this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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Data on search engine market share is available, but I wonder what that looks like for Lemmy users in particular, who I would assume lean more technical than the average user, so probably use DuckDuckGo and alternates more than Google.

I use a mix of DuckDuckGo and Kagi. I'll also use ChatGPT, which can be good if you're careful to verify the answers it gives you as a check against hallucinations. It's useful for short, direct answers without ads or SEO bullshit.

This article on Ars (and if you're not a subscriber, you absolutely should be, as they are the best tech journalists out there) inspired the question: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/google-admits-reddit-protests-make-it-harder-to-find-helpful-search-results

Fucking Reddit. Enshittification ruins everything.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They're all garbage. Content farms and SEO nonsense has been flooding search engines with useless garbage for years. Either that or pages that simply copy forum threads over and over and over so you get a whole results page of what appears to be different sites, but are all a copy of the same forum thread from 2007. Or they grab your search string and then you have a page that looks like it's exactly what you need, only to find out it's scammy bullshit. But AI is making that whole problem exponentially worse.

I've tried DDG many many times over the years. Sometimes it's ok. But overall, most of the results i get just aren't relevant, and it seems like over the last year or two DDG's results have gotten way worse. I always end up back on Google. As crappy as Google is, the results still end up being more relevant overall.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Google and ChatGPT, I tried DDG several years ago, but the results were not good, might try it again

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

duck duck go on firefox.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

A mix of Google and DuckDuckGo. DDG is great, and I support their movement, but for specific issues Google has unparalleled search results. I lock Google search in its own Firefox container.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yay Ecosia!!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Do you know if ecosia is still using google under the hoods?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I use DuckDuckGo on my personal stuff, but my office has the work browser set to Google and Bing still.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I typically use StartPage, sometimes DDG. Occasionally I pop in and check out how Brave Search is progressing, out of curiosity.

I would love to use Searx, but I've never found an instance where functionality wasn't breaking all the time or it just randomly goes offline. As much as I want to be, I've learned that I'm not much of a self-hoster. So, yeah, every time I try Searx, I wind up back at StartPage. If anyone has any solid, reliable instances they know of, I'd love to check them out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (5 children)

The only correct answer here is to use an instance of SearXNG because it's open source, utilizes privacy, and queries every kind of search engine that exists on the internet.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Dunno what it portends, but that link has an update that "SearX instances (not SearXNG) will soon get removed from this list"

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Bing/Bing chat in combination with Microsoft Rewards.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Self-hosted SearXNG. Very easy to self-host, and (for the most part) works just fine

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Can we stop trying to coin cute terms like "enshittification"? What that term describes is just capitalism working as intended.

There is a term that describes this behavior that we've been using for at least decades (to describe behavior that has happened since the inception of capitalism): rent seeking.

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