I pay for Kagi. The results are good oob and you can downrank/ban websites.

Kagi. Not cheap but I seriously cant go back. Its really good for what I need - actual results at the top of the first page, based purely on what I searched for. What a concept. My needs are basic to be clear.

https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ is a decent way of avoiding some ai generated junk.

Duckduckgo for everything.

At first, after the switch years ago, I'd occasionally fallback to Google to search for solutions or explanations of technical errors but I guess Duckduckgo got better and/or Google got worse and I no longer use any other.

A few days ago I tried Qwant briefly with the idea to try to change to non-US services, don't remember what for, and was not satisfied with the results. I did not try it for long enough to say it's not a good choice though.

noai duckduck go

I switched to noai.duckduckgo when startpage went ai. It is a lot better than when I tried duckduckgo in previous years, and definitely better than startpage was. I haven't noticed any issues with search returns.

I use qwant mostly

Self hosting searxng: https://docs.searxng.org/ I use it for everything. It finds results from multiple search engines, and lists every engine name at the bottom of each link to see where this "recommendation" comes from. You can configure which "engines" it should search. So I use it as my default for everything. The results aren't always the best and there are times when I then open other search engines directly to see if its any better. But admitteley it is only hosted on my main PC. Currently I cannot access it from other computers, but that is something I plan todo in the future.

If you use Archlinux, then its quite easy as there is a package that always builds from source. Look at my instructions here: https://lemmy.ml/post/45955322

If self hosting isn't your thing, then you can just use an instance from someone else who made it available in the public: https://searx.space/ It's also a good way to see how it works before committing to self hosting, if you plan to.

Selfhosted SearXNG for everything.

DDG is my goto, I always have a SearXNG instance, but it's relatively slow and runs into problems too frequently to be my goto

Ecosia

Works very well for everyday stuff, been using it for almost 2 years now, though it does take a bit to get used to it because it gives you slightly different results for the same search queries

It's not worse, it just interprets your queries slightly differently

The only time it consistently fails and I switch to google is when I need to look up something via popular references, typically text on memes, for which Ecosia instead tends to return serious/factual results instead of the funny I was looking for

Kagi. Once you try it you'll never go back.

google for porn. brave-search for everything else

Kagi.

I use Kagi for personal devices. I wish there was an open source alternative, but there's not. So I'm stuck.

For work or other devices, I use Qwant.

I was using Brave search for a couple of years for everything and sometimes i was switching to duckduckgo if i couldn’t find what i needed but this was rare. Now i self host SearXNG but this is not an option for an avg user. Brave search is an independent engine and privacy focused.

Yandex for reverse image search or piracy content

The noai DDG for everything else.

Unfortunately I have notice for the last couple of months that some simple things I can't just find the answer and the shit AI suggestion baked in the google search is giving me better results and I don't think that is the AI that got better.

I use marginalia search and wiby to find "small web" content. Good for finding more human created resources deeply buried in most search indexes.

I selfhost searxng ¯\(ツ)/¯

Running all my queries through SearXNG in normal windows and DuckDuckGo in private ones.

I'm a software engineer so I search quite a lot.

99% of my search is on duckduckgo and it provides me the best answers. Even if I'm using someone else's device to show them something for example, and their default search engine is google, I will switch to ddg because it genuinely provides better answers.

I often add the word "forum" to my searches to help get some actual human discussion instead of ad farming AI slop articles. Seems like the only way to figure things out these days.

I've been using degoog.org for a few months and frankly the experience has been flawless. I'm thinking of self-hosting it.

https://github.com/degoog-org/degoog

DDG for everything but especially searches in other countries (using the country toggle).

Google for images and super localized results.

Yandex for reverse image search (yes really).

I use Qwant as my daily mostly because it's European and I can turn of AI.

DuckDuckGo is said to cooperate with Google. Brave Search doesn't give me confidence because the browser has had many privacy violation scandals in its code. StartPage is proprietary, but has good privacy laws, since its origin is from the Netherlands, although the service has been down very frequently lately. I think the best is without a doubt SearX my dear friend. Link: https://metasearx.com/info/en/about

I used DuckDuckGo in the past, it's pretty nice but it's proprietary and the company is a little bit too much pro-AI. They made a poll about AI approval and despite the majority of people were against, they kept it on their regular website and launched DDG No-AI instead.

Now I've moved to SearchXNG (https://searx.ononoki.org/), and it's very good but the Bing search engine has a weird bug where doesn't give relevant results. You can fix this by using DuckDuckGo and Brave engines instead.

Normally I find what I search for

I use duckduckgo for every of my web searching needs. 85% of the times I get relevant or somewhat relevant results. The rest... well, I acknowledge that I may search for super nieche things and move on.

Only thing I don't kinda like in duckduckgo though is that the result list may change if I navigate to somewhere and go back, but I can live with it.

Selfhosted SearXNG or ddg noai / startpage when i get rate limited

I have been using Brave Search for a couple of years and have been very satisfied with the results. It uses its own index instead of relying on Bing or Google like most search engines. The summaries are also one of the few cases that I have found AI to be useful for some more obscure questions.

The image results are very poor though, so I still use DuckDuckGo for that.

Mostly DDG when I can. It's terrible with Slovene searches, so I occasionally still have to use google.

Also our local najdi.si is just stupid.

Someone posted this neosearch thing recently that I've enjoyed :

https://neosearch.org/

Qwant off of Orion on iOS. Don't bother with Kagi. There are better options if they switch to graphene.

EDIT: SearXNG is perfect in every way except for consistently returning useful search results.

I use duckduckgo on Firefox and mullvad browser, I also use it on my phones, but in my ungoogled chromium I'm trying out startpage.

Brave search (and Mojeek,Yandex,Mwmbl through SearXNG) for most stuff and Start page as a final resort.

I use duckduckgo because I'm basic.

I still use udm14. I've got most of the searches listed installed in my firefox and I jump between them a lot.

I'm not a tech person. I use duck duck go or i use Google through ten blue links to remove the AI results.

I use Brave Search all the time and like it a lot.

Download of searxist on my phone that rotates instances to confuse fingerprinting.

Ironfox rotating DDG, Startpage, Searx and sometimes a fork of Chromite rotating 4get, Searx, etc.

I am interestwd in self-hosting Hister, to make my own results over time. I'd like to make privacy centric ones.

I pay for Kagi and use it for everything. Very happy with the service.

Iirc ecosia uses google and Startpage is the same. I generally just use ddg unless I can't find something, then I try Startpage

I use noai.duckduckgo.com I used startpage for a while but I kept having captcha pop ups when I’d use a vpn and I got sick of it. While I really wish DDG didn’t push AI as much as they do, it’s at least nice that they offer a completely AI free version too, I guess. There’s definite give and take with all of the search engines.