Been looking for a search engine that isn’t plauged with SEO garbage every time I look for anything. Been using DDG for quite a long time now, and I’m starting to get dissatisfied with results. It seems like more and more results are just companies trying to make their way to the top of the search results instead of anything organic. It’s even worse when I look for any kind of service or product.
Looking for as close to 100% organic results as possible.
Kagi is how I search now. Very, very occasionally search for something on Google in specific circumstances, buy otherwise it’s all Kagi. Web has become a lot less noisy for me, and they label each search result with how many ads/trackers the site uses. Definitely have found smaller, “quieter” sites that have given me much better info, that hasn’t been paid for.
Especially good for tech-review searches.
I’m hearing a lot of recommendations for Kagi. Maybe when I can afford another subscription service, but that time isn’t right now.
I’m also not a fan of having all my searches potentially tied to one account, even if they say they respect privacy. Makes me very weary to try it.
$5/month is very steep, and it only includes 300 searches. There’s no way Google makes that per month off of advertising to me, and I really don’t see how $1/month wouldn’t be more than enough to cover their costs.
Google has probably managed to reduce cost at scale. I’d expect kagis internal cost per search to go down with time. But they may not pass those saving onto the user.
I don’t think you’ll find anything. Search engines locate relevant results by design. The only way they can do that is by interpreting the contents of public-facing webpages. There are some things they can do to combat obvious keyword stuffing, but ultimately, overly SEO’d sites are going to work around it with content that appears relevant but really isn’t (think recipe websites with 20 paragraphs and pictures of bullshit nobody cares about and the actual content you want to see at the bottom … that kind of thing).
Kagi, as others mentioned is good but need to pay. Logical. I used to have SearxNG instance but I tend to use search engines in general less and less so no worth to maintain it, currently using DDG or BraveSearch
- so yeah, Google is Google, the very definition of SEO – to the point now they will completely ignore your query to show you “relevant” results
- and Bing is Microsoft, ’nuff said – although I hear they seem to be THE choice for porn searches …
- people have been claiming DuckDuckGo has become just a frontend for Bing which is why their results have been declining 🤷
- ad tech company System1 owns a majority stake of Startpage – apparently they’ve mollified PrivacyTools that it would not impact Startpage’s privacy focused mission
- Qwant out of France actually seems to be stepping up as a good netizen, not only focusing on privacy but also investing in privacy initiatives in EU
- otherwise you’re stuck bouncing around
SearXSearXNG instances – Google and Bing REALLY don’t like meta search engines and will regularly block overactive instances
EDIT: looks like SearX is pretty much dead and had been replaced by SearXNG
Qwant claims not to know anything about me, yet I’ve noticed its results are very much tailored to my location.
I realize this is just data any site can easily see based on my IP, but still it’s one of my pet peeves. If I want to see information tailored to my general location, then I’ll add the name of the location in the search field. I really hate how search engines try to be so “smart.”
I’ll give you an example of why it bugs me: The first time I ever looked at Tik Tok, I saw nothing but right-wing MAGA content, certainly based on the political climate where I live. I don’t like sites trying to determine my interests based on the fact that I’m in [location].
The only ones that don’t seem to tailor results based on my location are SearX instances and Startpage. I have the same misgivings about Startpage, though I use it fairly regularly, and I haven’t noticed anything questionable, in spite of the fact that I deeply distrust System1. There’s no way they bought into it out of the goodness of their hearts. We may still be in the “bait” stage of a bait-and-switch.
What’s most annoying about the “tailored experience” is that they presume to know what you’re looking for, even though you directly told them what to show you. They don’t give a fuck about relevancy, they’re going to show you whatever is going to make them the most money, which usually means corporate ad crap, and outrage news. Plus if they show you shit results then you’ll search multiple times and they’ll get to show you 4 times the ads.
Yes, and sometimes it’s straight-up dangerous. I’m into longboarding, and I’ve noticed if you use a site like Google or Bing to search for the best longboards, you get swamped by Amazon affiliate sites recommending cheaply made junk that could end in injury or worse. But hey, at least someone profits. Yay capitalism!
Yay capitalism!
U.S.A! U.S.A!
