No Stupid Questions

No, can't say I had issues like that.

And I will say that while I think Google Search has become poisoned by fake/AI results, it's actually marginally better on Google than on something like DDG. It feels like all major search engine scraper developers just gave up on hte cat-and-mouse of blocking shit content and slowly it's all succumbing to endless SEO bullshit. 1995 Altavista all over again ;_;

I've been using DuckDuckGo for years now and it works surprisingly well for me. 9 times out of 10 I find exactly what I'm looking for in the first couple of results. Brave Search is another independent alternative you might look into.

AI generated garbage seems to be cluttering up places like Google.

Duckduckgo is quite good if combined with ublock origin.

Alternatively or also the lite variants of it might be useful to you:

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

Duckduckgo has gotten good enough that they're being more brave with ads: the first several results are always ads for me now, such that I usually have to scroll to get ito good results. I don't begrudge the ads; ddg doesn't track users, and ads are how they fund the service.

Lately, I've switched my default engine to a good searx instance. When I'm not looking for a business, it gives me better results. However, when I am loojing for products or services, DDG is better. DDG seems to prioritize commercial interests, either intentionally or not. I suspect it has something to do with SEO; maybe searx ignores a lot of that.

I also find that Bing is providing better results than Google, lately.

Finally, here's one of the best search engine resources I've come across recently:

Search Engine Party

I hear a lot of people complaining about how they can't find stuff with Google, but it seems to work fine for me? i don't know what I'm doing differently

I use brave as well, but in my opinion Google searches work better for me? I guess I'm just more used to it or something, for some reason I find things quicker on Google and also I often rely on the search bar calculator with chrome which doesn't work as well on brave (since in order to get my answer, I have to press enter after entering in an expression. not sure if there's a way to change this)

edit note: I mostly use search engines to look up random information or for programming

Even searching for obscure items returns 10,000 hits, but only the same 5 sites repeated 2,000 times.

Kagi.com for about a year now, absolutely love it. Never Google anymore.

Kagi. DDG and Google are trash in comparison

That's it back to Lycos!

The first result is always an ad that is irrelevant or outright misleading, sometimes dangerous.

The second result is a plug for some stupid Google tie-in service like Shopping or Maps.

The third or fourth result is usually what I was after, if not I usually have to change my query.

Tried to switch to DDG a few years ago but it's index was a bit lacking for my day job, may try it again though as Google is getting increasingly frustrating to use. And just not a fan of their ecosystem.

no and it's ALL googles fault. It's not a walled garden problem, It's a google problem. I'm searching for specific items to buy and look for small shops with online presences. Google will NOT give me results for shops that don't advertise with them. I can even type the name of the shop into the search. Sometimes Bing, sometimes duck duck go will give the results.

I can have the site open in one window and use another to type the description of an item I am looking at AND the name of the site I am searching on google and it's like 'Nope' never heard of them. i have to type the url in to the search bar then it will return a link.

Now sponsored links pop up a plenty.

We are the product being sold to advertisers. Search is working as intended.

I moved to Kagi paid search engine and haven't looked back.

There are open source search engines albeit you'll need to host it somewhere.

Any major search engine (think Google, bing, etc) are just place for companies to pay to get into the top results.

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Even the CEO has acknowledged this. They serve you what makes THEM the most profits, not what YOU wanted, ever.

For years now, the only way to find something technical related was to add "Reddit" to the search. But then Reddit imploded as well, chasing profits over the needs of its customers.

And Twitter/X likewise is now chasing profits over the needs of its customers, causing many to flee.

As too is happening in so many other places, such as Stack overflow, and most of Hollywood itself was on strike for months, bc they have been chasing profits over the needs of its customers.

Managers think they know better than customers what you want, or at least what you are willing to put up with.

And now they are pushing AI to the rescue, to put even above the SEO results, but soon they'll have to think about actually monetizing those answers, and the cycle will repeat at the level of SEO'd AI answers.

DuckDuckGo works, for now. Maybe one day there will be a hostile takeover and it won't anymore.

Btw this phenomenon is called https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification of the internet - yes that's the official term afaik!!:-)

It's not great but it is more than usable. What movie are you searching for that you can't find what you need?

It's been getting worse and worse for me too. Even things that I used to Google that would just come up so I could find it aren't anymore.

The YouTube search must have had an update because now it's entirely fucking worthless too even for searching only within itself. It'll show two relevant results and the rest just garbage.

Sometimes I not only have the impression that good content is harder to find, but that there is less good content in general. This may have something to do with the fact that high-quality content is becoming increasingly uneconomical. Plagiarized or low effort content is much cheaper. With the rise of AI, I think this trend will only continue to intensify.

I hate Google now, I was a loyal Android user since the very first Nexus and a Google account user since day 1 of Google+ (I miss you Google+), I even bought a Pixel 2 XL as soon as it came out...

Duckduckgo.com is my go to solution for when Google wants to give me trash results.