Mastodawn

What are the highest quality search engines?

https://lemmy.world/post/10979517

What are the highest quality search engines? - Lemmy.World

It is becoming near impossible to find relevant information from search engines. Duckduckgo, SearXNG, Bing, Google, and so many more mainstream engines have a significantly high noise to signal ratio, and it is getting worse. Here are a collection of the best search engines I know, please add more to the list. - Forum Search Engine: https://crowdview.ai/ [https://crowdview.ai/] - Non-commercial Search: https://search.marginalia.nu/ [https://search.marginalia.nu/] - Libre Meta Search Engine: https://librey.devol.it/ [https://librey.devol.it/] - Golden Age Search Engine: https://www.wiby.org/ [https://www.wiby.org/] - Yandex: https://yandex.com/ [https://yandex.com/] If no more high quality search engines exist, would it be possible to host your own?

Toes♀Jan 21, 2024

I’ve found duckduckgo works fine for things that aren’t recent.

Controversially the bing gpt chat bot works alarming well.

abbadon420 Jan 21, 2024

The bing chat bot scares me a bit. I don’t want to use bing out of principle, but at this point they’re just flirting too damn hard.

SpaceNoodle Jan 21, 2024

DDG is just Bing, so …

Toes♀Jan 21, 2024

Are you a bot?

NeoNachtwaechter Jan 21, 2024

Technically the best one was Altavista.

But they are long gone because they came from the old academic & idealistic internet and they never learned to survive in that internet where money rules.

Deceptichum Jan 21, 2024

From a very old memory, Google blew AltaVista out of the water no?

I mean we all switched for a reason and it wasn’t the cute logo.

cosmicrookie Jan 21, 2024

I believe yahoo killed altvista before google came and finished it off

0oWow Jan 21, 2024

Brave Search works really well for me, and they have AI responses at the top of the page now that are really good.

cll7793 Jan 21, 2024

Thanks! Never given brave a try before

DolphinMath Jan 21, 2024

Not sure why you got downvoted like crazy, but Brave legitimately has a great search engine. It also uses its own crawlers unlike DDGc, Startpage or Kagi who are really just meta search engines piggybacking off other companies’ results.

0oWow Jan 22, 2024

Good thing I wasn’t replying to the down voters. OP got my response and that is what I wanted. 🙂

Kool_Newt Jan 21, 2024

Kagi

sonovebitch Jan 21, 2024

I self-host a SearXNG instance and it works really well.

github.com/searxng/searxng-docker

GitHub - searxng/searxng-docker: The docker-compose files for setting up a SearXNG instance with docker.

The docker-compose files for setting up a SearXNG instance with docker. - searxng/searxng-docker

GitHub

walter_wiggles Jan 21, 2024

Ooo this looks super interesting

cll7793 Jan 21, 2024

Thank you!

aldalire Jan 22, 2024

Correct answer

Why pay for a search engine? I’m getting tired of Kagi astroturfing

Varyk Jan 21, 2024

I mostly use bing now. I like that it can answer complex queries and provides sources.

Don’t have much trouble not finding things.

zeluko Jan 21, 2024

Its nice when you are deep in Microsoft already from your company and get BingChat Enterprise included anyways.
Its slower than OpenAI GPT4 at times and its alot more restricted, but it gets the job done mostly.
You need to hack the UI to make it nice, unlock longer inputs, disable search tool at-will, disable synthetic streaming responses (consistent token speed, but takes longer overall)

Simple query via DDG, complex stuff and ChatBot stuff via BingChat Enterprise.

Varyk Jan 21, 2024

I thought the AI assistant was free? I just downloaded the bang app and I just use the AI assistant whenever I search for anything now.

I don’t use any sort of enterprise, or full disclosure know what any of the other things you said are, any of those options or parameters.

But bing’s really impressed me lately, haha, so I still use it.

Actually on my desktop, I just use the regular Bing search, which I do now find superior to Google for just finding quick accurate answers for basic stuff.

It’s still crazy to me a year later after switching all my default search engines to Bing after using Google for so long, but Google search is just such trash now, it’s insane.

zeluko Jan 22, 2024

It is free, but the Enterprise version doesnt store anything (not even usage statiwtics) and runs on separate systems (allegedly) aswell as having no limits.

