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Leigh @beehaw.org

What search engine do you use?

Data on search engine market share is available, but I wonder what that looks like for Lemmy users in particular, who I would assume lean more technical than the average user, so probably use DuckDuckGo and alternates more than Google.

I use a mix of DuckDuckGo and Kagi. I'll also use ChatGPT, which can be good if you're careful to verify the answers it gives you as a check against hallucinations. It's useful for short, direct answers without ads or SEO bullshit.

This article on Ars (and if you're not a subscriber, you absolutely should be, as they are the best tech journalists out there) inspired the question: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/google-admits-reddit-protests-make-it-harder-to-find-helpful-search-results

Fucking Reddit. Enshittification ruins everything.

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114 comments

  • @SemioticStandard Kagi. I used DDG for a long time, and Kagi is strictly better. Specifically, it’s very snappy and I trust the privacy guarantees even more since I’m a paying customer.

    • Kagi, hands down, is by far the best search engine I've ever used (next to Neeva, which got bought and shut down) without looking for Reddit results all the time.

      Just simple searches like "Best gaming headphones" or "Realtek Driver Download" and comparing them with Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Startpage, etc. shows how the quality of the results are far superior.

      And you can directly define, which sites you'd like to see higher / more results of or less - or even completely block or pin them to the top.

      Also, it also shows you directly, before visiting a site, in colors if a site has a very high number of ads and/or trackers.

      And they support for power users custom CSS to adjust everything, URL rewrites (e.g. change all Reddit URLs to old.reddit or to automatically open libreddit or archive.org versions), DDG and custom bangs, and much more.

      Lastly, I created a so-called "Lens", which allows me to search Lemmy / Kbin content only (also still have one for Reddit).
      Meaning with one click, it shows me results from only sites or keywords I've defined - see image.

      Very satisfied with it, can only recommend.

      (copied from another thread I replied to)

    • I use Kagi too, it’s surprisingly snappy! Like seriously impressive for a small org. They talk about speed optimisation being critical for them as well. I find the result to be excellent as well. A true Google replacement/feels like Google in its prime.

      I believe they have their own index and bot as well?

    • +1 for Kagi, seems a great value to me, well worth the price to not have any ads, no tracking (leap of faith here) and great search results.

114 comments