel only pity for you.
reading your comments is like watching a diseased guinea pig nibble on its own scabs.
“an LLM that approves copy pasted wikipedia snippets”
duckduckgo’s llm tool offers relevant information from credible sources.
that is good.
Good luck unbunching those panties.
Lmfao
It is, and it’s not just the search engines to blame.
The content out there is incredibly spammy. It doesn’t pay to create good content. It pays to make a pool of AI gunge based on what people search for and then stick ads on it.
Spam sites laden with key words and massive SEO to farm advertising dollars from clicks long predated AI
It doesnt help that big search engines like google have realized people will go as far as page 2 or 3 to find the results, so intentionally worsen their search results to increase ads being served.
Kagi is great. It’s a paid service but you can try 100 searches for free.
You can use the Orion browser on iOS and set Kagi as the search engine.
The day i pay for search engines is the day i finally finish my 2020 new year’s resolution
Enjoy your war against ads then. I’m not against supporting content, I just wanted a better model than invasive ads.
Kagi is working very well for me! and honestly i like that it’s a paid service.
Another vote for Kagi here as well… except for searching for local businesses near where I live, I revert to Google for that, but I Google through Kagi so privacy is somewhat protected
I know there’s some controversy but its spoiled me now, it just works
Thank you. I needed this. The “free” search engines have tainted my experience of this world. Frankly, I hate it here. I’m ready for the inevitable “Apocalypse”/" Alien invasion" that stops the absolute incompetence that permeates our society. Whether you understand it or not, I beseach upon you my blessings, may your days provide success in your endeavores, and bountiful returns to your entire home. Bless you for sharing.
Search engines make you yearn for the destruction of the human race…?
When you have no other problems, the question of search engines is the biggest issues in your life
And naturally, the solution to your biggest issue is always to destroy everything and everybody. ^^’
It’s not just you. At some point, search’s primary purpose went from “finding the information you’re looking for” to “getting paid to put links in front of you”. Then they kept iterating on it, quarter by quarter, for a very long time.
The whole internet is in the process of being filled with garbage content. Search engines are bad but also there’s not much good content left to find (in % of the total)
The Internet is dead ™
You only tested Google and Bing.
Qwant and DDG both use the Bing architecture.
I agree though, search engines have become noticeably worse the last 2 years.
I’m pretty sure they discovered in the google monopoly case that google realized a couple years ago that a worse search experience would not negatively impact their bottom line. So makes sense
I’m very happy with kagi at the moment. Just crossed one year using it as my main search engine last week and don’t see why I would go back.
Same. Using Kagi feels like surfing the old web. The first thing I did was block all Pinterest results. That alone made every search golden. 😂
I hate Pinterest lol, best thing about Kagi is being able to block whole sites and it remembers your preferences. I may come back to Kagi but I didn’t feel like funding their AI features development. Now Im using Searx and 4get cause they’re free.
You’re not the only one. They have a leaderboard and the top 7 results are various Pinterest domains.
Leaderboard here for anyone curious
Yep everyone blocking Pinterest.
Also the most prioritized website is Wikipedia. Guess everyone wants facts in the the age of hallucinatory AI
I never got Pinterest results on Kagi to begin with
Having to signup and login to a search engines sounds like an annoying hassle
It’s a very minor annoyance and well worth it in my opinion.
I was searching for a book quote for over a year. I tried every search engine, tried changing the terms, checking back several times every few weeks or so, but couldn’t find anything even close. I tried kagi and it was literally the very first result on my very first search.
I haven’t looked back and have never had an issue finding what I’m searching for since.
You pay instead of seeing ads, so they need the account. Remembers you, though, so you just login once. Plus they have a solution for incognito/private windows too.
I really like it, has some cool features.
You can create a search-link that includes your token so you can also use it in incognito or if you are logged out for some reason.
You do it once.
It is. And it’s also terrible for privacy, but people do it with google as well.
Signing up and logging in isn’t a problem imo. I wouldn’t even mind if I had to pay for searches, but I’m not going to make it a subscription service. Unless they add an option to do something like buy 1000 searches that never expire, its not something I’d considered. I do think they beat out competitors like google with their results pretty consistently though based on the trial.
I’m not gonna subscription my heated car seats but search is a service that costs an ongoing amount to provide. The subscription isn’t significant, it’s $5 a month for 300 searches (or $10 for unlimited).
I know we’ve been conditioned to expect search for free, but if we want to get away from the “the user is the product” model then I think it’s a good thing to have a subscription to a service that has ongoing costs to provide.
Up to 300 searches. I’m not asking for free. Just for it to not be a subscription. Just sell me 300 searches.
Ah right, I get you. I wonder if they have considered this. Pretty sure their free/demo tier is 100 searches not confined to a time period so presumably the platform could handle that model.
