I use MetaGer as my daily driver and you.com for deeper niche searches
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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I have to say I used Random Searx a lot, startpage as Backup. And as VPNs are getting mainstream, it gets a pain in the ass. Mullvad Leta sucks too kinda. Now I use duckduckgo alone and actually never need my specially configured SearXNG search providers, although useful.
I have to say, I use a lot of search engines. Using the "Add custom search" Addon on Firefox you can easily add any URL containing a search word to your browser.
I maintain some lists of search engines that need updating.
I tried using SearXNG for a few weeks but I kept needing to chance instances. I'm using DuckDuckGo for now.
You can self host for a better experience
tbh im not sure but if you want google results with safesearch try resulti
As main search, among others, I use Andisearch, it's an AI search assistant, with own lenguage model and one of the most private search engine. own reader mode for websites in the search results, so you don't need to visit it, you also can watch YouTube and others sandboxed right in the search results, anonymous use, no ads, no tracking, no logs.
Easy add it to your search engine list in your browser
https://andisearch.com/?query=%s
I'd say give SearXNG another try. Whats the issue exactly?
I used SearXNG for over a month but found myself routinely returning to Google for either tech problem searches or because it was returning irrelevant results for homonyms.
I would love to return to it. Do you have any tips for better search results?
You can choose which search engines you actually want to use. SearXNG is a meta search engine, which means it just queries other search engines for their results. Lots of it's results are some random wikis which most of the time do not help.
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A random thought
Do we really want search engines ?
Or, do we want AI to tell us the answers to our questions?
Let me go ask chatgbt for the answer, hold on one second.
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Maybe some will dislike , but i use yandex, i don't know why, but i get good results. I prefer to give them my info and not google
Definitely not. Never mind "out of the frying pan, into the fire"; for me, this is "out of the lake, into the fire".
Using Yandex would involve giving my personal data to Russia. The possibility of my data falling into the wrong hands is the main reason I am looking for a private search engine; I'm certainly not then about to just walk up to the wrong hands and say "here you go". Not to mention the censorship.
Besides, I've blacklisted the .ru, .su, and .рф, .москва, and .yandex TLDs in NextDNS.
Well i am far far from Russia so i don't care, it can't be worst compared to google. I don't believe too much in the real privacy, one way or another 3 letter agencies will get the info.
I use Brave Search, it's quite good imo
Brave
Its surprisingly good... I rarely need anything else