I’ve been using duckduckgo for years now with no issues, but today I opened it and realized there were no longer any search results before scrolling. It was all ads/info cards. So I guess I’m looking for a replacement. Any suggestions?
Related: anyone know if there’s a way in the Adnauseum Firefox extension to hide ads on a specific trusted site? I like their goal of not punishing ads following the do not track standard, but DDG has crossed a threshold and I now want to blacklist them specifically.
If you self host, you could try searxng
Check out Kagi. It’s a paid search engine. I’ve been using it almost half a year now and really enjoy it.
I mean, Kagi is just the best. I remember trying it like a year ago and I just forgot to switch back to anything else. It’s that good.
Yeah, but for those on a budget that subscription is a pain point. So long as you can afford it easy it is good because you are no longer the product, but that will keep allot of people at bay.
Out of interest, has anyone here been using Kagi? It’s a premium search engine, which means it has reasons and resources to not suck, in theory. Kind of interested in trying it, but not sure how good it actually is.
I’ve been using it for a number of months now and have been really happy with it. I think it saves me time and aggravation compared to using Google.
I’ve been using Kagi for the better part of a year. I find it removes about 2/3 of the time and effort between search and goal. There are a lot of very simple quality of life things that every search should have (and would have if not for user tracking).
Some people have fairly said that paid search is inherently privacy unfriendly. You have to log in to use it. That doesn’t really bother me, and if it doesn’t bother you, it’s great to use a quality search where you are not the product.
That’s the kicker for me. It’s possible they log your entire search history which is disturbing.
I looked into it before I started using it like a year ago. They count the number of searches but claim to not hold actual search queries. I don’t have a citation handy (it has been a year…) but even if that’s untrue (which I don’t think it is, but hypothetically) and they were found to be using it to tweak their engine, meh? I search for memes, accounts for art/porn, games/reviews, etc. I’m not searching for my home address or anything of interest or value. “hey, the horny furry searched for more horny furry stuff” is like “water is still wet, more at 10”.
This is a super low-important possibility, imo.
I’ve been using it for over a year. It makes my life easier, to be honest. I’m on the 5€ plan because I don’t need more than 300 searches per month.
I like how customisable the search results are, the lack of SEO stuff and I’m a big fan of the “small internet” results.
Try it, they give you 100 free searches.
I’ve been using it for months and really like it. It’s so refreshing to get clean and useful search results.
Not doubting you here, but I just tried searching for two very different terms on DDG on two different devices (Windows laptop and Android phone) and two different browsers (Firefox and Brave), and I didn’t really see any ads or dodgy stuff.
The mobile Firefox version had a couple of main links at the top (they don’t look like ads), and some news cards under that. But the links were all relevant. The desktop DDG was super clean, again no ads.
This was without ad blockers enabled too. I also tried it in private mode, and still clean.
What am I missing? Why is my DDG experience so clean compared to yours?
This was the worst time I’ve seen. Here’s a screenshot. The search term was benaroya hall if you want to try yourself.
Wow. Yeah that sucks!
It really caught me off guard. I had another search later today after I posted this that only had one Ad at the top, so it seems like it depends on the search term. I’m not thrilled this is even possible though 😒
I second this. DDG, Searxng and various LLM are my daily drivers depending on the queries. I don’t recognise DDG being bloated with ads like Google. I have adblockers but I put sites like DDG on the whitelist because hey support the good guys.
Is it topical? Regional? Does OP have malware that is transforming the browser document? Is OP searching for niche content and confusing singular domain results for ads? Has DDG shifted owners and doing some tests?
I would like to know more.
DDG is not any better than bing. If you are willing to give your data to the “good guys” so they can make money with your data, you ultimately failed at protecting your privacy.
