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.

  • Kir@feddit.it
    9·
    1 year ago

    I don’t understand why lots of you answer with chatGPT. It’s not a search engine! And you shouldn’t use it like a search engine.

    • NeonWoofGenesis@kek.henlo.fi
      1·
      1 year ago

      I can see a usecase for where you don’t know where to start or search with, and then verify with actual searches.

      I recently used it to explain for a friend what is the difference between wheat and ale beer, and it gave a very good summary. With DDG I might not get a direct explanation and would need to read a few articles and then word them in a comprehensive way.

    • 雨 月@feddit.de
      0·
      1 year ago

      Maybe people mainly search for answers to simple daily life questions or something.

      • Kir@feddit.it
        1·
        1 year ago

        I guess, but it’s still not a search engine and I think it’s a bit problematic if that’s the usecase.

    • tenet@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      Except it IS a search engine and that’s basically all it’s good for. By its very nature all it can do is collate information. It’s the only thing AI is good at.

      • Kir@feddit.it
        0·
        1 year ago

        No it’s not. To search is a specific task, and generative AI can’t do that. It can fulfill some need that we are used to fulfill by searching the web, but this doesn’t mean it’s a search engine.

        If you lost the key of your car and have access to an AI that can (sometimes) start your can without a key, you can be happy about it, but you still can’t say the AI searched the key for you. It can’t do it.

        Edit: btw, we are talking about generative AI here. I’m not saying there isn’t and could not be a search engine that use AI to better its result.

  • ian@lemmy.sdf.org
    6·
    1 year ago

    https://www.marginalia.nu/

    Currently down for updates, but does a great job of avoiding SEO abuse/blog spam/etc. Takes you back to the earlier days of the internet when it felt like there were more forums/individual sites/etc. They’re still out there, just hidden under all the junk.

    • Ix9@beehaw.orgEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Same here. I know a lot of folks don’t like the results, but to be honest, I don’t find Google any better these days.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    I use mostly either ddg or brave search. I miss the google of pre 2010, when the majority of its results were good.

    I also use Yandex whenever I’m looking for pirate stuff, the only engine that doesn’t block those kinds of results.

  • eight_byte@feddit.de
    4·
    1 year ago

    Kagi. Very happy with it. Best $5 it recently invested. Gives me much better results than Google and all the others.

    • monotrox@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      1 year ago

      How do you come by with just 300 searches per month? I tested the trial period and used up the 100 searches in just a couple of days

      • eight_byte@feddit.de
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yes, that limited number of included searches is my only criticism I have with Kagi. They are aware of this, and are trying to offer customers more searches for the same price by improving their costs. I am glad they decided to do this by reducing their costs and have decided to not go the road of monetizing their users by selling ads and customer data.

        However, I try to use Kagi only for serious search requests. For other very trivial searches, I use Startpage. For me, works OK. But I hope that one day Kagi offers enough searches, so I can just use it everywhere as my default search engine without thinking about it.

  • kamen@beehaw.org
    4·
    1 year ago

    I’ve been using DuckDuckGo as my main search engine for the past couple of years. I occasionally fall back to Google.

    • Keesrif@beehaw.org
      2·
      1 year ago

      I was in this camp but find that the results I’ve gotten from DDG have been notably worse for the last year or so, to the point that I don’t expect useful results to come out of it any more at this point. Even if I searched “site name” because I couldn’t remember the URL was spelled “site-name.com” I’ve had no results coming from DDG, while Google had it as the first hit.

      Have you experienced something similar? Are there techniques or workarounds I’m not aware of?

      • kamen@beehaw.org
        2·
        1 year ago

        Sadly, yes, and instances like this have me falling back to Google. I’d happily try something else, but I’m a bit at a loss right now. What would you suggest as another search engine to try?

      • Jarmer@vlemmy.net
        1·
        1 year ago

        I honestly haven’t noticed this. I can almost always find what I’m looking for with a general ddg search. Interesting.

  • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.comEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Self-hosted Searxng. It’s shared to multiple people which kills a lot of the usefulness in Google or others trying to track my instance.

    • copylefty@lemmy.fosshost.comEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      I tried this, but it kept saying ‘Engine failed’ or something on every other search. I never could figure out why. I might try again

      Edit: Actually it was Searx I used. I’ll spin up Searxng and see if it’s improved

      • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.comEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I had some issues with searx… Things are a bit better in my experience with searxng. Sometimes I still run into the error messages. But usually it’s my fault more than anything (server bogged down, too many requests/searches across all my users, or internet blips)… I just rerun the search a few seconds later and it’s usually good again.

  • kscutsforth@beehaw.org
    3·
    1 year ago

    Duck Duck Go is the only search engine I use. Switched away from Google for privacy reasons and haven’t missed it a bit.

  • sorchist@beehaw.org
    3·
    1 year ago

    I’ve been using DuckDuckGo since, at least 2010, maybe earlier. If its results aren’t up to snuff, I’m not aware of that because they’re what I’m used to. I fall through to Google ( !g) if I think there might be more out there. The bang commands are so good. I use DDG as my main search in my search bar and then I can use the bang commands to get to whatever specialized search I want from there. It’s a meta-search-engine.

  • lentilhoarder@beehaw.org
    2·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for making me aware of Kagi, I’ve been trialing it and getting decent results is a breath of fresh air in a world of blogspam and LLM garbage.