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171 votes
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Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
96 votes -
Bringing back the minimal web
112 votes -
‘Reddit can survive without search’: company reportedly threatens to block Google
71 votes -
After two decades the dominance of Google Search comes into question
85 votes -
Update to Kagi Search pricing
22 votes -
How Google is killing independent sites like ours
59 votes -
Alternatives to Google as a Search Engine?
Looking for something along the lines of DuckDuckGo and other privacy focused search engines. Any Tildoes have a go-to, non-censored, privacy focused search engine?
30 votes -
How bad are search results? Let's compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT.
47 votes -
DuckDuckGo usage is growing fast
63 votes -
While Google is attacked over privacy concerns and perceived bias, DuckDuckGo raised $10M
44 votes -
Has DuckDuckGo recently started giving you significantly worse results?
Over the last week or so, I have been noticing that the majority of my searches in DuckDuckGo have been completely failing. For example, I was searching for a specific Firefox extension api and it...
Over the last week or so, I have been noticing that the majority of my searches in DuckDuckGo have been completely failing. For example, I was searching for a specific Firefox extension api and it only brings up a list of Firefox extension. If I put the exact same query into Google, the second result is exactly what I wanted. Before this last week, I have being using DDG almost exclusively, but know I am need to add the Google bang before nearly every query. Am I the only person that is having this experience? I really prefer using DDG to Google, but I can't if the results stay this way.
28 votes -
The people who ruined the internet
73 votes -
Google search is dying: Reddit is currently the most popular search engine. The only people who don’t know that are the team at Reddit, who can’t be bothered to build a decent search interface.
41 votes -
I got paid $0.33 for confirming with Google that I got a haircut where I did and paid with a card
Who got the better end of that deal? It was in Google rewards. They were already involved in that transaction. How much is me matching their phone records really worth?
27 votes -
Google is killing Retro Dodo and other independent sites
47 votes -
I believe Google search is restricting what articles I can see in my searches, based on my location. What can I do?
Whenever I search for information about something - especially about a news event - Google returns me a lot of results from Australian sites. Any foreign sites come further down the list,...
Whenever I search for information about something - especially about a news event - Google returns me a lot of results from Australian sites. Any foreign sites come further down the list, sometimes even on the second page of results. I've never really paid much attention to this behaviour, beyond some occasional mild frustration at not being able to find local sources.
However, this came to a head this week when I was searching for a local US-based news article about something I'd read in an Australian news site, so I could post that local US article here on Tildes (I always try to get as close to the source as possible). But, try as I might, I just could not find any good non-Australian articles about this news! It was almost like Google was deliberately blocking my attempts to read non-Australian sites. I mean, it's possible that this news wasn't reported outside Australia, but that's unlikely, seeing as it was Uber's announcement about trialling electric aircraft in Texas and Victoria. That had to get American coverage. But I struggled to find it in my searches.
I then noticed something I've never noticed before: at the bottom of my Google searches, there's a small line which tells me my current location. It's as specific as my local council area, not just my state or the country.
Is this location affecting what Google shows me in my searches? If so, how do I remove this restriction?
For context: I use Chrome, but I only sign in when I'm accessing a Google service (usually the Calendar). After I've finished with the service, I sign out. So Google isn't tracking me as a person, it's just tracking my browser's search activity.
EDIT: Thank you all. I've already set up DuckDuckGo as my default search engine, and am trying it out.
16 votes -
Google witness accidentally blurts out that Apple gets 36% cut of Safari deal
58 votes -
Google user data has become a favorite police shortcut
54 votes -
Who makes money when AI reads the internet for us?
18 votes -
What happened to Google Search?
13 votes -
New ad-free search subscription service: Neeva
6 votes -
Trump accuses Google of rigging search results to show mostly negative stories about him
32 votes -
You can tell how bad Google Searches are now when you try to search for "Baldur's Gate 3 Wiki" and it pushes you a single outdated wiki and a bunch of posts telling you to use bg3.wiki
54 votes -
ChatGPT mostly breaks the parts of the internet that are already broken
15 votes -
Same Energy, a visual search engine
19 votes -
Google sued by US Department of Justice in antitrust case over search dominance
26 votes -
Apple showing signs it may soon launch a search engine to compete against Google Search
26 votes -
Big Tech won’t let you leave. Here’s a way out.
28 votes -
Neeva.com is shutting down
22 votes -
Asking advice re search engines, search technique
So, in the past, I have been able to find new poems I enjoy by reading a critical essay about poetry and taking the referenced poem and author and typing the information into Google search. It...
So, in the past, I have been able to find new poems I enjoy by reading a critical essay about poetry and taking the referenced poem and author and typing the information into Google search. It used to be that that technique turned up a copy of the text of the poem and typically more poems by the author 95 percent of the time for me.
This year, when I try that same technique, Google gives me general reference articles about the life of the poet, or news about celebrities with similar names (not the same name at all), or just no search results. Does anyone know what happened? Can anyone help me use the internet to find new poems again?
Thanks very much
21 votes -
One month with Kagi search
Toward the end of August, I signed up for a trial of Kagi -- a privacy-focused search engine. You get 50 free searches, and then, if you want to continue, you can convert to a paid account at $10...
Toward the end of August, I signed up for a trial of Kagi -- a privacy-focused search engine.
You get 50 free searches, and then, if you want to continue, you can convert to a paid account at $10 a month.
I mentioned here that I wasn't planning on converting to paid, as $10/month felt very steep and I didn't think I could make it my default search on my iOS phone, but @pallas's comment here ultimately made me want to give it a try.
