Been looking for a search engine that isn’t plauged with SEO garbage every time I look for anything. Been using DDG for quite a long time now, and I’m starting to get dissatisfied with results. It seems like more and more results are just companies trying to make their way to the top of the search results instead of anything organic. It’s even worse when I look for any kind of service or product.
Looking for as close to 100% organic results as possible.
I don’t think you’ll find anything. Search engines locate relevant results by design. The only way they can do that is by interpreting the contents of public-facing webpages. There are some things they can do to combat obvious keyword stuffing, but ultimately, overly SEO’d sites are going to work around it with content that appears relevant but really isn’t (think recipe websites with 20 paragraphs and pictures of bullshit nobody cares about and the actual content you want to see at the bottom … that kind of thing).
A search engine that used Bayesian filtering could work, with users providing feedback on results. This approach works well for a spam filter (and gamed search results is essentially a form of spam), and as spammers change tactics to try to game it, the bayesian algorithm adapts.
Kagi is how I search now. Very, very occasionally search for something on Google in specific circumstances, buy otherwise it’s all Kagi. Web has become a lot less noisy for me, and they label each search result with how many ads/trackers the site uses. Definitely have found smaller, “quieter” sites that have given me much better info, that hasn’t been paid for.
Especially good for tech-review searches.
I’m hearing a lot of recommendations for Kagi. Maybe when I can afford another subscription service, but that time isn’t right now.
I’m also not a fan of having all my searches potentially tied to one account, even if they say they respect privacy. Makes me very weary to try it.
$5/month is very steep, and it only includes 300 searches. There’s no way Google makes that per month off of advertising to me, and I really don’t see how $1/month wouldn’t be more than enough to cover their costs.
Google has probably managed to reduce cost at scale. I’d expect kagis internal cost per search to go down with time. But they may not pass those saving onto the user.
Just remember that when something is free, you’re the product.
I second this. It’s paid, and I’ve only been using it a week, but I like it.
- so yeah, Google is Google, the very definition of SEO – to the point now they will completely ignore your query to show you “relevant” results
- and Bing is Microsoft, ’nuff said – although I hear they seem to be THE choice for porn searches …
- people have been claiming DuckDuckGo has become just a frontend for Bing which is why their results have been declining 🤷
- ad tech company System1 owns a majority stake of Startpage – apparently they’ve mollified PrivacyTools that it would not impact Startpage’s privacy focused mission
- Qwant out of France actually seems to be stepping up as a good netizen, not only focusing on privacy but also investing in privacy initiatives in EU
- otherwise you’re stuck bouncing around
SearXSearXNG instances – Google and Bing REALLY don’t like meta search engines and will regularly block overactive instances
EDIT: looks like SearX is pretty much dead and had been replaced by SearXNG
Qwant “The search engine that doesn’t know anything about you, …”
Clicks on link: “Unfortunately we are not yet available in your country.”
🤔
I mean … I suppose that’s marginally better than Google’s frontpage telling me what town I’m in?
These points seem to mirror my experience for the most part. DuckDuckGo has also been going downhill because certain search modifiers don’t work anymore. Microsoft raised the price of API queries which in turn made it too expensive for DuckDuckGo to maintain certain ones. I mostly enjoyed it because it gives you access to Bing’s search results without the user-hostile UX garbage Microsoft loves to put on all its products. These days I’m using Kagi. It’s been about six months now and I’m really enjoying it.
Kagi, as others mentioned is good but need to pay. Logical. I used to have SearxNG instance but I tend to use search engines in general less and less so no worth to maintain it, currently using DDG or BraveSearch
You need to be more specific about what you mean by “SEO garbage” because every search engine is going to put “SEOed” pages higher up.
I guess we all know that mean, some page are filled with just a bunch of keyword and no content to just raising it SEO and for visitor traffic.
metaphor is pretty good. it actually uses llm’s as a way to generate links, rather than an unsourced mess of text.
Interesting, thanks
I use Ecosia which is a reskin of bing that plants trees with your search results. I’ve never had any issues with low quality results, but maybe we have different ideas of what that means.
How are they dealing with your privacy? I’m not an extremist on that front but it was such a relief to stop seeing adds about everything I Googled when I switched to DDG.
They don’t track you.
https://www.ecosia.org/privacy
We only run “context-based” ads, meaning that they are selected as a function of your search term. If you search for “green bank” you likely are interested in green banking ads.
Google and Bing itself operate very differently. They do what critics call “surveillance-based” advertisements. Before serving you an ad they might look at what you searched for in the past, what emails you wrote, which videos you watched, and what you bought with your credit card. They probably are also taking your search terms in order to influence what banner advertisements to show you in their office products or elsewhere.
That seems like such a cool project. I am going to switch from DDG to them I think!
swisscows?