this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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I used google for most of my life, for the past couple months I’ve been using brave search, but I still end up using google often because google images is far better than brave search images. I’m also worried that maybe brave search isn’t the best choice. What would you guys recommend?

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I use duckduckgo. It is Bing but with more privacy. You could try also searx, swisscows, startpage or qwant

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've been using DDG for a while but just got hit with an AI summary finally, like Brave and then Google does. It's such a turn off. I trust the information exactly 0%. Definitely considering just using SearXNG full time now. I liked DDG a lot but I'm so fickle, it doesn't take much for me to swap.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You can disable that. Here are two links that disable that. Add it to Firefox or Chromium through the settings.

Simple, only disables AI answers: https://duckduckgo.com/?kbe=0&q=%s

Long, disables AI answers and ads: https://duckduckgo.com/?kak=-1&kax=-1&kbe=0&k1=-1&q=%s

Steps to create a custom DDG search config:

  • Visit: https://duckduckgo.com/settings
  • Select the settings you want, for example dark mode.
  • Click the "Show Bookmarklet and Settings Data" button.
  • Copy the link, using my dark mode scenario would yield the URL https://duckduckgo.com/?kae=d
  • Edit the URL by adding &q=%s to the end, which acts as a placeholder for the browser to replace with your actual search query. Using my example https://duckduckgo.com/?kae=d&q=%s
  • Last step is add it to your browser. May differ between browsers, but generally look in the search engines tab of the settings.
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Thanks for the tips but it says that it can be disabled right on the summary itself. The issue isn't disabling it for me. It's that the information is bad and I don't want a search engine that thinks this is useful. Sorry for not making that more clear. That's what I meant by me being fickle.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

does ddg not have its own search backend anymore?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/

My reading is that the classic search listings are coming from Bing and the the quick answer type stuff is coming from DDGs systems.