Tired of duckduckgo using MSN’s amp thing for news or blocking some websites, and it’s now adding shit AI too. Don’t want to spend any money running a searxng instance for the time being and most public instances are too overwhelmed.
Any suggestions? Doesn’t need to be perfect, just not too annoying.
I’ve found Kagi has been good enough to justify the subscription price. I like that I can block certain sites, pin and promote others. It has some neat AI features but they only activate when requested and never replace actual results.
I tried it out after getting a referral code from somebody I know granting a 3 month trial. I’ve been hooked. It’s the first search engine that has rivaled Google search, it’s so good. I’m often disappointed with DDG (switching to Google later to find what I need), and Mojeek never finds anything. SearXNG has been very close, but is essentially an aggregator, not exactly a Google replacement.
Kudos to Kagi for getting it right.
Mojeek never finds anything.
Got any examples we can look into?
That’s a hard one to answer without losing anonymity. It’s with contextual searching, like X business in Y town, or looking up specific or niche software tools. I occasionally give Mojeek a fair shot, then switch away when I can’t find what I’m looking for. If you’d like, I’ll keep track of those instances and email you with examples, is that helpful?
That would be helpful, yes; there is a “submit feedback” button on results pages which allows you to send it directly to us if that works.
when people say searx, i want to know… is it duckduckgo or google or both?
Like the old Dog Pile
just started using Firefox with ublock origin for the same reason. I run the kagi plug-in on Firefox so I can tailor my search engine preferences (https://kagi.com/). I go back and forth between those two mostly.
I use DuckDuckGo. AI isn’t bad inherently, just the proprietary, censored, corporate stuff. DuckDuckGo’s AI isn’t forced on you, is private, open weights, and less censored than the main players.
It used unethically collected databases, you seemed to miss that on your list.
I like the SearX search engine. It gives old-school, relevant search results, not google ranked ones.
It’s also spread out over many separate instances, so you can pick the one that best suits your search needs:
I’ve been using the Lycos search engine lol
I’ve been kind of liking Brave Search lately, even though I’m not really a fan of the browser.
Self hosted SearXNG
Ecosia
Quackquackyo
