I’ve been using duckduckgo for years now with no issues, but today I opened it and realized there were no longer any search results before scrolling. It was all ads/info cards. So I guess I’m looking for a replacement. Any suggestions?
Related: anyone know if there’s a way in the Adnauseum Firefox extension to hide ads on a specific trusted site? I like their goal of not punishing ads following the do not track standard, but DDG has crossed a threshold and I now want to blacklist them specifically.
Not doubting you here, but I just tried searching for two very different terms on DDG on two different devices (Windows laptop and Android phone) and two different browsers (Firefox and Brave), and I didn’t really see any ads or dodgy stuff.
The mobile Firefox version had a couple of main links at the top (they don’t look like ads), and some news cards under that. But the links were all relevant. The desktop DDG was super clean, again no ads.
This was without ad blockers enabled too. I also tried it in private mode, and still clean.
What am I missing? Why is my DDG experience so clean compared to yours?
This was the worst time I’ve seen. Here’s a screenshot. The search term was benaroya hall if you want to try yourself.
Wow. Yeah that sucks!
It really caught me off guard. I had another search later today after I posted this that only had one Ad at the top, so it seems like it depends on the search term. I’m not thrilled this is even possible though 😒
Ahh okay. That would explain it. Yeah, it’s disappointing that DDG is selectively selling out. I get that they need to make money. But the content in that screenshot you shared is just ridiculous.
I second this. DDG, Searxng and various LLM are my daily drivers depending on the queries. I don’t recognise DDG being bloated with ads like Google. I have adblockers but I put sites like DDG on the whitelist because hey support the good guys.
Is it topical? Regional? Does OP have malware that is transforming the browser document? Is OP searching for niche content and confusing singular domain results for ads? Has DDG shifted owners and doing some tests?
I would like to know more.
DDG is not any better than bing. If you are willing to give your data to the “good guys” so they can make money with your data, you ultimately failed at protecting your privacy.
If you self host, you could try searxng
Out of interest, has anyone here been using Kagi? It’s a premium search engine, which means it has reasons and resources to not suck, in theory. Kind of interested in trying it, but not sure how good it actually is.
I’ve been using Kagi for the better part of a year. I find it removes about 2/3 of the time and effort between search and goal. There are a lot of very simple quality of life things that every search should have (and would have if not for user tracking).
Some people have fairly said that paid search is inherently privacy unfriendly. You have to log in to use it. That doesn’t really bother me, and if it doesn’t bother you, it’s great to use a quality search where you are not the product.
That’s the kicker for me. It’s possible they log your entire search history which is disturbing.
I looked into it before I started using it like a year ago. They count the number of searches but claim to not hold actual search queries. I don’t have a citation handy (it has been a year…) but even if that’s untrue (which I don’t think it is, but hypothetically) and they were found to be using it to tweak their engine, meh? I search for memes, accounts for art/porn, games/reviews, etc. I’m not searching for my home address or anything of interest or value. “hey, the horny furry searched for more horny furry stuff” is like “water is still wet, more at 10”.
This is a super low-important possibility, imo.
I have. It didn’t seem ridiculously priced and the results have included what I want the majority of the time. No complaints so far, and it’s been about six months.
I’ve been using it for a number of months now and have been really happy with it. I think it saves me time and aggravation compared to using Google.
There’s a trial, you get a handful of searches per month for free
I think it’s just a flat 100 searches trial, not per month. Of course you could use another burner email if you wanted to game the system but I think it’s worth paying for.
Try it, they give you 100 free searches.
I’ve been using it for months and really like it. It’s so refreshing to get clean and useful search results.
I’ve been using it for over a year. It makes my life easier, to be honest. I’m on the 5€ plan because I don’t need more than 300 searches per month.
I like how customisable the search results are, the lack of SEO stuff and I’m a big fan of the “small internet” results.
I do. Just the feature where I block domains and they pop up in the results when I search something is a reason to pay for it for me.
And people voting down those spam sites means that you also won’t get them in your results. 5/5
I tried Kagi and found the results to be significantly less helpful than Google. Searches for local businesses, open source libraries, and Canadian history missed useful sites that Google provided.
I guess I’m an outlier, because other people seem to have a good time with it.
No, I have the same experience. Especially if you want to search for local stuff in my country. It is like my country (Netherlands) does not exist Kagi.
