this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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What is the least SEO-fucked search engine? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

What search engine is currently showing the most useful results? What other tricks do we have aside of adding "reddit" or whatever internet community to the results?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Here's my experience with some search engines:

A Tier -- Gives me the closest results.

  • Google: A classic and oftentimes, it gets what I want. A lot of the links are redirects which is annoying.
  • Kagi: It's paid but it has a lot of features like "lenses" and "quick answer". The results are pretty good. It gives me good articles and PDFs instead of a blogspot post.
  • You.com: The WORST UI EVER but the results are surprisingly decent. It's pretty close to Kagi. It might actually be the same thing. It also has an AI chatbot but I don't think it's as good as Bing's or OpenAI's.

B Tier -- Gives me decent results.

  • Startpage: ~~It used to use Google search results but they switched to Bing. It is worse than Google.~~ EDIT: Search results are still closer to Google but they "incorporate Microsoft Bing results". From my experience, it filters out some of Google results that were very useful for me. Their widgets (particularly the Wikipedia one) sometimes displays irrelavant information.
  • DuckDuckGo: Results are worse than Google. One time a referral link came up in one of my searches.
  • Bing: There's no dark mode. The AI chat tool is pretty nice and is comparable to the OpenAI one (significantly better than Google's Bard). Search results are worse than Google.
  • Yandex: Search results are similar to DuckDuckGo.
  • Ecosia: Search results are similar to the ones above.

C Tier -- Gives me poor results.

  • Brave: Search results feel so inconsistent and out of place. Maybe worse than the ones above.
  • Mojeek: Independent search engine. Results aren't very good.

Open Source Front Ends - Results quality varies.

  • SearXNG: It depends on which instance you're using. Sometimes search results error out due to rate limiting but you still get results anyway. It has a lot of options and configs so it fits to your liking so you can choose which search engines you want to include.
  • LibreX: Actually one of my favorites since I've never encountered errors due to rate limiting but using it to search for images is terribly slow. It has a cool feature where you can add front ends like Libreddit and Wikiless. It also has a built-in torrent search engine.
  • Whoogle: The UI isn't very good and it performs poorly on most public instances. A smaller or private instance might be worth looking into. It uses Google search results.

F Tier -- It sucks.

  • Qwant: Not available in my country.

If anyone knows of any other search engine not in this list, let me know so I can try it out.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

More and more I have been using the Bing “chat” search. It does a search, filters through the results and summarizes the answer with links to the sites it found them on.

For certain types of search it is a huge time saver of scrolling through results to find answers on various pages.

Over all bing search it self isn’t bad.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Dunno why you're getting down voted. It's literally a search engine that can read all the bullshit faster than you, so that you don't have to.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If it isn’t open / free / private there is a % of the community that will not even try it.

Just like on Reddit lots of negative energy in some subs.

Hardly saying bing is amazing only that lately I have been drawn to trying it more since the chat based search that allows follow ups in natural language.

Google bards equivalent is only available in the US and just this last week the UK so I can’t try it out.

However over all I agree that more and more google search results have more adds and the good results pushed further and further down.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't like the idea of getting answers from a search engine. That gives too much power to the company that runs the search engine. Id prefer to get a variety of links from independent sources.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Have it compile a list of sources it's already sourced from, and keep searching for any new sources it can add. Have it list its expectations for what an expert should know about a particular subject, then have it learn about each of those points, and finally present as if it is an expert there to assist you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

For my job and work. I use Kagi. Its not free, but the search returns are very good, you can filter domains out from your returns, it supports custom "bangs" ala duck duck go and theres no tracking of queries. There are also specific filters for things like programming, or recipes for cooking etc. Theres also no ads, you are paying and are the customer. They are trying to establish a sustainable model to run on that allows for privacy.

I find it quite refreshing. It isnt free and I generally hate subscription stuff, but this is easily one I dont mind as it pays dividends often when searching for work.

https://kagi.com/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Having to pay for a limited number of searches really takes away a lot of freedom. I would really have to think about my search query and be upset if it didn't give me the results I was looking for. I would need unlimited searches just for my peace of mind. And I'm definitely not paying more then a couple of dollars for it. Might sound cheap but I really really hate subscription services.