I know it’s been getting worse over time, but I could still find what I needed after some digging.
Recently it’s been like 10 minutes of adjusting search terms, still getting completely useless or irrelevant results, and me just giving up afterwards. Other search engines seem just as bad.
*years? Yes. It used to be the bleeding edge of search and now it’s just profit driven enshittification like the rest of ai-ridden garbage tech wallstreet bullshit.
Don’t forget your glue on your pizza! Can’t have a pizza without glue…
It’s not just glue it‘s Elmer‘s Glue. They still have some standard.
Elmer can go Fudd himself. Store brand non-toxic craft paste is just as flavorful an half the price.
We’re talking about glue not craft paste. One can be launched across the room at an unsuspecting teacher, the other taste fantastic.
Sounds pretty sociopathic
And don’t forget to check if your bread is baked by inserting your dick in it. You’re Welcome.
The other day I asked google what season we were in. The AI got it wrong, and that’s like the simplest question ever.
If we could roll back the internet 10-15 years, everything would be much better.
It has definitely been getting worse over years, but I specifically meant the last couple of weeks. I could still find what I needed between all the garbage… now I can’t even find it after adjusting the search multiple times.
If you use Firefox you can add a Search Engine that removes the google cruft.
In about:config browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh Boolean, hit the plus sign to add. Exit out of that screen. Then go to Search engines in Settings and “Add” [ whatever name you want to call it ] as a new search engine. And paste this URL and save it. https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14
You will see that it deletes everything but search when you use it. You can also just use the url but you must replace the %s with your search term, like red+espresso. Example: https://www.google.com/search?q=red+espresso&udm=14
I’m sure this works for other browsers, I just use Firefox.
I love you.
I’ve already added a new search engine like this, but what does the about:config setting do?
Returns the add custom search engine button. Which for some reason, has been hidden by default.
Oh my god, thank you for this. You solved a year long sufferfest for this internet stranger because of that greyed out button. Every god-damned guide online points you towards that button and I could not find the solution for it. What the fuck Mozilla
You can right click the URL bar for sites that support the OpenSearch XML standard. Which I guess is what they wanted to replace it with. But I don’t really know why they removed the button to a about: config setting. Could at least be a checkbox or something to enable.
Hm interesting. I guess that is part of why tenbluelinks.org even needs to exist. Because a custom one is now a PITA. Thanks.
If you’re going to use it as a one-off, you can put the udm part first, making it much easier to type into:
Ooo I haven’t heard of this, thank you! The amount of garbage they’ve added is absurd.
I have tried many times to do exactly what you said, and I still am not getting the option to add a custom search engine.
Any advice you have is appreciated.
I was honestly getting so frustrated the other day at work when searching for something very specific and coming up empty handed. Tried DuckDuckGo and even fucking Bing and found what I needed in a matter of seconds. Google search is trash now. I have to go to the second page or further just to find something that isn’t an ad, AI response, or reddit. None of which are helpful.
DuckDuckGo is just Bing with a duck on it.
Regardless, I still got better results than Google.
I’ve been swapping around search engines too, but they still seem bad. I always end up back at Google just because I know how to manipulate the search terms better.
The results are usually the most clicked, not necessarily the factual links. Others have recommended kagi. I haven’t tried it yet. I remember when the internet started and you had to use them all!
I’ll have to try kagi some time
EDIT: subscription based… Idk, definite maybe on that one.
Is that the one that costs money? You can’t have a true incognito search if that’s the case.
True, but worth reading their about page and privacy page. Not saying it’ll stay this way, but the way they are running is something that makes more sense then being sold as a product to Google. And you aren’t getting much of an incognito these days with all the fingerprinting they are doing.
I will admit kagi search isn’t the highest performer, but it’s viable. DDG, Start page, etc. Might give you more privacy, or not (hard to tell with DDG these days), but it might be worth trying a different model for a while.
I miss the days when the internet was truly free, but in lieu of that we have to have something better. Kagi is a start.
Then != Than
Incognito is on your client side browser in that the browser doesn’t retain any trace of the current session once you close the tab. The search engine still knows what you whacked off to.
You can’t have? Or you can’t be sure?
Because you certainly can have. Just because you pay, doesn’t mean they will log your searches. In fact Kagi claim they don’t. And since their only income comes from paying users. If anyone ever found out they’re lying about that, they’d quickly loose a big chink of subscribers and income. As well as get sued for fraud. So it’s rather unlikely they do.Unlike every other search provider, Kagi is the only one with a business model that ensures it’s users are the customer, not the product. When actually using it every day, that’s quite obvious in the results. Even when you search for a company directly, it’s Wikipedia entry is usually the first result. The the company site is the second.
True Incognito mode is a myth, it only stops keeping a history in the tab of that browser. Everytime you use a browser to go to any site ever, the browser logs you went there. So does your ISP and the site your connecting to. No matter which mode or browser you use, if you go to Google, then Google knows you went there and logs your searches.
The closest you can come to browsing the web anonymously would be with a mix of dedicated privacy OS like Tails and either a VPN or Tor as a middile man, but that assumes those proxys are not corrupted. Free VPNs make money by selling your “secret browsing” habits.
The internet is nothing more than wires, if you connect your wire to someone elses, every intermediatary knows.
You can use uBlock Origin and other privacy add-ons to block tracking and a VPN to hide your IP address but if you’re logged in to a search engine’s account then everything you search is tied to you no matter what you do.
If you’re logged in a vpn that’s also true of the vpn, and all these measures are not stopping FAANGS
Good VPN providers take certain measures to ensure your anonymity.
A vpn is not a proxy and cannot do anything to protect you beyond changing your exit point. You are not anonymous using a vpn, especially not with any vpn that has servers in a five eyes country.