Varyk Jan 22, 2024

Oh, I see, yeah that does sound way better

m_randall Jan 21, 2024

Come on over to Kagi! You do have to pay but I use a search engine dozens of times per day so I’m not too bothered by it.

calm.like.a.bomb Jan 21, 2024

Not when they collaborate with brave. Fuck that!

xigoi Jan 21, 2024

They don’t “collaborate” with Brave, just use its search API.

cll7793 Jan 21, 2024

I’ve heard a lot of great things about Kagi, though the search limit and subscription is a little off-putting. A self-hosted Kagi would be amazing though!

Classy Hatter Jan 21, 2024

Kagi has a free trial, 100 searches for free, so you can try it out and see if you like it or not.

1984 Jan 21, 2024

Why would they do all that work to create a better search engine than Google and give it away for free? What is going to pay their bills?

Google pays their bills by selling your data and spying on your searches, not to mention they are morally corrupt. Kagi pays their bills with your monthly sub. Seems a lot better.

cll7793 Jan 21, 2024

I’m worried eventually even Kagi will get enshittified. It has been a common trend that almost always occurs. Open source is the only way to ensure stability. Conflict of interest is what leads to companies either overcharging, or even accepting to get bought out.

Don’t get me wrong, Kagi seems to be a great company thus far! But for something as important as search it would be best to have an open source solution.

1984 Jan 21, 2024

Probably they will, but it could take a long time. Valve is still good as an example of a company that managed to not become crap.

Open source is the only way to provide stability? Can you explain more about this?

cll7793 Jan 21, 2024

Valve is great! Private and non-profit organizations give me some hope for a better internet one day.

Regarding Kagi, there are other potential concerns with privacy, data leaks and price gouging as well. The Patriot Act and Snowden’s leaks have shown that companies will lie in their privacy policy to appeal to authorities even if they claim they are not storing information. All your health related searches, sensitive personal details, private life, etc is also always linked to your payment method waiting for a potential data leak if they are lying. (Or a copy is just sent to five eyes)

All that is to say, be wary of trusting your privacy to companies. Monetization is a powerful motivator!

Z4rK Jan 22, 2024

You can pay with bitcoin, which might help keeping the account entirely anonymous for some.

SoylentBlake Jan 22, 2024

After that power company got blackmailed in the American South and extorted for like 40000 Bitcoin, which they paid…but then within 24 hours the FBI had recovered all of it…which is something no one was supposed to be capable of doing.

That means the FBI or DHS has devoted the computational power necessary to track every.single.bitcoin.transaction and then indexed it all well enough to cross reference against metadata.

Bitcoin is as secure as they allow it to be. It’s most likely allowed for the same reason the Tor network is, because it’s an avenue to move resources or information to undercover assets overseas.

Lith Jan 21, 2024

At this point, I’ve come to expect that all of the products I like are going to be ruined at some point, so it’s about establishing enough independence to more easily transition to the next service.

Kagi’s great, and I’ll worry about finding a better search engine once it gets worse, but I don’t expect that to happen before my next renewal, so I’m happy.

cll7793 Jan 21, 2024

Self hosting is smart! Usually good things always come to an end, at least if they are not open sourced.

nilloc Jan 21, 2024

Plus self hosting an index big enough and fast enough for a useful search engine is ridiculous.

m_randall Jan 21, 2024

They now have unlimited searches for $10/mo. That’s what got me to try it out.

You are correct though. I really do not like having all of my search history tied to my credit card (and then me). What helps me justify that is that instead of me being the product like google, by paying I’ve become the customer. Hopefully that incentivizes keeping them on the up and up.

I did come across searnxg in this thread. It looks like that can be self hosted so I’m gonna give that a try as well.

Maalus Jan 21, 2024

That’s expensive as shit, what the hell.

Z4rK Jan 21, 2024

Yeah, you may be fine with the $5 plan, but that’s the lowest tier available.

Afaik they are not really running a profit yet, just expanding, so that’s an eye opener to how expensive it is to run a search business and how much value Google and others estimate they get from your personal information.

