Which search engine do you use, and are you happy with the results?

Questions
22

SearX and Brave
but omg the image search lol

2 Likes
23

So, I have tried all search engines you have mentioned and have tried to use them for some time.

Search engines I have used till now: duckduckgo, brave, startpage, qwant, ecosia, swisscows, google, bing, yandex, searx, mojeek, metager.

I can say that out of them all startpage is the best because it gives you search results from google directly.

But startpage has been doing shady practices with their app and fingerprinting (many threads on this forum). Not to mention the captchas they put for every search is just tiring. If youā€™re using tor or vpn then experience would get terrible. You will keep fighting captchas for sometime for every search. I donā€™t really trust them with all the things theyā€™re doing.

So your next best bet is brave and duckduckgo. Now duckduckgo uses bing and some other searches. While search results are decent for normal searches but for things such as academic and programming, itā€™s a hit or miss, in my case mostly a miss.

Brave is the only real player with independent index. While results arenā€™t great compared to startpage but I think itā€™s somehow better than duckduckgo imo.

Ecosia is also like duckduckgo as it uses bing exclusively.

Qwant, swisscows are not reliable and qwant is not available in most countries.

Searx is awesome but itā€™s again a hit or miss. Many times you can see error when getting data from different search engines. I would avoid it!

So for me I use brave for most things and have a separate browser where I use google exclusively for programming related searches.

Brave ā†’ duckduckgo ā†’ google

2 Likes
24

I recently started testing Kagi but have never tried Brave. Why do you think Brave is better than DuckDuckGo? I just found out that Kagi uses Yandexā€™s APIā€”thatā€™s a red flag for me. I donā€™t want to support a company that collaborates with a terrorist state, so Iā€™m looking into DuckDuckGo and Brave instead.

25

Which search engine do you use?

26

Why Brave, not Duck?

27

Iā€™ve been using Kagi for about a year now. Iā€™d say it has consistently been a 9/10 search experience for me, with the only downside being image and video results. In recent months though, even those have improved tremendously, and Kagi is ever approaching a 10/10 for me.

Either way, it is miles ahead of other search engines in my eyes.

4 Likes
28

A mix of DuckDuckGo, SearX and Wikipedia. Sometimes Brave, but much less than I did in the past.

1 Like
29

Brave rocks but the captcha on phones are very frequent and often just donā€™t work (you do it correctly, will just reload another one).

I like that both DDG and Brave supports bangs, so I often switch between.

Occasionally use Google when I want niche results, or I know Google is very strong on not taking your query literally but understanding itā€™s meaning.

1 Like
30

Brave browser on PC and Vanadium browser on mobile. DDG as search engine on both. Iā€™ve considered trying a different PC browser but Iā€™ve been on Brave since 2017 so Iā€™m very familiar with it.

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31

Why donā€™t you use Brave search? I really like Brave Browser too, and I also use Vanadium on my phone on GrapheneOS I use Brave for YouTube as well.

32

Iā€™m also using, and a fan of, Kagi. Their AI features are nice (just end a query with a ā€˜?ā€™ to get an AI reply based on the results returned, for example). No ads is awesome, and the ability to pin, raise, lower, and block domains to customize results is something I donā€™t want to do without. These days, if I come across AI slop spam in search results, I block the domain and never have to worry about it again.

1 Like
33

I donā€™t know. I have been programming since many years and I know how google provided really good results for programming.

However with duckduckgo the results werenā€™t reliable but brave search gave better results with direct reference to docs, stack overflow and many personal small programmerā€™s blogs. Same is for academics.

Now as per your question why brave is better than duckduckgo?

See what I said is my personal experience but one objective reason is brave has an independent index while with duckduckgo you are still using bing indirectly and also duckduckgo did had controversy of allowing microsoft trackers in the searches.

So, imo with all the testing, FOR ME, Brave works better (I do use google in seperate browser tho when searches arenā€™t reliable). I would advise you to use week method. Spend one week with one search engine and perform searches for things you like or is associated with your job. Maybe duckduckgo works better for you!

1 Like
34

Ended up buying Kagi anyway to try alongside Brave.. Somehow got a bit hooked during the trial period, have to admit.

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35

Do you turn off AI in Brave? I heard that results are worse with AI. Do you customize the search engine in any way?

36

Kagi is good, but since they use Yandexā€™s API, I donā€™t want to pay them for that and

1 Like
37

I only opted out of data collection by brave search. Remember when you first time use it, thereā€™s a popup asking for collecting data. I opted out! Other than that I didnā€™t customized brave search.

As for AI Summaries, Yeah I donā€™t like them but I donā€™t think they impact search results. Most search engines including duckduckgo use AI summaries, so Iā€™m kinda used to it now. Also other reason that I keep AI summaries on, is sometimes you get the answer to your solutions directly from my summaries.

So coming back to your questions:

No, I think itā€™s fine.

Just opted out of collection of search results data. Rest itā€™s just default!

1 Like