cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/4448974
I’ve recently started using a self hosted SearXNG instance but I’m still using the search engines enabled by default (google, duckduckgo and qwant). What search engines do you have enabled or which ones do you feel you’ve gotten the best results with?
I’ve stuck with DuckDuckGo for years. It’s mostly gotten pretty good if you search in English. Other languages can be iffy.
I can’t be bothered to self host a search engine. I just stick to duck duck go and I’ve tried some whoogle instances but I just prefer ddg at this point.
Brave is surprisingly good
It is but unfortunately it doesn’t work in SearXNG most of the time
I use it daily. Just their account system with that fucked up login-by-email sucks hard. Especially since I have to refresh my session in multiple browsers on multiple devices.
(I use Premium for ad free search.)
I just did some tests on DDG (sorry OP, not related to SearXNG). If you use it normally, they put a lot of images from URL like improving.duckduckgo.com/t/we?monitor=you&spying=secretly&id=etc (supposedly for improving DDG by gathering statistical blah blah). Their no-JavaScript version is much less invasive.
Solution(s): 1) uBlock is highly recommended, 2) if possible disable JS, 3) try Tor Browser, which is just an anonymity version of Firefox
I am trying Kagi but use ddg quite often too.
DuckDuckGO for the bangs, with a custom !bang made for my favorite SearXNG instance; on which most of my ‘googling’ actually happens.
I used to use searx for a couple years but it got too unreliable where it would fail to load results all the time randomly. Tried DDG and consistently ended up having to manually switch to google after the results on DDG just weren’t good enough (think troubleshooting linux issues and stuff, DDG would never find the obscure answer in a forum but google would).
Anyways, ofc the goal wasn’t to end up back at google so now I’ve been using startpage for the last few months and it seems to work great with no issues.
ecosia.org It care about my privacy and It also plant Trees from ad revenue.
Qwant for work and DDG for personal stuff
I am testing both for personal use right now, can you share your experience and how you came to the decision which to use for personal use and which for work?
Qwant has very similar search results to Google which I need for work. DDG is IMO more private so I use it for personal stuff.
Also Qwant has better results than DDG is languages other than English.
Presearch. I don’t care for the crypto features. (I already got Monero anyway) but the concept of a decentralized search engine is interesting.
uBlock + (MetaGer or Searx or DDG/html[no JS]), via Tor 24/7. Onion available. Individually, hit and miss. In total, good enough for me. While DDG is okay (the default search engine for Tor Browser, Tails), intuitively I don’t fully trust it. Its no-JS version is acceptable.
I need Google results, in my experience they are the best. That’s why I’m using startpage.com That’s the best alternative I have up to today
I currently use searx.org instance of SearXNG which for me works decently, and I can still use the ! searches of DuckDuckGo in it, just adding another !, like !!wikipedia
I’m planing on self hosting a Searx instance. But right now I’m very happy with DuckDuckGo. I find I get less biased results and a lot of the time I prefer it’s results to google. And for the odd time I want an image and DDG isn’t giving me what I want I use bing, which is probably the best search engine for images from my experience.
Unfortunately DDG blocks piracy related searches and torrents, that’s why I don’t support them anymore, also they plan on banning “misinformation” whatever that means. I don’t like it anymore.
Good to know thank you
What search engine do you use or if Searxng what engines do you pull from?
Google and DuckDuckGo mostly, I guess if they are pulled from Searxng, then they can’t track you and all that.