For now though their user base seems fairly much leaning towards business users that can defend this expense as part of becoming more effective professionally. Hopefully over time they’ll grow large enough to provide cheaper plans for regular persons while staying privacy focused and ad free.

m_randall Jan 21, 2024

I did 1300 queries which I think would put it at .007 cents per query. Sounds reasonable to me.

Deceptichum Jan 21, 2024

The owner of Kagi is a homophobic piece of shit.

Just use searxng.

1984 Jan 21, 2024

If you are going to look for perfect companies, you will look forever, and probably use Google while you are looking.

It’s not worth it. Just use something better than Google even if it’s flawed, because everything had flaws.

Deceptichum Jan 21, 2024

Just use searxng.

Don’t give money to homophobes, we have an open source and better alternative already.

1984 Jan 21, 2024

I think it’s perfectly understandable that some people are homophobes, so it doesn’t worry me. You still have people being afraid of black people in this age even.

You can dislike that of course, but that’s the real world. You can walk up to any older person and they are likely to be a lot less open to gay marriage than a younger person also.

You interpret that as them being hostile. I think it’s more about being afraid of something that doesn’t feel natural to them.

Deceptichum Jan 21, 2024

Yeah, get fucked mate :)

ReCursing Jan 21, 2024

I think it’s perfectly understandable that some people are homophobes

No it's not. It's not a justifiable position. It's not unexpected sadly, but it is not understandable because it's not a position based on anything other than ingrained hatred and fear

GregorGizeh Jan 21, 2024

Kagi isn’t homophobic. Apparently the “controversy” is that it employs brave search as well; which is indeed made by a company with a homophobic ceo.

Though by that logic virtually everyone in the world is, because at some point in time, in some place, someone built a piece of modern civilization upon knowledge or resources belonging to a homophobic person, I’m fairly sure.

Deceptichum Jan 21, 2024

No, that’s a seperate controversy. The Kagis owners views became talked about a lot more during that event though.

So many people here are quick to defend and normalise homophobia, yet refuses to just use an open source free alternative that’s without this baggage.

Classy Hatter Jan 21, 2024

Are you sure none of the developers of the open source free alternative aren’t homophobic, transphobic, or in some other way bad people?

ultranaut Jan 21, 2024

Can you link to some evidence?

xigoi Jan 21, 2024

Where did you get that from?

Deceptichum Jan 21, 2024

It’s all over the Mastodon side of the Fediverse, shouldn’t be too hard to find with a quick search. I’m not at my pc atm so cbf using a phone to find some links sorry.

xigoi Jan 21, 2024

The controversy was about Kagi using search API from Brave, whose CEO is supposedly homophobic. Not Kagi’s CEO himself being homophobic.

Deceptichum Jan 21, 2024

No, it is also the Kagi founder as per the Mastodon topics.

xigoi Jan 21, 2024

Can you show some evidence of that?

HipPriest Jan 21, 2024

The sources I find are solely from mastodon threads, and date from this month and the Brave thing. This is the best thing I've found

https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/111707573907442638

Paul Cantrell (@[email protected])

For the past year or so, I’ve been using and enjoying the search engine Kagi. Its search results are…fine, no worse than others, and it’s ad-free, stated privacy as a primary goal, and seemed to have a better ethical sense than its competitors. Or so I hoped. 1/

Hachyderm.io

xigoi Jan 21, 2024

So Kagi’s founder not wanting his company policy to be influenced by the personal beliefs of the CEO of a different company is somehow “homophobic”?

HipPriest Jan 21, 2024

According to some people on the fediverse, the Kagi forum thread that is linked in the toots I posted above and seemingly nowhere else.

From a non political standpoint: I tried Kagi last year and it was ok but I didn't get the big deal. And because I'm not in the US but the UK if you try searching where's my nearest garage or stay the nearest result came up as 150 miles away. So it's one of those things I'll maybe return to it once it's developed a bit more

Krucian Jan 21, 2024

I self host a searxng instance and I find the combination of bing, duckduckgo and qwant as the source engines to return decent results. You can use a public instance and choose those engines in settings.

cll7793 Jan 21, 2024

I found public instances often have issues connecting to many search engines at once, will look into self hosting it. Thanks!

silverhand Jan 21, 2024

Those AI ones like Perplexity.ai, Kagi FastGPT and even Copilot (Bing Chat) give good results not just in the responses, but also in the links they return.