Which search engines do you use?

[Onio]

Which search engine, or combination or search engines and directories, do you prefer to use when you're seeking something specific or doing research online?

[Icey!]

goggle.com

[TheFrugalGamer]

DuckDuckGo, although I've found for very niche topics I still have to unfortunately switch over to Google.

I've heard some people have issues with DDG, but I haven't found one I like as much that has a good track record with privacy.

[Melooon]

DuckDuckGo is my main search and covers 95% of things

Google is a good backup, particularly if its a very specific thing Im looking for - also Googles reverse image search is great, and Google Scholar is really handy for academic documents.

I actually don't use any directory sites.. I find large lists of links quite overwhelming and Iv never found one that felt fun to use

I tried Ecosia (apparently they plant trees with search ad revenue) for a while, but its just Bing as far as I know, and I also tried Kagi which is a paid search engine; I actually really liked its design and results, but its too expensive and I reaaallllyyy don't trust its developer

[Onio]

DuckDuckGo is my main search and covers 95% of things

Google is a good backup, particularly if its a very specific thing Im looking for - also Googles reverse image search is great, and Google Scholar is really handy for academic documents.

I actually don't use any directory sites.. I find large lists of links quite overwhelming and Iv never found one that felt fun to use

I tried Ecosia (apparently they plant trees with search ad revenue) for a while, but its just Bing as far as I know, and I also tried Kagi which is a paid search engine; I actually really liked its design and results, but its too expensive and I reaaallllyyy don't trust its developer

Also a DuckDuckGo user here, though I agree with Frugal, sometimes it just doesn't cut it :/

What about Kagi rung the alarm bells for you? I find this interesting, considering how much has been revealed about our information being sold. It wasn't until last year that I realized how sketch Discord is!

[Version]

Searx is my go-to and it has a lot of advantages: It's Decentralized, privacy oriented, and is a metasearch engine (meaning it aggregates results from multiple other engines). But it has a couple problems. Mainly that it's hard to find a good public instance if you can't host your own. And sometimes those public instances will go down meaning I have to use something like ddg as a back up.

[angel-val]

I use startpage, which is basically just getting google results without the tracking/privacy bull.

[Cele]

I use Qwant because it's European, unless I need something specific fast, then I use Google, because Qwant hasn't been translated into my language yet and doesn't always have relevant local results. I used DuckDuckGo and Ecosia in the past.

[Guest]

I use DuckDuckGo regularly. Never wished for anything else.

[purelyconstructive]

Searx is my go-to and it has a lot of advantages: It's Decentralized, privacy oriented, and is a metasearch engine (meaning it aggregates results from multiple other engines). But it has a couple problems. Mainly that it's hard to find a good public instance if you can't host your own. And sometimes those public instances will go down meaning I have to use something like ddg as a back up.

Same here. If I am not using DuckDuckGo, I usually look up an available instance of Searx on searx.space

[Deckade (Tolo)]

I was also picking between duckduckgo and ecosia. I think either one is good in the end, with duckduckgo also being carbon negative, and ecosia supposedly also not tracking your searches, but I went for duckduckgo as well because it's reliable and has good widgets and info-boxes when you search things up.

[Guest]

As far as I know by the way, Ecosia plants extremely cheap trees in a monoculture, which actually destroys nature more than not. Plus, it's not open source, so you have no way of knowing for sure what they do to your data. No corporation does charity.

[Gans]

Let me throw DuckDuckGo Lite in the ring. "Lite" means that no JavaScript is required and the site loads faster. So it works on the old Netscape fine.

https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/

Privacy related I remember that Duckduckgo was hosted on Amazon servers, so super privacy is doubtable. Startpage too, being owned by an dubious company since a couple of years.

Other search engines for old computers are Frogfind and Wiby.

http://frogfind.com/?q=Melonland
https://wiby.me/?q=Melonland

Wiby being interesting for having a search index that's being feeded by the users with good old-style sites instead of a webcrawler running across the web. You can find some niche sites there.

[Melooon]

As far as I know by the way, Ecosia plants extremely cheap trees in a monoculture, which actually destroys nature more than not. Plus, it's not open source, so you have no way of knowing for sure what they do to your data. No corporation does charity.

Maybe! Its hard to tell; I did see a short clip of the founder in this documentary and he seemed like a cool guy and very genuine - I imagine they are not perfect regardless but I hope they are not as bad as you say because its nice to think theres some people out there doing good!

[glacial_pace]

duck duck go needs to support exact quotes in queries, i find myself constantly using google for that