I've recently started using a self hosted SearXNG instance but I'm still using the search engines enabled by default (google, duckduckgo and qwant). What search engines do you have enabled or which ones do you feel you've gotten the best results with?
I can't be bothered to self host a search engine. I just stick to duck duck go and I've tried some whoogle instances but I just prefer ddg at this point.
SearXNG, it was fairly easy to get used to coming from duckduckgo because !! uses the same !bang search as ddg. (honestly !bang searches were the only thing keeping me on ddg)
I use it daily. Just their account system with that fucked up login-by-email sucks hard. Especially since I have to refresh my session in multiple browsers on multiple devices.
I just did some tests on DDG (sorry OP, not related to SearXNG). If you use it normally, they put a lot of images from URL like improving.duckduckgo.com/t/we?monitor=you&spying=secretly&id=etc (supposedly for improving DDG by gathering statistical blah blah). Their no-JavaScript version is much less invasive.
Solution(s): 1) uBlock is highly recommended, 2) if possible disable JS, 3) try Tor Browser, which is just an anonymity version of Firefox
uBlock + (MetaGer or Searx or DDG/html[no JS]), via Tor 24/7. Onion available. Individually, hit and miss. In total, good enough for me. While DDG is okay (the default search engine for Tor Browser, Tails), intuitively I don't fully trust it. Its no-JS version is acceptable.
I am testing both for personal use right now, can you share your experience and how you came to the decision which to use for personal use and which for work?
I used to use searx for a couple years but it got too unreliable where it would fail to load results all the time randomly. Tried DDG and consistently ended up having to manually switch to google after the results on DDG just weren't good enough (think troubleshooting linux issues and stuff, DDG would never find the obscure answer in a forum but google would).
Anyways, ofc the goal wasn't to end up back at google so now I've been using startpage for the last few months and it seems to work great with no issues.
Sorry, this question was SearXNG specific, so MetaGer was irrelevant. I’ve never self-hosted it, but I’d say Brave. It’s supposed to have its own index (correct me if I’m wrong), so one can expect some diversity.
~1-2 years back they collected data on which search results their users clicked on by default with their own link-forwarder. After some outcry they removed that.
Their "privacy browser" allowed third party cookies by Microsoft to track their users because DDG made a deal with them without telling anyone. When it came out Gabriel Weinberg released some BS statements.
Positive:
DDG doesn't even have a Linux browser, but I love their Android browser. The DDG search engine provides results that are quite fine
I currently use searx.org instance of SearXNG which for me works decently, and I can still use the ! searches of DuckDuckGo in it, just adding another !, like !!wikipedia
I'm planing on self hosting a Searx instance. But right now I'm very happy with DuckDuckGo. I find I get less biased results and a lot of the time I prefer it's results to google. And for the odd time I want an image and DDG isn't giving me what I want I use bing, which is probably the best search engine for images from my experience.
Unfortunately DDG blocks piracy related searches and torrents, that's why I don't support them anymore, also they plan on banning "misinformation" whatever that means. I don't like it anymore.