this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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Even more reason to continue not using their search.
Alternatives? I'm using duckduckgo.
Kagi (paid)
Kagi is a hybrid with their own crawler (very small) and Bing. So basically the same as Duckduckgo.
Kagi pulls data from a bunch of different sources - including Google - but as far as I know, Bing isn't one of them. Duckduckgo like you said is 90+% Bing, without some of the tracking-related results.
But even if Kagi were pulling mostly from Bing - which is fine - the experience I've had is way different.
When I search Bing or DDG, the results I get are roughly the same (some more promoted crap with Bing, even with adblock; but otherwise really similar). And those results are.....ok. Sometimes they're better than Google's default results, sometimes not. They're usually not as good as Google's searches in "verbatim" mode, which is more like Old Google.
But the search results I get with kagi seem to be generally as good as Google+verbatim mode, or better (sometimes much better). It's generally the best results every time, and without ad blockers, or enabling certain modes, or whatever. And I've gone back and compared against other search engines a bunch just to compare and try to see if Kagi was really worth it.
Plus, the ability to easily set exclude sites, or search contexts, or a bunch of other stuff is super nice. I don't use them every day but when I use them they can be amazing.
+1 for Kagi. Started using it and never went back.
i second duckduckgo
Duckduckgo source their search queries to bing and yahoo.
Their sources:
As per their website, queries are largely sourced from bing
So they are a metacrawler that has additional first party crawlers? That’s actually pretty neat.
Searx, or if you need Google results but proxied use Startpage.
Depending on your appetite for self-hosting, you could try searx, searxng, 4get, and/or Yacy. I copied the below from another comment I made earlier today as it relates to those engines:
I’ve been using a combo of
myself lately, and they can all use DDG. Being able to get specialized searches sent to the appropriate engine automatically or being able to choose the engine(s) manually is really nice. But they don’t have their own web crawler.
I’m starting to look into Yacy - which is supported by Searx - as a means to add a p2p web crawler and index under my control to the mix.
Me too. I’m hoping Brave Search can improve and bring more competition, but right now it’s about as bad as Google, and seems to be getting worse, not better.
ChatGPT with Bing (paid version)
Dude when did bing become good? Like legitimately I find myself going to bing when Google doesn't turn up useful results
Also, its free search side-bar AI (also called Bing) is way better and helpful than Google's AI (Bart?) Still, ChatGPT4 is the best tool that I can have access with moderate amount of monthly payment.