Google, DuckDuckGo and Bing now all return the same shitty LLM-generated nonsense sites to most of my searches, and don’t respect my literal search terms even when I put them in quotes.
I’m not ready to pay for search, yet.
Is there any alternative?
- PhilipTheBucket ( @PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat ) 46•1 month ago
What are you talking about? I just tried two test queries on DDG, and neither one had LLM-generated nonsense, and the one that was in double-quotes returned only five results, all of which had the double-quoted phrase and one of which was the thing I was challenging it to find.
Can you give an example of a query where DDG returns LLM results or doesn’t respect your double-quotes?
- bananahammock ( @bananahammock@lemmy.ca ) 30•1 month ago
I think they are referring to the search engines returning LLM content farm websites.
- LadyMeow ( @LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 4•1 month ago
Maybe I’m a little out of the loop, what are llm content farm websites?
- Gamma ( @GammaGames@beehaw.org ) English5•1 month ago
Sites that mass-generate garbage using llms
- JackbyDev ( @JackbyDev@programming.dev ) English2•1 month ago
Think recipe websites that take forever to get to the recipe but it’s for other topics. Like a simple question, “what is the release date for X new game?” And then there will be like 5+ paragraphs of jibber jabber about the game and then finally the last article will say when it releases.
This sort of site has been around for a while but supposedly they’re more common nowadays. Personally I think people just have a better eye for things not written entirely by humans. Either way it’s annoying to deal with them.
- LadyMeow ( @LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 3•1 month ago
Ugh I feel like I have been seeing more of that. Asked how many ml in a wine pour and got like 5 sites that wouldn’t just come out and say it. All kinds of gobbledegook dancing around the topic but no one would just freaking say it. 140ml in case you needed it
- PhilipTheBucket ( @PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat ) 1•1 month ago
They’re clearly not.
- SkavarSharraddas ( @SkavarSharraddas@gehirneimer.de ) 25•1 month ago
https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist is supposed to remove AI slop from the results of various search engines. Wants the uBlacklist browser addon though.
- ᗪᗩᗰᑎ ( @KLISHDFSDF@lemmy.ml ) 23•1 month ago
Posted this previously:
yes. use any of the following, in no particular order:
- ecosia.org - A non-profit certified B corp that plants trees by serving ads in your search results. Bing search underneath.
- duckduckgo.com - A privacy friendly search engine. Primarily sourced from Bing but mixes in a few other sources.
- any SearXNG instance - A self-hostable search front-end to various search engines.
- marginalia.nu - specifically ‘random’ - An independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren’t aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.
- Chris ( @i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk ) English11•1 month ago
Also, Stract
- logging_strict ( @logging_strict@lemmy.ml ) 1•1 month ago
- anothermember ( @anothermember@lemmy.zip ) 1•1 month ago
Are you (or is anyone here) daily-driving Stract yet? I discovered it a few months ago and thought it was everything I was looking for in a search engine, but also concluded that its search results aren’t up to the standard I can use for now, so I filed it as one to look out for. Would be interested in hearing others’ experiences.
- Chris ( @i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk ) English1•1 month ago
Unfortunately not. I’d like to, but as you say it’s not quite there yet. I probably should try it more frequently.
- Dave ( @Dave@lemmy.nz ) 9•1 month ago
I think Searx is a good suggestion. Can be a bit slow to return results because it runs the search on a bunch of search engines and compiles the results, but that helps to make sure better stuff rises to the top.
- logging_strict ( @logging_strict@lemmy.ml ) 5•1 month ago
The other suggestions aren’t suggestions at all. They are obsoleted by searx.space
DDG … obsolete
startpage.com … obsolete
Browsers have default search engines. Curse everytime, DDG is accidentally queried.
DDG is a curse word!
Any centralized site, with privacy claims, is treated as lying thru their teeth. Front run future news.
- Interstellar_1 ( @Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 7•1 month ago
Also 4get.ca
- Ark-5 ( @Arkhive@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 2•1 month ago
Bump for 4get
- Miss Millie ( @limitsomething@lemmy.ml ) English1•1 month ago
Microsoft invests in Ecosia
- oozynozh ( @oozynozh@lemm.ee ) 7•1 month ago
I use Qwant sometimes but it’s sourced from Bing. Searx is better if you can self-host. Kagi is better if you can afford to pay (but you asked for free).
- abbenm ( @abbenm@lemmy.ml ) 2•1 month ago
Doesn’t Kagi offer X amount of free searches per month before you pay?
- festus ( @festus@lemmy.ca ) English3•1 month ago
No. They have a trial of 100 one-time searches, but that’s it.
- codenul ( @codenul@lemmy.ml ) 6•1 month ago
Not sure if its untrustworthly or not, but switched over to Startpage and been liking the results. Just wished it would implement the !bang system from ddg
- Avero ( @Avero@feddit.org ) 4•1 month ago
They use Googles results with a bit of Bing mixed in. Bangs should work too, like !wiki for Wikipedia or !d for DeepL They’re partly owned by an adtech company though (and say they dont share anything).
- SynopsisTantilize ( @SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee ) 4•1 month ago
Reply to this for me to see tomorrow please
ok
- SynopsisTantilize ( @SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee ) 3•1 month ago
Thanks. Got a lot of downvotes lol
- telepresence ( @telepresence@discuss.tchncs.de ) 3•1 month ago
I’ve been using brave search on my pc and phone for maybe 6 months now. i still use google like 10% of the time if i’m searching for something that isn’t in english, but otherwise, id even say for many things brave returns better results than google
- CanadaPlus ( @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org ) 2•1 month ago
shitty LLM-generated nonsense sites
It’s kind of impossible to filter these out computationally, regardless of brand. You pretty much need to run them through a bigger LLM than generated them, and the economics of doing that for every indexed site are obviously bad. Doing it by hand may or may not be workable either, depending on how quickly you can detect bad domains versus how quickly a new domain can be put up.
It’s on us to figure out who’s trustworthy, and who just sounds authoritative, unfortunately.