tantedanteGoogle doesn't work anymore ?
bermudaGoogle is definitely iffy for me, which is why I’ve been bouncing between alternates. A lot of people like to complain about how google is filled with ads and spam results like Pinterest, but even then it just doesn’t really seem to give accurate results anymore, and even when results are accurate it’s very surface level. From what I found, it loves to push listicle articles and such when googling a new topic, as opposed to say, Wikipedia or an encyclopedia article. Like if I search about Barbie, I’ll probably get a bunch of ScreenRant-esque articles before I get the IMDB page. There have been dozens of instances of me searching for controls for video games and getting clickbait-y articles, some of which barely even make an attempt to answer the question, before getting an IGN or GameFaqs article that’s to-the-point and answers my fucking question.
There are definitely better search engines out there, but they all have their own flaws. DuckDuckGo is pretty bare bones and can also give poor results if your search is too vague. You have to adapt to that one. Others like Brave have AI to help out with summaries and stuff, but Brave’s management is “problematic” and so some people might not want to support them.
TL;DR: on google, not only is there ads and spam, but it’s just hard to find answers anymore. Everything is clickbait. And with other options, they are good but they also have their own major flaws that some might find unappealing.
Exactly, I’ve noticed this over the past few months, actual relevant results are being pushed much further down the stack.
If you want to explore alternatives, I’ve been using SearXNG, a so-called “metasearch engine”, where you can get a combination of various search engine results, based on your preferences. It’s pretty good, when it works (it tends to get rate-limited fairly often… or at least some of its results / search engines do, which can get annoying).
GitHub - searxng/searxng: SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services and databases. Users are neither tracked nor profiled.
SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services and databases. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. - searxng/searxng
Kata1ystYou can also selfhost SearxNG with modest hardware and side step the rate limits. I love it. Happy to answer any questions
How does it compare to Kagi?
I can’t self host it, what’s the problem with using an existing instance?
I haven't used Kagi much, but my understanding is that Kagi has their own indexing and you can customize your search by ranking your results.
SearxNG runs searches against many other search engines and then uses an algorithm to rank the results sanely. So less customizable but also the net you're casting is much wider.
You could easily self host on a free-tier instance in Oracle cloud or AWS for a year, or even just run it on a laptop. But if you really can't see a way to do that you can of course use one of the listed instances, you'll just be more likely to bump up against rate limits since you're sharing limits with many other people.