@ahimsa_pdx may I recommend also startpage.com and ecosia.org both of which, at present, are slop-free and both of which in 2026 give me much better results than DDG?

There have been a few roundups published to fedi under hashtag-searchEngineGames if that's of interest, too!

@datum I looked at ecosia and it seemed to have an AI chatbot included. I think you just have to be careful not to click the wrong link but I'm not 100% sure.

Do you have a link for a non-AI version?

PS. Thanks for the hashtag suggestion, I will look at that later.

@ahimsa_pdx Ecosia... seems to go both ways. Hmm. When I perform an actual search, there's no LLM summary, no chatbox, just links to results.

But on the main page of ecosia.org:

AI that answers to the planet
We use smaller, faster AI models that deliver accurate answers from reliable sources, while using less energy.

I use it without creating an account. Maybe LLM access is gated behind accounts? If so, that's kind of OK by me - if someone wants to seek out a chatbot, I'd rather they use a model that takes less energy and isn't directly controlled by the major players. And not having it there by default means it's not training free users to seek and trust LLM output.

@datum
Here's what it looks like for me.

When I got to the main page (https://www.ecosia.org/) if I type a phrase there's a drop down list of suggestions. I think the one with the diamond instead of the magnifying glass is an AI search. (see first attached image)

After the search it shows AI chat as one of the options under the text field where search text is entered. (see second attached image)

This with Firefox on a laptop. Maybe mobile view is different? (many folks on here use a phone)

@ahimsa_pdx Interesting!

I'm also on firefox, accessing it 2 ways:

Seaching that way shows no "AI chat" link, just web,images,videos,news,more, and more doesn't list any AI chatbot.

However, if in 2. I don't select the diamond-star-glyph option but pick any other item in the list, or just hit 'enter' or the arrow icon, it takes me to the same results as from 1. with no "AI chat" option between "web" and "images"

So, again for me personally, this is OK. It's not polluting results directly with slop generated for the individual query (web-wide search results, of course, still include slop hits) or even suggesting a link to generate slop unless I specifically select that non-default option from the search suggestions dropdown.

Not ideal, but as far as LLM integration goes, it's the very least pushy.

Maybe you and I are getting put into different A/B test groups, with you being shown more routes, if that second link came from a standard search without you having selected the LLM diamond-star-glyph? Not sure.

@datum I appreciate all the info you've shared, thanks!

Yes, the second screenshot with the AI option showing was taken right after I did a standard search, not after a diamond/star/sparkle (LLM) search.

I may start trying other search engines like Qwant, Ecosia, etc., to compare.

I remember I used Startpage a few years ago. I can't remember why I stopped using that one and switched. Were they an early AI adopter? My memory is too bad to remember why I switched.