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Ask HN: Best way to Google? log out first
so, everyone on here likes to posit that google is ‘the best search engine’.
my question is, since google ‘personalizes’ search so much from individual to individual, if I want to truly take advantage of the wisdom of crowds, to get the best out of google search, don’t i have to log out first? which enables generalized search results, rather than google telling me what i want to see?
- pdevr 5y agoI open a new window in Chrome's Incognito mode. Works well, as long as that is the first Incognito window opened.
- mkbkn 5y agoI use Ecosia or Startpage. Never felt the need for Google since past many years.
- KhyberNomad 5y agoI've been using Brave Search. The fast answers are better than duck duck go in my opinion
- decrypt 5y agoI have been using Whoogle search for the last two months: https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search It is "A self-hosted, ad-free, privacy-respecting metasearch engine". Happy with the experience so far.
- rStar 5y agothat is amazing and i will have that code on my machine soon. however for purposes of this discussion i’m interested in the best possible search results possible for myself as an individual. my question is more, has google personalized search to the point of diminishing returns. if I log out first, irrespective of surveillance, do i simply get better search results. i know it’s not the best results from an advertiser standpoint, so does that mean it’s not the best for me
- greenyoda 5y ago> if I log out first, irrespective of surveillance, do i simply get better search results Only you can answer that question, based on your own experience. "Better search results" is a very subjective measure, and means different things to different people.
- gtirloni 5y ago> i’m interested in the best possible search results possible for myself as an individual So you want Google's personalized results or not? Just use another search engine if Google annoys you so much (e.g. DDG).
- rStar 5y agogoogle seems to be the best search engine. google personalization seems to have the same blind spots as I do as an individual, so maybe i’m answering my own question here but I’d love more considered opinions than my own
- greenyoda 5y agoIf you don't want to self-host, another privacy-respecting metasearch engine is https://searx.me https://searx.me And you can always use DuckDuckGo, which can anonymously search Google with "!g".
- yuppie_scum 5y agoDuck duck go
- rStar 5y agogoogle is better than ddg, doesn’t seem close. i try to use ddg a few times a year, get frustrated, and switch back.
- mkbkn 5y agoMaybe that is true for developers. I am a non-developer and I search a lot. Ecosia and Startpage works for me.
- rStar 5y agostartpage gives me a captcha on every search. maybe its because i’m on a vpn. that is a very good solution though, and one of the things that started me thinking in this direction
- DerekBickerton 5y agoDDG is good for general queries. One thing I often do is to see what TLD a site is using before blindly typing it into my address bar. "Is it slashdot.org or slashdot.com?". For more complicated and long-tail queries, Google is your man, and DDG redirects those searches with a simple `!g` bang query.
- KhyberNomad 5y agoBrave Search is better. You can enable google fallback mixing so that if it can't find good answers it will just show you google answers anonymously. Also, they have their own indexing if you don't want to use bing's like ddg does.
- rStar 5y agoalthough with this !g ddg command that’s new to me, maybe ddg with !g is the answer. that being said, if anyone actually used that, i can see google shutting that right down.