Time to ditch #duckduckgo

In the last couple of months I have noticed an increasing trend of supplying me search results that are completely unrelated to the current query and tie back to my location or previous searches. I can say this with a high degree of certainty this is without a doubt beyond the 100th instance this has happened.

My browser is configured against tracking and fingerprinting (in fact all my devices are) which would make it fairly difficult to retain any data unless they are profiling me.

skozzii,

On DDG I can type in an exact company or product name and not get a proper result, it’s crazy. Google seems to find the stuff no problem, it’s really quite frustrating when the search engine isn’t even capable of basic queries.

rab,

I feel like ddg has never had good search results

TheHolyChecksum,

Yes, I have the same issue with DDG for something like a year now. I can’t use it anymore for basic searches, I feel like the bing api they are using is getting worse and worse.

canihasaccount,

I paid for Kagi and have been super happy with it. If you don’t mind paying, I highly recommend it. Not having ads or manipulated results is worth it for me.

LinkOpensChest_wav,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one avatar

I’m unhappy that Kagi uses geo-location data to provide certain types of results

Sunroc,

Oh that sucks, can you turn it off or spoof the location?

LinkOpensChest_wav,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one avatar

You can easily spoof the location on most search engines by using a VPN, but I’d much prefer my search engine solely respond to deliberate input from the user

example,

you can just turn it off, see help.kagi.com/kagi/settings/general.html

MigratingtoLemmy,

I turned JS off other than for specific websites. This includes DDG. It gives me accurate results, although the other commenters don’t seem be facing your problem either

ForestOrca,
@ForestOrca@kbin.social avatar

I use DDG, tho' it's with a VPN. And it seems to work just fine. shrug

random65837,

The time to ditch DDG came when they started gatekeeping during the first Russia thing, COVID, etc.

elias_griffin, (edited )

Looks like you are using Firefox. Use arkenfox sure, but cut Mozilla off it’s 115 server network it uses to track you via FF by using a host deny list, FOSS git clone harden-firefox. You’ll have to disable to update ublock origin or remove the extensions line, but it’s better to just cut the adverts and tracking by removing it from the networks than by browser interception (slower, loss of performance, still hits your computer). Links included to do that in that repo.

Alternative browers are Librewolf and Qutebrowser. When you really don’t want to be tracked for some things use Lynx.

A great search engine replacement is Grasp. It’s being funded by Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator and although you only get 100 free searches a months, it can come in very handy. The search results it gives you, unlike Kagi which is just a reformat of DuckDuckgo yet with AI, it’s results are completely different than any other engine and imo, on point, surely for anything technical.

My general search engine is an envs.net free hosting of Searx. envs.net is a free Linux shell community with many services like blogs, email, matrix hosting, etc etc. If you do end up using their German Searx as main search donate to them, I did.

thedeadwalking4242,

Kagi!!! It’s cost money but it’s cheap. If you do alot of searches it’s worth it

elias_griffin,

I tried Kagi and canceled after a week. It’s a reformat of DuckDuckGo, a better format for sure, and lack of sponsored links, yet it adds AI too. In the end, it’s the same old curated unhelpful results that leave millions of high value boutique and indie sources of information out. Also, it’s Orion browser is bad.

Basically ask yourself that knowing all the good writers, content creators went to Substack, yet hardly any search engine gives results from there, why?

thedeadwalking4242,

There isn’t going to be a search engine without some type of ai or content agitation tool. Key word search is not enough to make one of these work. Search engines need to sort through millions of web pages, and try to give you the best match for what your looking for via smart algorithms. With Google these algorithms are designed to sell you products and get the most clicks out of you. Kagis profit incentive is to curate good links for your search results. Indie results will always be low on the ranks thats why they are indie. As they get more popular so so their search results. You don’t want your search engine feeding you only new and up and coming shit. You want the most relevant search results. Sometimes it’s going to take some digging to find what your looking for. UNLESS you want to give up mountains of your data to and hope that the company uses it to serve your interest instead of feed you sponsored bullshit.

clearleaf,

I’ve never seen the point of this search engine or any commercial alternative to google. It’s all just varying layers of proxy to Google. You might as well just find a searx instance and use that because it’s all the same crap at the end of the day.

Zyansheep,

Huh? I thought duckduckgo maintained its own index?

PlatypusXray,

I feel like Qwant has become the best when it comes to the quality of the search results. My experience with kagi is limited, though.

mojo,

Nah it’s still the best

I_Miss_Daniel,

It might be blindly searching for websites that contain any of the words scan, mark 2, pro.

It seems to do that when it can’t find a page with all of the words, and the only way I know to fix it is put the whole thing in quotation marks.

steakmeout,

Working fine here. OP are you sure it’s not your network?

DetectiveSanity,

I am running OpenWRT and forcing DNS traffic to Mullvad with a fallback to Quad9, besides this happens across different networks.

ksyko, (edited )

deleted_by_author

    •
    DetectiveSanity,

    This was first page. Around 10-15 mark.

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