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I grew up using Google (and ask jeeves and yahoo.) In school, google won. Now, google sucks. It's all ads, AI SEO maxxing, and the work to find useful results

by kawfey 2y ago

I grew up using Google (and ask jeeves and yahoo.) In school, google won. Now, google sucks. It's all ads, AI SEO maxxing, and the work to find useful results has gone up manyfold. I found myself using site:"" to get closer to what I needed. I tried DDG, and it's more or less the same, but it's like the search engine is conspiring against you to more or less find completely useless results. I tried kagi, and i love it. I hate that it's 100 searches for the cheapest account, but it gets me right into the thick of my research off the bat, plus searching smallweb has brought my faith back into the internet, and it's AI stuff is useful, insofar that it doesn't get in the way. DDG is still my standard search tool for "picture of banana" or "WWII jet airplanes" but for "forum discussion 73 magazine article on homebrew superheterodyne receiver from 1980s" im going straight to kagi.

elicksaur 2y ago
>it's like the search engine is conspiring against you to more or less find completely useless results. Has not been my experience at all. Been using ddg as my default for a few years. What kinds of searches do you find frustrating?
- bombcar 2y ago
  In my experience DDG and Google are similar in that you either get what you wanted right away, or you’re doomed At least with Kagi it’s been worth scrolling down a page or two before reformatting my search query.
- reassess_blind 2y ago
  [dead]
Atlas48 2y ago
I main DDG for it's bang feature. It's permanently ingrained into my muscle memory now.
- niutech 2y ago
  Brave Search supports bangs too! https://search.brave.com/bangs https://search.brave.com/bangs
- hifikuno 2y ago
  As another lover of Kagi, Kagi also has bangs. Apparently they also support all DDG bangs. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/bangs.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/bangs.html
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
    Why y'all going to your fav search engine first to search with another search engine? This is built into chrome and probably Firefox and every other browser
    - lionkor 2y ago
      bangs let you search on hundreds of specific sites, and you dont need to set anything up yourself.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      Bangs make searching third-party sites easier. For HN, for example: !hn by:dredmorbius ddg bangs (I don't know how to force that to search comments by default, but that's a toggle on the results page.) Others are image, weather, and Wikipedia searches. You can share your bang searches with others. Since the syntax is centralised, you're not working through other people's individual search shortcuts. DDG maintain the bangs and generally update the ones that break. Since more people are effectively testing these all the time, this is more effective than your own ability to keep your own search shortcuts in working order. My claim isn't that these are necessarily overwhelming advantages. But they are benefits which some of us have noted and appreciate, and show that the concept has more than nil value. And: DDG have over 13,500 bangs and counting, and you can search for relevant bangs using, of course, the !bang bang search, e.g., !bang weather (About 24 results.)
hackernewds 2y ago
shameless undercover plug for kagi much?
flakeoil 2y ago
It's 300 searches per month for the cheapest Kagi plan. For me that has been enough so far. Some days I search a lot and then other days almost nothing so on average I never passed the 300/month so far.
- definitelyauser 2y ago
  Main thing holding me back from even trying it is the mental overhead of having to think about "number of searches per month". Same as an ISP with a bandwidth limit, even if it's much higher than I'm likely to need, it's not something I'm interested in having to keep track of or worry about.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    You can get the unlimited plan for a cheap price and then not have to think about it.
  - flakeoil 2y ago
    Just don't think about it. Kagi keeps track of it and they do not charge for anything extra. They will tell you when you reached your limit. At first I also thought I would have to think about and not search for anything unnecessary to keep the usage low, but now I just blast away without thinking about it and I have so far never reached the monthly limit of 300 for the $5 plan. It's refreshing to not have any ads and know there is no hidden agenda behind the search results.
gonational 2y ago
This has been my exact experience with DDG. I tried Yandex when somebody posted on here that it had old-school style results, and it was true to a certain degree, but I'm not gonna use some Russian search engine. So I just literally stopped searching for things. The Internet mostly died, for me, when searching got bad; now it's just specific forums and websites that I already know about. In my opinion, this was all done on purpose. They wanted to ruin free and open access to independent, distributed creations, and keep any traffic into a narrow funnel owned mostly by Black Rock, Vanguard Trust, and State Street Capital, with the eventual goal of frustrating people into purchasing licensed access to AI to get curated and censored access to limited information.
jeffrallen 2y ago
My first stop is No Trash Search: https://notrashsearch.github.io/about.html https://notrashsearch.github.io/about.html
leokennis 2y ago
What turned me off Kagi is that they spent a huge percentage of some recent funding they got on making ridiculously customized overengineered…t-shirts. Their development process seems to be “just say yes to everything that piques your interest” and so even with their steep pricing I’m fairly sure they’ll run out of money quickly.

