• Pistcow@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 years ago

    I don’t need a 27-page novel to know the temperature and time to cook something. I also don’t want to he directed to Pintrest and be required to have an account. Honestly, I’ve started using Bing more often.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 years ago

      Yeah honestly. The Google ad-based search system created a set of incentives that just destroyed the internet! I miss the days when people created their own fun little quirky websites like Ian’s Shoelace Site. That used to be every site on the internet!

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
        0·
        2 years ago

        I’m just starting to learn HTML and oh my fucking god do I LOVE chatGPT… Holy hell… I can’t even begin to express just how amazing it is to be able to ask basic questions and not only get a reply, but provide example code, and it will elaborate or be as concise as you like… I LOVE IT! I’m especially happy to see they don’t ask for your phone number and other absurdly intrusive unnecessary information anymore. That’s what kept me away at first.

        I do know it’s not infallible and I probably won’t use it as much as I move on to more complex programming.

        • frokie@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 years ago

          I do fairly complex programming and still use chat gpt. It will contribute to be helpful to say “write me a function that does this” rather than “how do I code this”

    • saltesc@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 years ago

      The Google habit is hit the third link, scroll to fourth paragraph, your answer should be around there somewhere.

    • ANGRY_MAPLE@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      2 years ago

      No kidding. Just earlier today, I was looking for a kind of niche tool used to wrap pallets in plastic, and I found nothing on google about it. It kept showing me everything BUT what I was looking for.

      On bing, I found just about all of the information I needed about it. Turns out it’s niche partially because it’s made in my province, which I also found out from bing. Almost no one knows what I’m referring to when I mention it. It combines the technology of machine wrapping and hand wrapping, and it makes warehousing much easier sometimes. I wanted to recommend it to someone. Thanks Bing!

    • Daryl76679@lemmy.ml
      0·
      2 years ago

      Try Brave Search, Duckduckgo, Startpage, or Searxng. For more detail on these recommendation (that I definitely did not just steal), check out the Privacy Guides page, or The New Oil for a different, albeit overlapping, set of recommendations and take on search engines.

        • kattenluik@feddit.nl
          0·
          2 years ago

          DuckDuckGo has recently become a not very useful search engine too, it still has way way better queries than Google though.

          Going back usually shuffles the search results and after like 5 results there’s just a bunch of random entries based on your geolocation.

        • Gogo Sempai@programming.dev
          0·
          2 years ago

          Avoid the browser but I’ve been using their search on Firefox. Really like the AI summarizer and the results are also good.

        • Daryl76679@lemmy.ml
          0·
          2 years ago

          I mean I guess. They aren’t actively fighting or anything like that to my knowledge. I personally think the Privacy Guides is the better resource, because PrivacyTools has vpn recommendations like Nord and Surfshark with affiliate links that are not actively disclosed from my quick check.

  • AndreasRenner@feddit.uk
    0·
    1 year ago

    We developed GOOD search (www.good-search.org) as a value-based alternative search engine: 100% free of Big Tech, 100% ad free (as Google and Bing control the search advertising market. Europe-based. No loud marketing, as we are to the greatest extent a volunteer project, working with independent search feeds. For anyone who wants no Google or Bing inside, may be a good option …

    • lntl@lemmy.ml
      0·
      2 years ago

      kagi is paid search, I like the idea of that. why do you recommend kagi and not another paid search provider?

      • fossilesque@mander.xyzEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        I can customise it to ignore AI spam with custom filters + academic search + custom rankings + other custom tools. I can yeet domains from ever being seen again. It’s just very tailored to whatever you need. I hardly go elsewhere now. I find it curbs my compulsive rumination googling because I get clear, trustworthy answers and not AI telling me I have cancer or am distracted by something dramatic.

      • atkion@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        I use Kagi too - they have a feature I haven’t seen before where you can basically optimize your own SEO. You can uprank or downrank any given website to varying degrees based on how much of that site you want to see in your future search results (I use this a lot for game wikis that have since migrated off of Fandom etc, but the stale Fandom page always shows up first in google search).

        They’re also working on a feature to warn you which articles are paywalled directly from the search result, which I will use the hell out of.

        They also have something they call Lenses, which are essentially search profiles that emphasize certain types of results (programming lens upranks stackoverflow, github, and API docs for instance).

        All in all I’ve been extremely pleased with the quality of the product and the directions they’re exploring in. And being able to easily chat up the devs in discord doesn’t hurt either.

        • blackstampede@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          2 years ago

          I had Kagi for a bit and enjoyed it, but I’m not sure I use search enough to justify the price tag.

          I didn’t know about the personalized SEO thing- I wonder if you could have a “default SEO rank” that would basically average all the specific uprank/downranks from other users. So power users tweak their algo, and everyone else gets the benefit of using that human feedback to improve their results.

      • snowe@programming.dev
        0·
        2 years ago

        I hadn’t even seen other paid providers but I got real sick of Google about six months back, tried kagi on trial and paid for it before the trial was up, that’s how good it is.

