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What search engine do you use? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by SemioticStandard@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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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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[–] kamen@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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?

[–] Jarmer@vlemmy.net 1 points 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.

[–] kamen@beehaw.org 1 points 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?