In the last couple of months I have noticed an increasing trend of supplying me search results that are completely unrelated to the current query and tie back to my location or previous searches. I can say this with a high degree of certainty this is without a doubt beyond the 100th instance this has happened.

My browser is configured against tracking and fingerprinting (in fact all my devices are) which would make it fairly difficult to retain any data unless they are profiling me.

  • Gazumi@lemmy.world
    242·
    1 year ago

    What would we suggest as a realistic alternative? Sears? Startpage? Brave? (I am no expert by the way, just looking for tips)

    • currycourier@lemmy.world
      284·
      1 year ago

      I just switched to using Kagi recently and I like it a lot so far! Theres a free tier for 100/searches a month you can use to figure out if you like it.

    • coughrelief@lemmy.world
      22·
      1 year ago

      Searx sucks for images in my experience, startpage was bought by an advertising company, brave is weird for a multitude of reasons but I don’t know how good their search engine is as I’ve never tried it

      However I do think that finding a searx instance that works for you and then using another engine like ddg for images is the way to go… You could add a shortcut like “.ddg garbage truck” for easily searching with for example ddg on firefox

        • melooone@feddit.de
          6·
          1 year ago

          Also a bit confused by this. I thought the point of searxng is to combine your preferred search engines. So couldn’t I just configure ddg for the image results?

          • Gooey0210@sh.itjust.works
            6·
            1 year ago

            Maybe their point was that you cannot filter the images, like by color, size, license, etc

            But anyway, if I want to show somebody a picture of something it works perfectly As for the results, they are pretty comparable between searx, ddg, and googlag.

            I would even say searx wins on this one because 1. It’s easier to navigate and open images 2. The nojs version of the search looks so much better than any other search engine

    • Timber@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      4·
      1 year ago

      I’ve been using metager for some while and really like it. They’re also part of an initiative pushing for a free as in freedom search index, so that’s nice