Google’s results have been getting worse over time, but it seems like the last couple years, they’ve taken a steep nose-dive, completely overrun with crappy content farming.

I’ve mitigated a lot of that by doing searches for any kind of product comparison or technical question with “site:reddit.com”, but now with the possibility that that trick will become less useful over time as well…?

Yeah. What search engines are other tech folks using?

  • Nankeru@feddit.de
    14·
    1 year ago

    Kagi, hands down, is by far the best search engine I’ve ever used (next to Neeva, which got bought and shut down).

    Just simple searches like “Best gaming headphones” or “Realtek Driver Download” and comparing them with Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Startpage, etc. shows how the quality of the results are far superior.

    And you can directly define, which sites you’d like to see higher / more results of or less - or even completely block or pin them to the top.

    Also, it also shows you directly, before visiting a site, in colors if a site has a very high number of ads and/or trackers.

    And they support for power users custom CSS to adjust everything, URL rewrites (e.g. change all Reddit URLs to old.reddit), DDG and custom bangs, and much more.

    Very satisfied with it, can only recommend.

    • schnapsidee@feddit.de
      5·
      1 year ago

      This looks pretty good, and I wouldn’t mind paying for search, but it seems really pricy. I’ve never counted how many searches I do, but it’s definitely more than 10 a day. $10 a month seems like a lot for just search…

      • Nankeru@feddit.de
        6·
        1 year ago

        Made me feel a little unwell at the beginning as well, but considering that the search is one of the main, key features I use daily, multiple times, it is totally worth it.

        I pay for a search engine, but:

        • High quality search results
        • No ads
        • High customizability
        • No weird SEO optimized Website results which help me not at all and I lose hours in a year clicking them by accident
        • Did I mention no ads or sponsored content?
      • lovesyouandhugsyou@beehaw.org
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m happy to pay it myself, as I find that with other engines I pay in frustration and time because the results have to support those who do pay: the advertisers. Much higher value in my daily life than e.g. a Netflix sub.