Someone (average smartphone user) complained to me the other day that there isn’t a clear solution to navigating the web because it’s either ai slop or the results are poor.

And I kinda agree, nowadays you do have to put in some more effort to get what you’re looking for.

And so I told them I’d compile a list of which search engines are best for what purpose.

So far I have:

Startpage: works, but does a poor job of finding product codes and whatnot.

Duckduckgo: gives more general results afaik

Ecosia: works great but relies on bing

I have tried things like qwant ect but haven’t really settled on those.

Any other suggestions?

I’d tell em to use udm14 but it’s still google so I’d rather keep that as a plan B.

    • Ghoelian@piefed.socialEnglish
      9·
      8 hours ago

      Same here. It’s great easily being able to block those shitty github/stackoverflow scrapers like codegrepper, answeroverflow etc.

    • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      6 hours ago

      and you can downrank/ban websites.

      Holy shit, I’ve been wanting that for years. I’ll have to check them out.

      Edit: Aaaand they have a built in AI despite calling themselves “human-focussed”. That’s a turnoff. If I’m paying for a search engine, I’d prefer to have a subscription option with the AI stripped out so I’m not subsidizing it for others.

      Plus, I’m thinking about it I’m not exactly on board with needing an account with a search engine. That makes it super easy to track you. Meanwhile, using noai.duckduckgo anonymously via a VPN is way more private

      • graynk@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        3 hours ago

        I’m not exactly on board with needing an account with a search engine. That makes it super easy to track you.

        https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html

        they have a built in AI despite calling themselves “human-focussed”

        Because it’s a tool that can serve humans. Not strictly search-related, but their AI-based translation tool is genuinely great and very useful to me.

        https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/ai-philosophy.html

        You don’t have to use built-in AI, it only triggers when you explicitly ask for it and you can completely disable it in the settings.

        They also have anti-slop filters, BTW: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/slopstop.html

        Finally, not sure what models the search summarizer and the translation tool use, but the assistant lets you use open weights model like Kimi, GLM, DeepSeek et al.

      • ApplyingAutomation@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 hours ago

        In my experience, Kagi doesn’t force AI down your throat. It only triggers an AI summary if you end your query with a “?”, and it does seem to be summarization of the search results.

        Also, as per Kagi’s pricing page, there is a higher tier for people who want more AI features as you are suggesting.

        All that being said, I use a Searxng instance 😅