In the last couple of months I have noticed an increasing trend of supplying me search results that are completely unrelated to the current query and tie back to my location or previous searches. I can say this with a high degree of certainty this is without a doubt beyond the 100th instance this has happened.

My browser is configured against tracking and fingerprinting (in fact all my devices are) which would make it fairly difficult to retain any data unless they are profiling me.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 22 points 2 years ago (3 children)

What would we suggest as a realistic alternative? Sears? Startpage? Brave? (I am no expert by the way, just looking for tips)

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I just switched to using Kagi recently and I like it a lot so far! Theres a free tier for 100/searches a month you can use to figure out if you like it.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Me too. I was so reluctant to pay for a search engine at first since there are good alternatives out there I don't have to pay for. But I just at least wanted to try the first 100 free searches and was blown away by how great it is. It has some unique features like prioritizing or blocking specific domains, lenses and custom bangs. I payed the $10 the same day for Pro tier and 5 days later (yesterday) I even upgraded to Ultimate tier with ChatGPT-4 (called Kagi Assistant). I really, really enjoy Kagi so far. Most probably it's gonna be my one and only search engine for the next years to come.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    Searx sucks for images in my experience, startpage was bought by an advertising company, brave is weird for a multitude of reasons but I don't know how good their search engine is as I've never tried it

    However I do think that finding a searx instance that works for you and then using another engine like ddg for images is the way to go... You could add a shortcut like ".ddg garbage truck" for easily searching with for example ddg on firefox

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    How does searx suck for images exactly? 🫠

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Also a bit confused by this. I thought the point of searxng is to combine your preferred search engines. So couldn't I just configure ddg for the image results?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Maybe their point was that you cannot filter the images, like by color, size, license, etc

    But anyway, if I want to show somebody a picture of something it works perfectly As for the results, they are pretty comparable between searx, ddg, and googlag.

    I would even say searx wins on this one because 1. It's easier to navigate and open images 2. The nojs version of the search looks so much better than any other search engine

  • source
  • parent