For general topics it is ok I guess. I do have premium but I am barely using it anymore. I use Qwant.
I’ve been using Kagi for a while and would not hesitate in recommending it to anyone BUT with the caveat if you want to search for a local business or similar, at least here in the UK, then it’s pretty rubbish… I find Google still reigns at that.
I couldn’t live without it. Love being able to up/down-rate my results. I’ve been trying to de-google my life but search was always the one thing I couldn’t give up. DuckDuckGo being Bing results just didn’t have the quality. Kagi’s results are S tier. As I understand it, they’re sourced in a privacy friendly way from Google and then they apply your preferences on top of them. Definitely went in skeptical and now I can’t imagine not having Kagi.
I’ve been using kagi for months. I love it.
I am somewhat tempted to sign up and give it a shot. DDG is pretty solid for me, but it would be interesting to try a search engine where I’m not the product, it is.
Super impressed so far
I use it. I like it and would recommend it.
I mean, Kagi is just the best. I remember trying it like a year ago and I just forgot to switch back to anything else. It’s that good.
Read about it here, tested it, and was hooked on the first search. It’s magnificent.
Yeah, but for those on a budget that subscription is a pain point. So long as you can afford it easy it is good because you are no longer the product, but that will keep allot of people at bay.
Startpage is good, anonymized, and respects privacy. You will encounter ads and cards, but they can be blocked. Fully usable and functional with or without an account. It is also themeable with a dark mode. Results are pulled from Google, but DDG’s results were pulled from Bing and anonymized.
Since I started using it I raaaaarely open Google’s search.
Nice this one sounds great! I actually like cards in moderation, just not so many I can’t see the results without scrolling.
Check out Kagi. It’s a paid search engine. I’ve been using it almost half a year now and really enjoy it.
What about it is worth paying for?
I think it’s a mix of a few things.
The quality is on par with Google unless it’s local results. I feel the other search engines just have inferior results, whereas Kagi gets part of their search from Google.
Theres no ads and you have a lot of customization options. It just feels to me overall like what Google should have been.
I like how I can add reddit as a search filter and with one button I can search Reddit instead of having to type site:. I know it’s a small thing but is convenient on mobile.
You can pin and rate sites. So you can do things like pin Lemmy or GitHub posts to top of search.
The AI is non intrusive and gives really nice concise info.
Idk. Initially I just paid for a month to see how it feels, now it just feels weird to do search in Google.
It’ll also search the fediverse
Thanks for that, those all sound solid features
Kagi is simply SearXNG backend with a pretty UI. Nothing it provides is unique or something you cannot get elsewhere for free and most times better.
It literally uses Bing and Google indexes and is functionally no different than DDG except for the ability for you to pay them money to quality control the search results for them, which is extremely dumb because they are essentially making you pay them for you to do a job for them.
Avoid it unless you have money to waste for aesthetics like Apple fanatics.
Agreed.
I’ve been testing other search engines, and I found that SearX/SearXNG and Mojeek both turn up results for smaller websites that Google puts in 50th place for the exact title of the website/page.
That sounds like a big plus. Someone else said this was some self hosted thing though which is over my head unfortunately
There are public instances: https://searx.space/
This is one someone previously suggested, and the one I tried that seems to work well: https://search.disroot.org/ - I see it’s not in the list above though. Not sure why.
So its like an individual runs the search engine? Like a lemmy instance?
Yes, I think so.
SearXNG Public Instances List or self host it yourself.
Or use https://searxng.world/
Qwant is something I’ve been using for the past few months. I’ve been liking it personally.
OP, please reword the title to be a question. Thanks.
You can turn those info cards, ads, and some other stuff off in the settings fyi
Wait you can really turn the ads off?
Settings > General > Advertisements > Off
I still much prefer using one of the public Searx instances though
Yeah, not sure how this isn’t near the top.
There is Qwant, a French search engine. it is privacy focused
Do you know if it works OK in English too?
Yes it does
Startpage
This one looks really good. I’m not sure how they make money though.
Searx
and startpage aredecentStartpage is the same as Google but apparently “proxied”. There’s also that bs with system1.
I’m partial to ecosia.org myself. Search while helping to plant more trees!
I do wonder how they get the money to plant these trees, hmm…
edit: oh, look at that! Even ecosia started getting into AI. Truly impossible for search engines not to get into AI territory these days, funny right? Even kagi did.
