Is there any good, free search engine left?

superkret@feddit.org to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 105 points –

Google, DuckDuckGo and Bing now all return the same shitty LLM-generated nonsense sites to most of my searches, and don't respect my literal search terms even when I put them in quotes.

I'm not ready to pay for search, yet.

Is there any alternative?

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Posted this previously:

yes. use any of the following, in no particular order:

  • ecosia.org - A non-profit certified B corp that plants trees by serving ads in your search results. Bing search underneath.
  • duckduckgo.com - A privacy friendly search engine. Primarily sourced from Bing but mixes in a few other sources.
  • any SearXNG instance - A self-hostable search front-end to various search engines.
  • marginalia.nu - specifically 'random' - An independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.

Also, Stract

Are you (or is anyone here) daily-driving Stract yet? I discovered it a few months ago and thought it was everything I was looking for in a search engine, but also concluded that its search results aren't up to the standard I can use for now, so I filed it as one to look out for. Would be interested in hearing others' experiences.

Unfortunately not. I'd like to, but as you say it's not quite there yet. I probably should try it more frequently.

I think Searx is a good suggestion. Can be a bit slow to return results because it runs the search on a bunch of search engines and compiles the results, but that helps to make sure better stuff rises to the top.

The other suggestions aren't suggestions at all. They are obsoleted by searx.space

DDG ... obsolete

startpage.com ... obsolete

Browsers have default search engines. Curse everytime, DDG is accidentally queried.

DDG is a curse word!

Any centralized site, with privacy claims, is treated as lying thru their teeth. Front run future news.