I live in a country which uses a language I don’t speak but Google defaults to regional results in spite of my language being set to English. All other engines give me really poor results (not that Google was giving good ones, the image search has really gone to shit since they started populating it with AI stuff).

    • Faendol@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      2 years ago

      I switched to DuckDuckGo a while ago and haven’t regretted it at all. I honestly barely notice the difference. Realistically I should switch to firefox next but I’m pretty ingrainded in google chrome admittedly.

    • amortized_cost@beehaw.org
      3·
      2 years ago

      DuckDuckGo 99% of the time, Google Startpage if I’m having trouble finding something.

      *Note: Startpage uses Google as their source of search result.

      • mynameisnotdoug@beehaw.org
        1·
        2 years ago

        Same. The heavy bias towards Microsoft-centric top hits (thanks, Bing) usually mean when I’m searching for a non-Windows tech answer I go right to !g, but otherwise it’s my default.

    • Vorticity@beehaw.org
      1·
      2 years ago

      I’ve been trying to switch to duckduckgo but I really struggle with the results. I appreciate the privacy angle but I just can’t seem to find what I want about 80% of the time. It’s like it just ignores parts of my query…

  • sapo@beehaw.org
    14·
    2 years ago

    Nothing compares to DuckDuckGo with bangs, which let you change over to any other search engine with two or three characters. I usually use !g (Google), !w (Wikipedia) and !aw (ArchWiki).

  • Nymphioxetine@beehaw.org
    9·
    2 years ago

    Bing, actually. I think it has greatly improved. Mostly. Plus the new Bing and AI stuff has been great. Much better than google

    • TheSaneWriter@vlemmy.net
      7·
      2 years ago

      I also use Bing. I like the AI features and the rewards program. The results are meh in terms of quality, but at this point honestly so are Google’s.

    • Pekka@feddit.nl
      1·
      2 years ago

      The AI part really is what makes Bing great. I noticed that I save so much time by asking programming related question to Bing chat instead of going through a bunch of semi related results. And normal search results are also often fine.

  • LucidDaemon@lemmy.world
    9·
    2 years ago

    I use Qwant and find it gives me better results than Google most of the time. It claims to be private and such, so I’m happy with it.

    • EmasXP@beehaw.org
      3·
      2 years ago

      Thank you for reminding me about Qwant! I will set it as my default to try it out again. I remember that I did not find it too impressive a few years back. Felt like the exact same results as Bing, even though it supposedly has its own index.

    • starship_lizard@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 years ago

      I use duckduckgo with Google as a backup for when what I’m searching for is too specific. I’ve had to use Google less and less lately though

    • MrSangrief@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      Used Duckduckgo for a while, got myself into a spiral of search engine exploration and at some point settled on Startpage for a while…but I just missed the maturity in functionality of Duckduckgo. It just always felt like I was making a usability/productivity sacrifice. So I returned and am still happy … for now :p

  • Bretzel@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 years ago

    I use Startpage, a privacy focused search engine which uses Google powerful search engine but without sending the actual data to them. The result are pretty good. You can change both the language and region in the settings. Bad part of Startpage is it is a for profit company (some advertising will be displayed using past search history only)

  • httpjames@sh.itjust.works
    5·
    2 years ago

    Kagi is a great premium alternative. They focus obsessively on search result quality and adding helpful, but non invasive AI tools. One of them is even free as an experiment!

  • Thomrade@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 years ago

    I use DDG pretty exclusively. I’ve never had issues with it, I set it as default and didn’t think about it after that

  • jukey@beehaw.org
    3·
    2 years ago

    I tried you.com for a long period of time. It has some nice ways to present content but overall I too often did not find what I was looking for so I switched back to startpage.com as unpersonalized version of Google.

  • nattekrant@feddit.nl
    3·
    2 years ago

    When I setup a new browser, I always delete all the default search engines and install DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Qwant and Startpage. If I’m looking for accurate results, I always use 2 or 3 of these. I can’t say I consistently get better results using one or the other.