Thus, I dropped the $10 bucks to turn the free trial into a paid one-month trial.
I'm very glad that I did.
The free trial itself was actually not very convincing to me. Knowing that I had limited searches and not wanting to run through them more than I needed, my searches were in the single digits each day. I was very judicious about what I searched and how I typed it. Furthermore, I kicked myself if I instinctively typed something like "imdb everything everywhere all at once" into Firefox's search bar instead of going to imdb.com and then typing in the movie title, as that meant I'd wasted 2% of my allotment on what wasn't technically a search but more of an internet navigation optimization.
On the searches I did I felt like I got good results, but I wasn't sure if that was because of the quality of the service or if it was because I'd simply thought more about what I was actually typing in. Also, the trial made me way too aware that I was searching with limited queries to really make me feel at ease about actually using the service.
Now that I've paid for a month, however, I've just used it as a stand-in for how I used to use DuckDuckGo -- "wikipedia steam deck"-style searches and all.
Kagi doesn't track your search contents, but they do track your number of searches. I have completed roughly 400 searches this month, which Kagi says costs roughly $5.00 out of the $10.00 that I paid them. I don't know nearly enough about any of this to know whether this is an accurate accounting of actual costs or overstating things, but I will say that the $10 price that I initially felt was steep has looked a lot more worth spending after a month on the service.
Kagi generally finds what I'm looking for within the first link. If it's not the top link, it's in the top 3. Furthermore, it seems to dredge up less junk. With DuckDuckGo, I loved that I wasn't being tracked for the purposes of advertising, but it felt like DDG had no problem serving me pages that were built specifically for that purpose. I'd often look up product reviews and get re-routed to sites that appeared to be nothing more than machine-generated lists of recommendations with Amazon affiliate links. I've had to deal with less of these while on Kagi. Some of them still come up, but they're either further down the rankings or they're put into their own "Listicles" section.
Where Kagi really shines though, is local searches. Pretty much the only time I would bang through to Google from DDG was for local stuff. I don't know if it's my location in particular, but DDG is not great about giving me things that are specific to my area, often preferring to give me a smattering of things that are from similarly named locales from elsewhere around the world. Kagi, on the other hand, gives me the kind of local results I get from Google.
Most local searches of that type tend to come from my phone, and this also helped me understand that better search on a phone matters WAY more than better search on desktop. The smaller screen and limited view means that it's significantly more important for the top result to be the one I want on my phone than it is on desktop. As such, Kagi is winning me over because it's made mobile searching frictionless -- something I couldn't say for DDG. That aspect alone is probably going to be what keeps me on the service. I'm planning on paying for at least another month, though after that I might go back to DDG for a month to see how I feel in comparison.
I mentioned earlier that I didn't think I could make it a default search on iOS. I mistakenly thought Apple had that locked down? Turns out it's actually possible through an app. Also, Kagi apparently has an entire browser for macOS/iOS. I tried it out and it works quite nicely, though AdGuard+Safari seemed to do a bit better ad-blocking than the stuff they'd built into Orion, so I've stayed on Safari.
There's actually a whole lot of cool looking power-user stuff on offer from Kagi (you can individually prioritize and de-prioritize specific domains across your searches, for example), but I'm not the kind of user that needs significant search depth, so I can't really speak to anything other than the standard search experience.
What I can say is that I've been very happy with that experience so far.
Also, it should hopefully go without saying, but this post isn't sponsored in any way nor was I requested to post it by Kagi. This is me choosing to give my own experiences with the service because I thought people here might be interested.
26 votes -
China's censorship is far reaching. Searching for "tank man" on some image search engines brings up zero results.
For example: Bing DuckDuckGo Baidu obviously doesn't show tank man, but rather an assortment of random tank images Yandex and Google seem to show the results no problem. Would be curious to know...
For example:
Baidu obviously doesn't show tank man, but rather an assortment of random tank images
Yandex and Google seem to show the results no problem. Would be curious to know for you Tilderinos outside the US if the same results apply to you?
25 votes -
The man who killed Google Search
82 votes -
Scientists explain why ‘doing your own research’ leads to believing conspiracies
42 votes -
Why former Salesforce engineers want to take on Google
6 votes -
Another update to Kagi plans - More searches and unlimited AI interactions for subscribers
13 votes -
DuckDuckGo working on a standalone web browser for Mac & Windows
14 votes -
Google has quietly added DuckDuckGo as a search engine option for Chrome users in ~sixty markets
21 votes -
Microsoft launches the new Bing, with ChatGPT built in
13 votes -
Kagi + Wolfram
43 votes -
DuckDuckGo has acquired ownership of duck.com from Google
42 votes -
A glitch in the SEO matrix
47 votes -
Microsoft’s Bing is an emotionally manipulative liar, and people love it
14 votes -
I spent a year deleting my address online, then it popped up on Bing
20 votes -
Microsoft to forcibly install Bing search extension in Chrome for Office 365 ProPlus users
29 votes -
Tim Cook defends using Google as primary search engine on Apple devices
15 votes -
CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
29 votes -
A look at search engines with their own indexes
26 votes -
Does anyone know a search engine for news articles only?
I’m looking for a search engine just for news; kind of a Google News competitor but something independent. Any ideas? I know of Ground News, it’s already pretty good though it’s less search engine...
I’m looking for a search engine just for news; kind of a Google News competitor but something independent. Any ideas?
I know of Ground News, it’s already pretty good though it’s less search engine and more aggregator. Open to hear more.
18 votes