I ask because I’ve been doing a lot of research the last few weeks and Google search has really let me down. I’ve been finding better results on DuckDuckGo and Bing. Is this a recent thing with Google or am I out of the loop? Any other search recommendations?
Edit: In no particular order, some recommended alternatives to Google
SearXNG
Whoogle
Ecosia
Brave
Dogpile
DuckDuckGo
Kagi
Swiss Cows
Qwant
Bing
I recently switched to Kagi. I’m happy to pay for it because it aligns my incentives with theirs. It’s not yet as good as old Google, but it’s way better than new Google.
I really enjoy being able Raise or Block domains in search results. Within my common search areas like programming or personal finance, I try to find blogs and forums I trust and Raise them in future searches. So my searching is getting better over time as I tell the engine what I like and don’t like.
I also block useless domains like Quora.
I’ve been using Kagi for over a year at this point, and have almost entirely stopped jumping to Google except for some of the dynamic results like currency conversion, weather, and units conversion. Everything search, Kagi seems to nail it, and I think I just have a nostalgia bias that makes me think Google would be better - but when I actually compare I realize I’m wrong. So much AI nonsense on Google results.
I’ve been using Kagi’s summarizer a lot recently - if it gives me a Reddit result, I have Kagi summarize the result for me instead of giving Reddit the page view from me, and it works incredibly well.
My only negative with Kagi is the price, but they claim they are passing along actual costs and it’s more expensive than you’d think to run a search engine. I’m not sure how much that improves with scale, but I doubt they can get very big at the price point they are currently at.