Someone (average smartphone user) complained to me the other day that there isn’t a clear solution to navigating the web because it’s either ai slop or the results are poor.

And I kinda agree, nowadays you do have to put in some more effort to get what you’re looking for.

And so I told them I’d compile a list of which search engines are best for what purpose.

So far I have:

Startpage: works, but does a poor job of finding product codes and whatnot.

Duckduckgo: gives more general results afaik

Ecosia: works great but relies on bing

I have tried things like qwant ect but haven’t really settled on those.

Any other suggestions?

I’d tell em to use udm14 but it’s still google so I’d rather keep that as a plan B.

  • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
    121·
    6 days ago

    Self hosting searxng: https://docs.searxng.org/ I use it for everything. It finds results from multiple search engines, and lists every engine name at the bottom of each link to see where this “recommendation” comes from. You can configure which “engines” it should search. So I use it as my default for everything. The results aren’t always the best and there are times when I then open other search engines directly to see if its any better. But admitteley it is only hosted on my main PC. Currently I cannot access it from other computers, but that is something I plan todo in the future.

    If you use Archlinux, then its quite easy as there is a package that always builds from source. Look at my instructions here: https://lemmy.ml/post/45955322

    If self hosting isn’t your thing, then you can just use an instance from someone else who made it available in the public: https://searx.space/ It’s also a good way to see how it works before committing to self hosting, if you plan to.