I’ve been using duckduckgo for years now with no issues, but today I opened it and realized there were no longer any search results before scrolling. It was all ads/info cards. So I guess I’m looking for a replacement. Any suggestions?
Related: anyone know if there’s a way in the Adnauseum Firefox extension to hide ads on a specific trusted site? I like their goal of not punishing ads following the do not track standard, but DDG has crossed a threshold and I now want to blacklist them specifically.
Not doubting you here, but I just tried searching for two very different terms on DDG on two different devices (Windows laptop and Android phone) and two different browsers (Firefox and Brave), and I didn’t really see any ads or dodgy stuff.
The mobile Firefox version had a couple of main links at the top (they don’t look like ads), and some news cards under that. But the links were all relevant. The desktop DDG was super clean, again no ads.
This was without ad blockers enabled too. I also tried it in private mode, and still clean.
What am I missing? Why is my DDG experience so clean compared to yours?
This was the worst time I’ve seen. Here’s a screenshot. The search term was benaroya hall if you want to try yourself.
Wow. Yeah that sucks!
It really caught me off guard. I had another search later today after I posted this that only had one Ad at the top, so it seems like it depends on the search term. I’m not thrilled this is even possible though 😒
Ahh okay. That would explain it. Yeah, it’s disappointing that DDG is selectively selling out. I get that they need to make money. But the content in that screenshot you shared is just ridiculous.
I second this. DDG, Searxng and various LLM are my daily drivers depending on the queries. I don’t recognise DDG being bloated with ads like Google. I have adblockers but I put sites like DDG on the whitelist because hey support the good guys.
Is it topical? Regional? Does OP have malware that is transforming the browser document? Is OP searching for niche content and confusing singular domain results for ads? Has DDG shifted owners and doing some tests?
I would like to know more.
DDG is not any better than bing. If you are willing to give your data to the “good guys” so they can make money with your data, you ultimately failed at protecting your privacy.
If you self host, you could try searxng
I mean, Kagi is just the best. I remember trying it like a year ago and I just forgot to switch back to anything else. It’s that good.
Read about it here, tested it, and was hooked on the first search. It’s magnificent.
Yeah, but for those on a budget that subscription is a pain point. So long as you can afford it easy it is good because you are no longer the product, but that will keep allot of people at bay.
Startpage is good, anonymized, and respects privacy. You will encounter ads and cards, but they can be blocked. Fully usable and functional with or without an account. It is also themeable with a dark mode. Results are pulled from Google, but DDG’s results were pulled from Bing and anonymized.
Since I started using it I raaaaarely open Google’s search.
Nice this one sounds great! I actually like cards in moderation, just not so many I can’t see the results without scrolling.
Check out Kagi. It’s a paid search engine. I’ve been using it almost half a year now and really enjoy it.
What about it is worth paying for?
I think it’s a mix of a few things.
The quality is on par with Google unless it’s local results. I feel the other search engines just have inferior results, whereas Kagi gets part of their search from Google.
Theres no ads and you have a lot of customization options. It just feels to me overall like what Google should have been.
I like how I can add reddit as a search filter and with one button I can search Reddit instead of having to type site:. I know it’s a small thing but is convenient on mobile.
You can pin and rate sites. So you can do things like pin Lemmy or GitHub posts to top of search.
The AI is non intrusive and gives really nice concise info.
Idk. Initially I just paid for a month to see how it feels, now it just feels weird to do search in Google.
It’ll also search the fediverse
Thanks for that, those all sound solid features
Kagi is simply SearXNG backend with a pretty UI. Nothing it provides is unique or something you cannot get elsewhere for free and most times better.
It literally uses Bing and Google indexes and is functionally no different than DDG except for the ability for you to pay them money to quality control the search results for them, which is extremely dumb because they are essentially making you pay them for you to do a job for them.
Avoid it unless you have money to waste for aesthetics like Apple fanatics.
Agreed.
I’ve been testing other search engines, and I found that SearX/SearXNG and Mojeek both turn up results for smaller websites that Google puts in 50th place for the exact title of the website/page.
That sounds like a big plus. Someone else said this was some self hosted thing though which is over my head unfortunately
There are public instances: https://searx.space/
This is one someone previously suggested, and the one I tried that seems to work well: https://search.disroot.org/ - I see it’s not in the list above though. Not sure why.
So its like an individual runs the search engine? Like a lemmy instance?
Yes, I think so.
SearXNG Public Instances List or self host it yourself.
Or use https://searxng.world/
OP, please reword the title to be a question. Thanks.
Qwant is something I’ve been using for the past few months. I’ve been liking it personally.
There is Qwant, a French search engine. it is privacy focused
Do you know if it works OK in English too?
Yes it does
You can turn those info cards, ads, and some other stuff off in the settings fyi
Wait you can really turn the ads off?
Settings > General > Advertisements > Off
I still much prefer using one of the public Searx instances though
Yeah, not sure how this isn’t near the top.
Searx
and startpage aredecentStartpage is the same as Google but apparently “proxied”. There’s also that bs with system1.
Is your adblocker not stopping them?
I use Qwant, a French search engine. Much better.
I use DDG but caveat emptor it’s using Bing as a backend. I find it is very good at certain things google censors like finding streams of obscure films though.
