I live in a country which uses a language I don’t speak but Google defaults to regional results in spite of my language being set to English. All other engines give me really poor results (not that Google was giving good ones, the image search has really gone to shit since they started populating it with AI stuff).
Duckduckgo as default. If I need location/region specific stuff, I will sometimes use google.
Big fan of DuckDuckGo and Startpage. Brave Search is also a fine choice, as well.
I use duckduckgo with Google as a backup for when what I’m searching for is too specific. I’ve had to use Google less and less lately though
Been using Duck Duck Go too for a while. Not heard of Startpage before.
I’ve also been using Duck Duck go. I hadn’t heard about Startpage before.
Used Duckduckgo for a while, got myself into a spiral of search engine exploration and at some point settled on Startpage for a while…but I just missed the maturity in functionality of Duckduckgo. It just always felt like I was making a usability/productivity sacrifice. So I returned and am still happy … for now :p
Nothing compares to DuckDuckGo with bangs, which let you change over to any other search engine with two or three characters. I usually use !g (Google), !w (Wikipedia) and !aw (ArchWiki).
I had no idea they had this feature. Thank you, I don’t think I’ll use anything ever again unless I absolutely have to now.
Holy shit! I think you just changed my life!
Ecosia. If my searches are going to be used for data mining no matter what, might as well have some trees planted as compensation.
Glad to see someone representing Ecosia in the thread! I was kind of hoping it’d be more popular
I also use “Tab for a Cause” as well and love both. It’s nice to feel even just a tiny bit better about my searches
deleted by creator
DDG
I mix and match.
DuckDuckGo is my main one, but I often find myself just using bangs and either throwing in !brave or !g before some searches because sometimes the results aren’t as relevant as I’d like.
I obviously don’t like Google, but if I need super quick results, they’re typically better for me, though they’ve honestly become ridiculously terrible over the last couple of years.
Not just because of promoted content, but because they don’t even seem to care about syntax anymore.
If I put quotes around a search term, Google seems to ignore it. Why? Who knows.
As much as I have… let’s say mixed feelings about Brave, I find myself using !brave more and more on DDG. More relevant results, at least in my looooong experience of using DDG as my primary.
Startpage doesn’t like me because VPN or whatever, otherwise I’d use it more.
I sometimes use a SearxNG instance as well, but that’s only if I’m really struggling to find something.
Bing, actually. I think it has greatly improved. Mostly. Plus the new Bing and AI stuff has been great. Much better than google
DuckDuckGo. I’ve become reliant on the bangs. Regular search not giving me what I want? Just add !g. Want to find a word? !wt. Look up an album? !rym. Just want to search something on YouTube quickly? !yt
Same engine, same reason.
I wish I used DuckDuckGo more, but lately Google has been the default…
I started using Kagi recently and it’s fantastic. The results have been great, it’s pretty customisable and it uses all the same ! bangs as DuckDuckGo. Don’t feel like I have to use Google at all anymore (which wasn’t the case when I used DDG as my go-to). Plus, since it’s a paid service, there are no ads and no guff.
Brave. It’s interesting getting completely different results than from any of the big players. And the results from Brave are often better.
I use the Brave browser on my phone. The searches are good, but I mainly like that I can watch YouTube without adds, and make the video windowed and even turn off the phone screen while it plays.
Kagi is a great premium alternative. They focus obsessively on search result quality and adding helpful, but non invasive AI tools. One of them is even free as an experiment!
I’ve been a kagi subscriber for justa about a year and it’s been great.
Yes, this. I purchased a subscription and never looked back.
It looks interesting, I am not opposed to paying for search but I feel like the bar works high for me to continue to pay for it.
What makes it better then other search engines?
A lot of things. https://blog.kagi.com/blog
FastGPT is fun, I never play with these sort of stuff like ChatGPT before.
I used DuckDuckGo as my default and it works out for me most of the time. Though, were it tends to fall apart is with image searching. When I can’t find what I’m looking for I’ll go to Google and find it pretty quickly.
I use Qwant and find it gives me better results than Google most of the time. It claims to be private and such, so I’m happy with it.
Thank you for reminding me about Qwant! I will set it as my default to try it out again. I remember that I did not find it too impressive a few years back. Felt like the exact same results as Bing, even though it supposedly has its own index.
