cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/4448974
I’ve recently started using a self hosted SearXNG instance but I’m still using the search engines enabled by default (google, duckduckgo and qwant). What search engines do you have enabled or which ones do you feel you’ve gotten the best results with?
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Duckduckgo 😎
Qwant. And occasionally Google and DuckDuckGo
I am using https://4get.ca/ It’s a metasearch engine, I can search in various search engines anonymously through it.
I currently use searx.org instance of SearXNG which for me works decently, and I can still use the ! searches of DuckDuckGo in it, just adding another !, like !!wikipedia
I’m planing on self hosting a Searx instance. But right now I’m very happy with DuckDuckGo. I find I get less biased results and a lot of the time I prefer it’s results to google. And for the odd time I want an image and DDG isn’t giving me what I want I use bing, which is probably the best search engine for images from my experience.
Unfortunately DDG blocks piracy related searches and torrents, that’s why I don’t support them anymore, also they plan on banning “misinformation” whatever that means. I don’t like it anymore.
What search engine do you use or if Searxng what engines do you pull from?
Google and DuckDuckGo mostly, I guess if they are pulled from Searxng, then they can’t track you and all that.
Good to know thank you
I just did some tests on DDG (sorry OP, not related to SearXNG). If you use it normally, they put a lot of images from URL like improving.duckduckgo.com/t/we?monitor=you&spying=secretly&id=etc (supposedly for improving DDG by gathering statistical blah blah). Their no-JavaScript version is much less invasive.
Solution(s): 1) uBlock is highly recommended, 2) if possible disable JS, 3) try Tor Browser, which is just an anonymity version of Firefox
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Thanks, didn’t know LibreJS. Its concept is interesting. But there is a libre tracking JavaScript too. Besides, these tracking URLs on DDG are images (“web bugs”), not scripts. uBlock blocks these things on DDG already on its own.
Noscript can easily disable JavaScript for specific domain(s). One can install this add-on (or if you use TB it’s already there by default). So if disabling JS partially or totally is acceptable, that’s one of the options for DDG.
I need Google results, in my experience they are the best. That’s why I’m using startpage.com That’s the best alternative I have up to today
I used to use searx for a couple years but it got too unreliable where it would fail to load results all the time randomly. Tried DDG and consistently ended up having to manually switch to google after the results on DDG just weren’t good enough (think troubleshooting linux issues and stuff, DDG would never find the obscure answer in a forum but google would).
Anyways, ofc the goal wasn’t to end up back at google so now I’ve been using startpage for the last few months and it seems to work great with no issues.
Presearch. I don’t care for the crypto features. (I already got Monero anyway) but the concept of a decentralized search engine is interesting.
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ecosia.org It care about my privacy and It also plant Trees from ad revenue.
Me too, though unfortunately I systematically ignore search results with the ad mark, so it’s not really helpful…
Brave Search and Startpage.
Qwant for work and DDG for personal stuff
I am testing both for personal use right now, can you share your experience and how you came to the decision which to use for personal use and which for work?
Qwant has very similar search results to Google which I need for work. DDG is IMO more private so I use it for personal stuff.
Also Qwant has better results than DDG is languages other than English.
Sorry, this question was SearXNG specific, so MetaGer was irrelevant. I’ve never self-hosted it, but I’d say Brave. It’s supposed to have its own index (correct me if I’m wrong), so one can expect some diversity.
As for DDG, there shouldn’t be any problems if used via SearXNG. In general, there are a few comments about DDG here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1164105.html and I quote:
Negative:
Positive:
Daily driver: Qwant
Niche searches: kagi
Not privacy friendly— Ai: perplexity.ai
DuckDuckGo, I’ll switch to SearXNG as soon as it comes to Windows
https://coalition.blue :), hosted by your bud lol
Does a public instance ID or log users? I never even considered it because it seems risky, like I’m asking for backdoor access to my network
It does forward your real IP to the search engines so that google doesn’t flake out on me. But otherwise I am not logging anything haha
There are public instances you can use, or if you want it locally hosted, there is wsl2. (Alternatively, join the dark side and install linux!)