by kawfey 2y ago

elicksaur 2y ago

>it's like the search engine is conspiring against you to more or less find completely useless results. Has not been my experience at all. Been using ddg as my default for a few years. What kinds of searches do you find frustrating?

bombcar 2y ago
In my experience DDG and Google are similar in that you either get what you wanted right away, or you’re doomed At least with Kagi it’s been worth scrolling down a page or two before reformatting my search query.
reassess_blind 2y ago
[dead]

Atlas48 2y ago

I main DDG for it's bang feature. It's permanently ingrained into my muscle memory now.

niutech 2y ago
Brave Search supports bangs too! https://search.brave.com/bangs https://search.brave.com/bangs
hifikuno 2y ago
As another lover of Kagi, Kagi also has bangs. Apparently they also support all DDG bangs. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/bangs.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/bangs.html
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  Why y'all going to your fav search engine first to search with another search engine? This is built into chrome and probably Firefox and every other browser
  - lionkor 2y ago
    bangs let you search on hundreds of specific sites, and you dont need to set anything up yourself.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    Bangs make searching third-party sites easier. For HN, for example: !hn by:dredmorbius ddg bangs (I don't know how to force that to search comments by default, but that's a toggle on the results page.) Others are image, weather, and Wikipedia searches. You can share your bang searches with others. Since the syntax is centralised, you're not working through other people's individual search shortcuts. DDG maintain the bangs and generally update the ones that break. Since more people are effectively testing these all the time, this is more effective than your own ability to keep your own search shortcuts in working order. My claim isn't that these are necessarily overwhelming advantages. But they are benefits which some of us have noted and appreciate, and show that the concept has more than nil value. And: DDG have over 13,500 bangs and counting, and you can search for relevant bangs using, of course, the !bang bang search, e.g., !bang weather (About 24 results.)

hackernewds 2y ago

shameless undercover plug for kagi much?

flakeoil 2y ago

It's 300 searches per month for the cheapest Kagi plan. For me that has been enough so far. Some days I search a lot and then other days almost nothing so on average I never passed the 300/month so far.

definitelyauser 2y ago
Main thing holding me back from even trying it is the mental overhead of having to think about "number of searches per month". Same as an ISP with a bandwidth limit, even if it's much higher than I'm likely to need, it's not something I'm interested in having to keep track of or worry about.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  You can get the unlimited plan for a cheap price and then not have to think about it.
- flakeoil 2y ago
  Just don't think about it. Kagi keeps track of it and they do not charge for anything extra. They will tell you when you reached your limit. At first I also thought I would have to think about and not search for anything unnecessary to keep the usage low, but now I just blast away without thinking about it and I have so far never reached the monthly limit of 300 for the $5 plan. It's refreshing to not have any ads and know there is no hidden agenda behind the search results.

gonational 2y ago

This has been my exact experience with DDG. I tried Yandex when somebody posted on here that it had old-school style results, and it was true to a certain degree, but I'm not gonna use some Russian search engine. So I just literally stopped searching for things. The Internet mostly died, for me, when searching got bad; now it's just specific forums and websites that I already know about. In my opinion, this was all done on purpose. They wanted to ruin free and open access to independent, distributed creations, and keep any traffic into a narrow funnel owned mostly by Black Rock, Vanguard Trust, and State Street Capital, with the eventual goal of frustrating people into purchasing licensed access to AI to get curated and censored access to limited information.

jeffrallen 2y ago

My first stop is No Trash Search: https://notrashsearch.github.io/about.html https://notrashsearch.github.io/about.html

leokennis 2y ago

What turned me off Kagi is that they spent a huge percentage of some recent funding they got on making ridiculously customized overengineered…t-shirts. Their development process seems to be “just say yes to everything that piques your interest” and so even with their steep pricing I’m fairly sure they’ll run out of money quickly.