this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by cll7793 to c/[email protected]
 

It is becoming near impossible to find relevant information from search engines. Duckduckgo, SearXNG, Bing, Google, and so many more mainstream engines have a significantly high noise to signal ratio, and it is getting worse.

Here are a collection of the best search engines I know, please add more to the list.

If no more high quality search engines exist, would it be possible to host your own?

EDIT: Some new discoveries. The addon uBlacklist and filters can block super SEO sites from appearing in search.

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[–] Paragone 19 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Isn't Yandex Russian?


I agree with the person who identified that ChatGPT is better than a search-engine, but you have to check it, because, unlike a normal search-engine, the ai-engine, itself sometimes produces disinformaiton, instead of only linking-to disinformation.

Checking is now required in both cases.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines#Metasearch_engines

for some alternatives, btw.

_ /\ _

[–] cll7793 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks! Search results have recently been so bad that I found Yandex sometimes offers better results than Duckduckgo/Google/Bing etc. It's quite sad actually

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Stupid question: is this a recent development? I remember that seaeching for stuff was no problem just 2 yrs ago. Is it becauae I search more niche stuff or bexause I sont use commands like specific sites and others?

[–] cll7793 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The enshitification has been a gradual process. Think of it as slowly boiling a frog. I've observed the quality of search slowly degrading over the past 2 decades. Just recently, it has gotten to such a severe point that searching has been useless.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for elaborating. Do you think there is a reason for this besides „everyone want to make money fast“?

[–] cll7793 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Conflict of interest is the best explanation. The goal of search engine companies is not to provide information as efficiently as possible but rather something else entirely.

A lack of competition is another factor as well with the monopolization of Google, Microsoft, etc. There may exist better search engines, but the average joe, and even some of us, have trouble finding them. The quality search engines don't get a chance to expand and or are bought out like with Altavista (Regarded as the best search engines from the golden age). For example, crowdview.ai is the best search engine (outside of kagi from what I've heard) but I'm unsure if they will be able to stay afloat for a long enough time to get a chance to expand and take shots at Google.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Makes sense, thank you. I think the general business climate is not conducive to fair and good companies.

The hierarchical order of things does not allow for the expert to rise to power but for the most ruthless. The biggest companies are just the most ruthless.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

Can we stop using the boiling frog analogy? It’s a myth.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I don't think it's better, I think they serve different functions . I use both Kagi and Chat Gpt a lot for different things.

I heard that Yandex is actually good.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

If I recalled correctly, Yandex is googles equivalence in Russia, so I am quite confused of not calling it mainstream. By that standard, Baidu (ad-filled, trash, Chinese equivalence of Google) is also not mainstream.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Isn’t Yandex Russian?

So?