      • StorageAware@lemmings.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        As a subscriber, one of the things I like about Kagi is how responsive the Kagi team is. I’ve reported a few bugs (4-5 maybe?) and they all got resolved fairly quickly. You can also find the founder on the Discord server talking with users. This was a breath of fresh air to me when I signed up.

      • fossilesque@mander.xyzEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Here is an example for searching for “cats” with academic turned on. It’s not just .edus but it’s definitely part of the weighting. Nature is usually the first hit obviously.

        You can also make custom searches with parameters and link easy access third party buttons. I did one for Google shopping for instance.

  • De_Narm@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 years ago

    That’s not only a search engine problem in itself - websites also got worse in general to appeal to googles algorithm. Which means that other search engines would show similar crap, unfortunately.

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
      0·
      2 years ago

      I remember in the early days of the internet Alta Vista search worked quite well. It was easy to find what you wanted, and find new things relevant to your interests - and so it became very popular. Unfortunately, Alta Vista only worked well if people made their websites in good faith. It was searching meta-tags and text on the page; and so when greedy people wanted to get more traffic on their website, they found it easy to exploit Alta Vista’s search. As more and more people started exploiting the system, the search got worse and worse.

      I remember the day I switched to using Google. I was searching for some C programming stuff on Alta Vista with technical words - and the results had more porn sites than programming sites. Like, wtf. Obviously that search doesn’t work anymore. It stopped working because arseholes were exploiting it.

      And now, pretty much the same thing is happening to Google. Their algorithm worked better for longer than what Alta Vista was doing, but it seems that self-interested people have kind of cracked the system, and now the results are mostly just junk instead of useful stuff. (Note, I stopped using Google several years ago. I’ve been using Duck Duck Go. But you’re right that the problem is more widespread than just Google.)

      • sub_ubi@lemmy.mldeleted by creator
        0·
        2 years ago

        Profit motives are good at ruining social platforms; society.

        • boomzilla@programming.dev
          0·
          2 years ago

          I had not so good experiences with Contabo lately. Lot of outages and they withdrew 2 more month after the end of my subscription. Ionos had no outtages so far (5th month). In addition their web interface is better than Contabos.

          • CronyAkatsuki@lemmy.cronyakatsuki.xyz
            0·
            2 years ago

            I have been using contabo for over a year and had 2 outages when they had some problems last month.

            For the webinterface I don’t care since I do everywhing in the cli amd don’t mind a bad interface.

            • boomzilla@programming.dev
              0·
              2 years ago

              Then it must’ve been bad luck. I had plenty more over the course of a few month with a CS GO server and it wasn’t the game server because I often couldn’t login via SSH or the session just froze. And I definitely took precautions with a firewall, fail2ban and no root, no password only certificate SSH login (a tried and tested combination of measurements I use on plenty other ionos VPS).

              You’re right the webinterface doesn’t really matter but the overall impression was much more professional on ionos with a slick interface for the config of the hw firewall.

  • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    2 years ago

    Yeag, If the search is about something relatively obscure then 50% of the links are random letters and numbers or worse, believable looking links that are riddled with viruses.

    • M137@lemm.ee
      0·
      2 years ago

      My main problem with DDG is that it doesn’t show the dates of results. A lot of the time, I need to know that to get the information I need. I used it for a couple of years, but I was constantly forced to go back to Google or Bing to get the information I needed.

      I found Kagi earlier this year and tried it out, and it’s as close to perfect as you can get, IMO. I really can’t recommend it enough. It’s like being back to “the before times” when Google was king, with the addition of many other features. It’s a paid service, and I’m more than happy to do so for something like this. No tracking, a ton of features, very well designed, and results that never fail. I’ve shared my account with family and friends, and everyone has mentioned how good it is after trying it.

      Sorry if it feels like I’m a shill for it, I’m just super happy with it and really feel like everyone deserves to know about it.

  • jezebelley3d@lemmy.zipdeleted by creatorEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Duckduckgo is not only privacy centric but now it has better results than Google. Google is floundering in every area of their business lately. Pixel phones still have a very small niche share of the market, their search is garbage, chat gpt is a better AI than bard by miles, and their productivity suite is just as readily replaced by libreoffice or office 365.

    The only thing Google has anymore is YouTube.

    • COASTER1921@lemmy.ml
      0·
      2 years ago

      Although they’re nowhere near marketshare of Apple they definitely haven’t had failure in the Pixels. Every generation I notice more and more people using them rather than the previous niche audience. They’re probably the best all-around Android phones out there for average people, and with the standard pixel 8 being $550 reasonably good value compared to their competition for all but heavy mobile gamers.

    • henrikx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      2 years ago

      Just wanted to chime in and say that I am super happy with my Pixel 7 so far. Easily one of the best phones out there, especially considering the price.

  • Barometer3689@feddit.nl
    0·
    2 years ago

    Yep, I switched to kagi a while back and couldn’t be happier with the results. If you don’t want to be the product, maybe consider paying for search?