What search engine do you recommend that isn't Google or Bing?

DuckDuckGo on Firefox. If you truly want to de-google your life avoid Chrome and Chromium based browsers like Edge and Brave

I just make a post in NoStupidQuestions and use y'all like a search engine. :P

I'm out of the loop on DDG, what did they do?

https://kagi.com no ads, great results. It’s $5 a month but worth it imo

Half a dozen people in here already mentioned it, but Kagi has completely changed the search game and changed the way I use the Internet. It's like an old school search engine with modern conveniences like a chat bot and summarizer, but without the ads and other shenanigans.

I personally enjoy DDG. Their privacy policy for their search is straightforward and there's no evidence that they're not abiding by it. I find it tends to prioritize higher quality blogs and articles ahead of social media results.

I sometime use Brave Search as it seems to do better at giving social media/forum results as they seem to be prioritized higher by it, when I'm looking for more discussion-based content.

Firefox allowed you to define the default search and have many many engines listed. That's been a standard feature for many years.

Kagi. Nothing else even comes close. Kagi is what Google used to be, before they decided they'll show you whatever is profitable, rather than what they know you're looking for.

I've been incredibly happy with Kagi. All of the listicles and blogspam get shunted off into their own sections. Kagi also seems to do a pretty good job at finding "deep" results. Like, when I want to find out more information about some home automation gizmo, Kagi does a good job of finding some random blog post where someone has torn the gizmo apart and analyzed every strength and weakness it has. I still prefer Google for looking up restaurants and stuff, but I hardly use it anymore. I don't at all regret the $10 a month I pay to use Kagi.

Edit: I also like that Kagi lets you define rules. Occasionally I'll be forced to go to Reddit to get some information (I really try to go elsewhere first). I deleted my account, so I go to new Reddit by default (which I hate). I don't want to add an extension to redirect to old Reddit, but I can just replace the www with old automagically for all Reddit search results. Works great.

Kagi is by far the best search engine I've ever used. It is paid though.

I use SearXNG. It is a meta search engine so it use results from various other search engines and you can specify which with !. It does the job for me.

The best I've found is Mojeek. The results take some getting used to because we're all used to Google's fuckery, but I've been using it for months, and it's quite good.

There's also SearXNG, though I'm not sure if that fits your needs. A couple public instances I've liked are:

https://searx.tiekoetter.com/

https://search.fuckoffgoogle.net/

check out ecosia.org! plant trees while you search! 🌳

Duckduckgo and (downvotes incoming) brave search.

https://duckduckgo.com

https://search.brave.com/

And I disagree with you, I don't know a single browser where you can't change the default search engine.

I like startpage.com. It doesn’t save your searches and I feel like it gives better results than DDG. Also it’s been around for awhile - it used to be ixquick

Been using Qwant for maybe a year or so. Recently found Swisscows too. I am not sure if Qwant uses their own index. I remember that they said that they were to create their own index, but the results looks suspiciously similar to Bing. Swisscows for sure runs their own index, and I find the results to be rather good

Kagi is the best around if you are willing to pay. If I had to cancel my subscription for whatever reason, I would go back to DDG.

Meta search engines:

• SearX

  Open source, self hostable meta search engine.

• SearXNG

  Better version of SearX. A list of SearX and SearXNG instances is available at https://searx.space

Also meta search engines, but different:

• DuckDuckGo

  It's very privacy friendly, but it gets all the search results from Microsoft's Bing.

• Startpage

  Basically the same thing but it uses Google results. They are really focused on privacy too, they even are on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@StartpageSearch

  They're based in the EU (Netherlands) so they are also subject to the GDPR.

Independent:

• Brave Search

  They recently stopped using Google and Bing and created their own search index. It appears to be privacy friendly, but the company behind Brave is not ideal.

• Mojeek

  A small privacy focused search engine, that uses its own index. They're also on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@Mojeek

• Kagi

  I've seen many many people recommend it, but I have never really used it myself. It's not free, they charge $5/month for 300 searches and $10 for unlimited searches.

Kagi

It's a paid subscription but it's better than Google, I've found.

https://kagi.com/

ecosia, like knowing that my searchs are helping the world a little

qwant.com

I run a whoogle instance personally

Edit: I meant to also express my frustration that most browsers do not let you select a “default search engine” that can be used in the address bar aside from 3-5 pre-chosen engines. Seems like 2023 we should be able to customize that to our own liking.

Which browsers don't? I think this one can likely be chalked up to user error.

You want a free search, Brave. Don't like brave, then qwant. I use Kagi. It costs money but it is great.

Another option is SearXNG. It's meta search engine, which means that it aggregates other search engines like Google and Bing but without tracking or logging, because your searches are proxied using a public instance, that will mix your search with the ones from other people.

And about default search engine, don't know what you're talking about, both chrome and Firefox allows this, in mobile and desktop.

https://searx.space/

Brave search is also really good now

SearXNG

I use stratpage. I find it reliable

Marginalia is cool. It feels like an old-school search engine and truly provides results you don't see through Google, et al.

I use startpage.com on desktop. They provide Google results (sort of like DDG uses Bing results) so it’s not some autonomous magic privacy thing but it’s what I want from a search engine.

It reminds me of Google pre-enshittification.

I've been using qwant for a few weeks and it gives me quite satisfying and accurate results. Before I had been using ecosia for years but the results can be lackluster sometimes. Especially when you search very specific "niche" things (like obscure Linux problems troubleshooting). But I'm still looking for a browser which let's you pick multiple languages for results.

What about metasearch engines/ search aggregators?

I use a mix of all 3 search engines on firefox

I like AskJeeves but a case can be made for WebCrawler

startpage is alright if u want a quick alternative.

but definitely look into searx. it can be annoying to choose an instance (unless you self host!), but it can be a lot more customizable and decentralized

https://www.startpage.com/

Owned now by a marketing company. I've been using it for many years and never had my results noticeable affect my advertising incoming.

It's a proxy for Google which is why I use it. I have really started to use ChatGPT in anger yet as the trivial don't need it.

I'm not connected to them in any way.

I used to be a part of the DuckDuckGo hype train until I found out they did actually track data (not an issue to me personally, but it betrayed their key marketing point), as used to be demonstrable if you had a slow internet and hovered your cursor over a link (it would show the tracking data loading). It was the one thing separating them from Ecosia, and I decided to join the Ecosia hype train, even if their own promises are themselves highly exaggerated. Every effort to do what Ecosia promises, even failed efforts, are appreciable.

How would you go about setting searxng for search suggestions? I'm not sure i understand the documentation.

Kagi if you're willing to pay. Otherwise tryaS Searx instance.

You can absolutely configure the default search engine on your browser to a custom one in some cases. I use startpage and it isn’t in the default options, but it can be added.

I am generally switching between Google and duck duck go on Firefox. When Google gives shitty results (which is frequently) I switch over to ddg.