I suspect that this is the direct result of AI generated content just overwhelming any real content.
I tried ddg, google, bing, quant, and none of them really help me find information I want these days.
Perplexity seems to work but I don’t like the idea of AI giving me “facts” since they are mostly based on other AI posts
Why have you not tried Kagi? If it’s important to you to have good search and you don’t like being spied on and having ads shoved down your throat, it’s worth paying a small fee for quality instead of paying with your privacy for crap results. It’s been a breath of fresh air. Searching is fun again. It also indexes Lemmy. Traditional Search has largely gone to crap, but I’m tired of everyone complaining that these mega companies offering ‘free’ services aren’t holding their end of the deal instead of supporting the people that are doing something about it. I’m not optimistic things like qwant or searx will be sustainable or deliver high quality results, but by all means donate to them with time or money if you believe in them.
What? When was searching ever “fun”? And when was that even a desirable state? Statements like this contribute to the propensity to dismiss kagi fans as shills.
There is no propensity to do this at all. It just you being a prick I think. You are clearly too young to remember when Google first came out. Harnessing the power of search is exciting! The internet may be getting shitier, but there is still fun to be had. Im sorry if you’ve never experienced that.
unnecessary antagonism aside, people have fun learning and satisfying their curiosity, and it’s more rewarding when there’s less bloat to slog through
Kagi is the same as ddg 99% of the time.
Omg no. You have a diversified data set?
Kagi isn’t free
The search problem is largely due to not being the actual customer.
Look at me. I’m the customer now.
Neither is beer
If it’s free then you’re the product
And if you’re the product then there’s an interest to keep you on the site and show you ads which works best if the first result isn’t the correct one and you need to scroll or even go to page two
It’s literally the reason why Google got so much worse that they wanted to show more ads to users which wouldn’t work if the best result is always the first
If you think paying means you aren’t still the product, I have news for you.
I don’t need my search history tied directly to a means of payment, and not because I search for illicit stuff, but because I don’t need an advertising profile built on me that is absolutely tied to me now, because I paid for it.
If Kagi doesn’t turn out to be selling that info in a year or two, I’ll eat a bug.
I pay anonymously through crypto accounts. It’s easy and I can open new Kagi accounts if I want. I’m saving a beetle for you.
Exactly. A paid search engine is a privacy nightmare, and you have zero guarantees that they don’t monetize you one way or another in addition to the subscription fee.
You want to compare the hard evidence on abuse between paid search engines and unpaid search engines? I’m happy to work through that data with you.