technology

I use DDG. It's getting worse, but it is still better than Google. At some point I might switch to Yandex.

Does China have any good search engines for English content? I'd consider Baidu but it is not practical to use if you don't read Mandarin (though you can still query in English and get English results).

Also, for DDG heads looking to try something else, you might be interested in a browser plugin like this to keep DDG "bang" behavior with other search engines. I cannot vouch for this extension in particular though aside from pointing you to the same review page I just looked at.

I use DDG, it at least has the courtesy to ask me if I want AI slop so I can say “no”, and not have it forced on me.

Why not just use public SearXNG insrances? It's what I do.

I'd like to set up my own instance at some point, but in the meantime, I get all (or most anyway) of the benefits of Searx without any setup or hassle. You can use just one public instance just fine, but what I like to do is use LibRedirect (that name, I know) to point to about 10 or 15 public instances and it randomly selects from those with each search. When I need it to be real specific, I have a couple public instances where I have saved settings.

If I want to use yandex or startpage, or just want to search say wikipedia, I'll use bangs, which just means putting a couple exclamation marks before the engine name and my search, like "!!yandex " or "!!w " and it automatically searches there directly instead of going through the searxng instance.

By far the best way to search these days, imo. The only issue is that sometimes an instance will get rate limited or the server will go down, but then you just use a different public instance.

I've been using DDG since I heard about it. The quality of results has indeed dropped recently but I just assumed that was because the quality of all the other engines dropped too. I always thought they just pulled from Google & Bing and stripped out the crap, but maybe they don't?

Anyway, I haven't found a better engine that you don't have to pay for. Kagi I hear is pretty good but you have to pay for x number of searches per month and I'm not about to worry about how many searches I've done per month.

4get, better searx ng imo

I self host my own instance but you can use other people's instances. This is just one I found randomly. https://4get.ca/

Get uBlacklist and a user curated ai block list. Block any site that wastes your time and you will eventually have an OK experience.

I don't know. Yandex maybe? It does tend to prioritize Russian results a bit higher than any western search engine but so long as you're using the English site it seems okay when I've tried using it. I think the whole web is poisoned with AI SEO slop and we're not likely to ever go back. Going forward if you want info you'll have to pay for premium search, for an AI assistant to search for you, etc. Knowledge is being gated behind a paywall of frustration and time-wasting.

Mojeek and Startpage. Mojeek is independent of other search engines, but you can still directly use them via the buttons on the bottom if the results are not satisfying. Also, you can use it cookieless for directly searching.

I use DDG. It's sufficient for me, and I never use !g anymore because I quickly realised that doing !g for poor DDG results got me even worse Google results. The DDG results are getting worse yeah, but it's still usable for me

Leta from Mullvad https://leta.mullvad.net/

Ecosia and Qwant have been okay for me. Might not be for everyone though.

They're all pretty bad

I would only recommend kagi but you've already blacklisted it, amazing engine

searx, mojeek(only for english results), swisscows, startpage(not the best but I like the anonymous view feature), yandex and sometimes ecosia, brave search through mullvad leta.