Not if you used Dogpile. Also it still exists somehow.
I’ve used Kagi’s free trial. I’d turn to it when nothing else was helping and it did really well, but recently it hasn’t been helping either. It’s probably still fine for most things, but I’m often searching niche developer/programming things that are too burried under SEO/AI spam to find anymore.
FWIW, the default “programming” lens works quite well in Kagi, you can also create your own lens if you have a set of websites from which you routinely search info, and there are tons of bangs already (which can also be mapped to lenses BTW). In addition, you can downrank AI/SEO stuff when you find it (it is downranked by default in kagi), so that over time your results are quite clean.
SEO became too well known and is now filled with bullshit.
I recommend Kagi, I’ve been using it for about six months now and results - especially small web results like blogs - are so much better. I also have a pretty good time image searching compared to when I was on Google.
Yes it’s paid, but that to me is the price of resisting enshittification. Find a company that isn’t a publicly traded for-profit world-burner and pay them for their service. Is the idea of paying for email and search an alien concept to me? Yes. But I’m either paying Google whatever €120 a year in eyeballs on ads and an increasingly worse experience, or I’m paying €80 a year and getting a markedly better experience.
Now it’s up to Kagi and Proton to not turn into shitty companies while other competitors catch up and we have a thriving ecosystem again.
Kagi is amazing. I absolutely love its’ filtering features and I use that forums toggle all the time. It feels like such a more relevant experience for me. I tried it out with the 300 searches limit, but that wasn’t even close to enough, turns out I easily use 4 times that in a month and even though it’s not cheap it feels like it’s worth it.
I second kagi. Have been using it for almost a year now and I will stick with it. I switched from google to ddg some years ago to ddg before, but kagi is simply better.
A colleague also uses it and is also very satisfied with it.
Google Maps is utter crap lately too. It seems to be making up locations, and several times in the past month, it’s taken me to the wrong place. It’s getting almost as bad as Apple Maps
My favorite one recently is constantly telling me to keep straight to remain on a highway like 7 times before I need to actually get off the highway. Glad I turned off the sound a long time ago otherwise I would have lost my fucking mind.
We have express (toll) lanes on some highways around me, and the navigation system loses its damn mind every time. “Keep going straight”, “continue going straight”, “proceed in a trajectory perpendicular to your current trajectory”; I fucking get it!
I went to a low data plan and learned that Google Maps consumes a vast amount of data (relative to my plan limit), and I download all my maps and had location off. 1 single bus route between two pinned locations was 30Mb. Maps and search could be so simple but they are insanely bloated.
Hey now, Apple Maps is more accurate, provides better directions where I am, has more up to date satellites imagery, and has been this way for years. I only use Google Maps to search because Yelp is god awful. I live in a rapidly expanding area and all of that matters.
Oh god, yes this too. All the sponsored location spam drives me crazy. I love when I zoom in to a location and it doesn’t mark ANY of the shops besides STARBUCKStm
Apple Maps is fantastic for navigation, but it doesn’t have enough locations on it. I use Gmaps for searching locations and apple for navigating.
yes. use any of the following, in no particular order:
- ecosia.org - A non-profit certified B corp that plants trees by serving ads in your search results. Bing search underneath.
- duckduckgo.com - A privacy friendly search engine. Primarily sourced from Bing but mixes in a few other sources.
- any SearXNG instance - A self-hostable search front-end to various search engines.
- marginalia.nu - specifically ‘random’ - An independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren’t aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.
Aside from DDG, these are all new to me. I’ll take a look this week, thank you.
I stopped using it last year it got so bad, I ended up using DDG but that’s gotten shit and I’ve found myself back on Google. To me it feels 10% better than it was when I stopped.
Although everyone’s experiences with Google are so different we’re probably all being A/B tested.
Yeah, last month I finally had enough and DDG has been alright
The problem with DDG is if it doesn’t find results it just ignores your search terms and throws whatever shit it wants at you.
Oh my god, I feel this so much… Also, I think that recently got even worse, as I recently found myself switching between DDG/Google and finding both extremely bad for my query
Yes!
It think it got suddenly so much worse recently. Glad to see I’m not alone, something must’ve e changed.
I know it’s being overly recommended in here, but kagi pretty much gives you exactly what you want. I’ve had very few times it’s been unable to give me my search in the first few results. Others swear by SearXNG
Yeah, I’ve recently switched to SearXNG instances on some devices, definitely seem to be getting better results
apart from ne not having that much money laying around a the moment I’m not a fan of people having to pay for their search engine, as I’m of the opinion that such a fundamental tool to use the web should remain free
does it also straight up ignore special commands like -whatever i could swear you could use that on many sites and it worked as "exclude this "
it sometimes seem to, most advanced searching still works, at least on DDG
google does this as well, unless you switch on verbatim mode
They fucked it all up with that AI bullshit awhile ago and it hasn’t recovered. I use start page now and am much happier.
It is half okay, but only if they are not getting paid to screw up your results. It is a coup against democracy where freedom of information is freedom of the press and is an entire fundamental pillar of democracy. Google’s entire business model has always been neo feudalism. A web crawler and search engine is like a library, it must be neutral, objective, and publicly funded as a non profit. Much the same with YT, it is our digital public commons and the most efficient form for information sharing in the primary form of human communication.
It’s crap.
You can use udm14.org though.
I have fully switched to kagi, it’s not perfect but for the average case it’s better than google.
I read on here (I think) a couple months ago that adding “before:2023” to your search terms improves results a lot. I’ve found it to be true. Unless I’m looking for something specifically from the last couple years.
Unfortunately, I’m usually searching software development issues and half the results are a decade old (and are no longer relevant for the language anymore). Assuming “after:xx” works too this night help, thank you!