Yes but then how do they get that sweet sweet recurring revenue
By having a good product, so people want to use it and need to top-up on new searches regularly as a result?
Hmm, perhaps. But…recurring revenue sure is easier than…whatever you said.
Same. Even the ai stuff is helpful instead of annyoing.
My blocks
Edit: hm. I seem to have replied to the wrong comment.
I’ve been using Kagi for about a month now and it’s been working well for me
I don’t remember any specifics, but I think I heard there were some privacy concerns?
Then again, there seem to be privacy concerns about pretty much anything so might not be that bad…
The concerns are about the credit card you use to pay.
The argument is that they can associate the card with your searches.
As far as I know they don’t keep search data. I’m personally happy with them
I think this might be it. There were also some statements by the CEO I think which didn’t exactly inspire confidencenin their company - but again, I don’t remember the details unfortunately
That’s what’s kept me from using it, although I very much like the idea of paying for a good service. I would love to see them figure out a way to avoid accounts.
Never heard any issues with Privacy, but I’ve heard issues about them using Brave search Results as part of their results.
If i remember right, it wasn’t just using brave, but including a referral id in brave searches. It wasn’t intended, and they fixed it, so all good with me.
Yeah, lots of opinions, a few facts: one of the discussions.
It was not even the emails. I tried to duckgo it and only found this controversy (which was new to me). What I saw was a specific qute, possibly on topic of privacy or something adjecent which just made me go “nope!”
Same.
Is it really $108/year good though for a single person (based on the tier that makes sense for me)? Just curious what other search engines you’ve used or tried and what features set it apart to make it worth spending the money on.
That really depends on your use case and how valuable web search is for your daily life.
I’ve personally tried Google, Bing, DDG, Brave search, and ChatGPT. Kagi is consistently able to find what I’m searching for more quickly and accurately than anything else, which has been very valuable for me in my personal and professional life.
It’s easily worth the cost in result quality and time saving for me personally, but that doesn’t mean the same will apply to you or anyone else.
As far as stand out features, there aren’t really any that I can think of. It just gives me the results I’m looking for without any bullshit to wade through.
It’s the first one I’ve paid for. And it is that much better than the free ones I used before imho.
Unfortunately they started to play with AI too :-(
It was disabled by default on my account I think
It’s not you. Google has been getting worse.
https://www.404media.co/google-search-really-has-gotten-worse-researchers-find/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/google-search-is-losing-the-fight-with-seo-spam-study-says/
Lately I google for someone that should give me a direct, exact result. First five links are fucking paid ads.
It becomes more and more true every day.
Jesus, the “plandemic” explanation for why the Internet is dying. The Internet IS clearly dying, but this is stupid. Even if we got rid of all the bots and AI, the Internet would still be dying, because open protocols are not as exploitable as walled gardens. The value of capital in the world overwhelms the value of human labour and human interest, and all our social structures conform to the needs of capital over time.
It doesn’t really, it’s just that human activity on the internet is more and more taking place on platforms without any search indexing. 20 years ago, internet forum are where you’d go for advice online. Nowadays, it’s more and more becoming discord servers and similar, which just aren’t indexed by internet search.
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it really doesn’t.
Kagi is pretty awesome
My experience is that search engines are still decent at finding niche information that would normally be hard to find. But for anything mainstream, for instance any household product that should be easy to find information about, instead how about these 300 pages of top 10 lists of Amazon affiliate links buried under AI generated filler?
I often have the opposite experience when looking for technical documentation about programming libraries. For example I will be dealing with a particular bug and will google the library name plus some descriptive terms related to the bug, and I get back general information about the library. In those cases, it seems google often ignores the supplemental information and focuses only on the library name as If I were looking for general information.
What is worse is that the top results are always blog-spam companies that just seem to be copying the documentation pages of whatever language or library I was looking at.
Right on
Roccat Kone Aimo micro switch gives me “500 best mouse 2024” and such BS and that’s it.
SEO spam has been a problem for a long time, but AI has allowed it to be accelerated to a whole new level.
Sounds interesting. Care to elaborate that part about AI accelerating SEO spam?
I think OP is referring to the fact that bad actors, who are exploiting facets of SEO (rather then providing “meaningful” content), use to need to programically generate content (pre-AI/LLM).
For a real reader, it was obvious (at a quick glance) this was meaningless garbage. As they would often be large walls of text that didn’t make sense, or just lists of random key words.
With LLM/AI, they’re still walls of text and random key words, but now they grammatically/structurally correct and require no real effort to generate. Unfortunately, it means that the reader actually need to invest time in reading it. You’ll also notice a growing trend in articles (especially in “compare X vs Y” type articles), the same content is recycled and rephrased to “pad” the article and give it a higher SEO ranking.
