I used google for most of my life, for the past couple months I’ve been using brave search, but I still end up using google often because google images is far better than brave search images. I’m also worried that maybe brave search isn’t the best choice. What would you guys recommend?
I use DDG but I’m always open to alternatives.
All of them at once: SearXNG.
It aggregates results from whichever you select.
Google without logging in with ublock is best. No privacy implication, no ads, no ai response.
It may be one of the better solutions, but there are certainly privacy implications
Like what? I mean you don’t save cookies/local storage either, or use private browsing always.
At most google see your search terms, results you click and your ip address. Unless you’re using ipv6 without rotation or with unique prefix there is no identifying information.
If you’re using something like tor, and rotate on every single search, then that would be ideal.
I assume you’re not using tor. That means all your searches can still be linked to you via the network source (ip address, etc.). Google can also use your search patterns to fingerprint you.
Been using Qwant for the last 2-3 months and been pretty happy with the results
I use duckduckgo. It is Bing but with more privacy. You could try also searx, swisscows, startpage or qwant
does ddg not have its own search backend anymore?
https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/
My reading is that the classic search listings are coming from Bing and the the quick answer type stuff is coming from DDGs systems.
the the quick answer type stuff is coming from DDGs systems.
which doesn’t an index make, more like a fetcher for specific data
I’ve been using DDG for a while but just got hit with an AI summary finally, like Brave and then Google does. It’s such a turn off. I trust the information exactly 0%. Definitely considering just using SearXNG full time now. I liked DDG a lot but I’m so fickle, it doesn’t take much for me to swap.
You can disable that. Here are two links that disable that. Add it to Firefox or Chromium through the settings.
Simple, only disables AI answers:
https://duckduckgo.com/?kbe=0&q=%25sLong, disables AI answers and ads:
https://duckduckgo.com/?kak=-1&kax=-1&kbe=0&k1=-1&q=%25sSteps to create a custom DDG search config:
- Visit: https://duckduckgo.com/settings
- Select the settings you want, for example dark mode.
- Click the “Show Bookmarklet and Settings Data” button.
- Copy the link, using my dark mode scenario would yield the URL
https://duckduckgo.com/?kae=d - Edit the URL by adding
&q=%sto the end, which acts as a placeholder for the browser to replace with your actual search query. Using my examplehttps://duckduckgo.com/?kae=d&q=%25s - Last step is add it to your browser. May differ between browsers, but generally look in the search engines tab of the settings.
Thanks for the tips but it says that it can be disabled right on the summary itself. The issue isn’t disabling it for me. It’s that the information is bad and I don’t want a search engine that thinks this is useful. Sorry for not making that more clear. That’s what I meant by me being fickle.
SearXNG: https://github.com/searxng/searxng
It enhances and respects privacy,
is open source and self hostable,
and queries multiple configurable search engines (google, bing, brave, duckduckgo, …)You can find a list of public hosted instances here:
https://searx.space/However I prefer to slap an instance randomizer on top, so each of my queries goes through another public SearXNG instance, for more privacy, and mostly, to bypass rate-limiting after frequent queries.
For this I use:
- On Desktop - GimmeASearX:
https://github.com/demostanis/gimmeasearx - On the go - SearX NeoCities:
https://searx.neocities.org/
- On Desktop - GimmeASearX:
I self host my own SearXNG instance. I use that.
Me too! Surprisingly easy to set up from docker. Like, four commands?
Including setting up docker?
Setting up docker to host a couple of containers from Linux is only a couple of commands, depending on your distro. Basically, install a few packages, create a group for docker, add yourself to that group.
Harder in Windows, probably, but I’ve never tried it.
I’ll look into it (linux). Thanks!
This is probably the best resource for keeping track of which search engine options exist and what their quality is like: https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes
For a “fire and forget” option that doesnt require any configuration you cant go wrong with good ol DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/
If you’re okay with dealing with more configuration and breakage then Searx can be pretty powerful as its a metasearch engine that can search with every search engine you tell it at once and agregate the results(while proxying things to maintain privacy): https://searx.space/ (had decent luck with the https://search.sapti.me/ instance if you just wanna try it out without searching through a list of options)
Also all search engines are kinda bad due to SEO spam and “AI” generated images and articles polluting the results, consider using uBlacklist to help you filter out the trash from search results(think of it like ublock origin for search engine results), can use it for basically any search engine so no reason to not set it up: https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist
I am paying for Kagi. Has worked well and some searched topics had been human curated so the answers are right there in the results. But it also does a good job with obscure searches, although it seems it tries to alter the meaning or context in order to show more results.
Best feature is the ability to hide from the results shit sites like Reddit or Quora.
Same - I paid last year and it just expired, so I tried Brave Search, DDG and Startpage but they weren’t cutting it for me so I’ve just gone back to Kagi.
Anyone of the many SearXNG instances is your best choice for balancing privacy and quality results. It’s open source, sources multiple search engines which you can control, is anonymous, and provides solid results. Here’s a list of active SearXNG instances: https://searx.space/
I also use DuckDuckGo. If I find I’m not seeing the results I want i just add !g anywhere and the search gets sent over to Google, though I don’t find I need to do that very often.
I use Brave Search (yeah from the browser) and it works pretty good. Their privacy policy seems fairly robust at least according to my understanding and they have their own index, so they don’t rely on Google or Bing, which allows them to filter out the SEO Spam rampant on other engines.
I’ve been using Ecosia, it’s basically Google results, but with more privacy, and they invest the revenue in tree-planting projects.
*or Bing depending upon where you are
I’ve really been enjoying Kagi. They seem to have a pretty good privacy policy as well. However Searxng is probably the best for privacy since it’s self hosted.
Start Page. Google results without the Google.
Or duckduckgo
In 2019, the advertising/data science company System1 became the majority owner of Startpage. Based on this, I’d say it’s worth finding an alternative to Startpage.
Oh really? I’ll look more into that thanks.
I saw people mentioning an open source and self hostable search engine (SearXNG) which is cool and I tried it out but it gives not very good results. I tried searching for specific sites and it would show anything but. But it’s fine for general info.
I still don’t think there is anything else other than startpage that is as private while giving good search results. I don’t believe that startpage is collecting data on users like google/Microsoft do and I don’t think duckduckgo is as good in that regard either. It still makes sense for startpage to be owned by an advertising company since it does show ads mixed with the search results. The difference is they are not personalised or tracked to you (so they say).
So if you have any evidence of System1/startpage tracking users and collecting personalised data on users for anything other than general usage and diagnostic analytics then I think it’s fine. If you do, then I will stop using and recommending it.
