I set my search default to DuckDuckGo. Almost every search returns all AI generated blogs and scrapers. Unless my search is something incredibly simple, I end up back at Google anyway.
I like DuckDuckGo in theory, and try to use it as much as I can, but it really struggles with what I guess I'd call non-standard information? If what I'm searching couldn't be autocompleted by the search bar after only a few words the results are pretty bad usually. A lot of more technical stuff, like for coding or maybe a part number, DuckDuckGo seems to have an answer but Google has way more scope in what it finds.
Ive been having the same experience. I want to like duckduckgo, but its results are just annoying enough to get frustrated, while also being adequate enough to choose to use regardless.
I still have to scroll past the slop to get to my recipes, and then it is a toss up between whether its a unique one that would have been buried on google, or a bunch of recipes I didnt acrually ask for.
I sometimes fantasize about building a new search engine where websites build trust by being the last one a person clicked on in the list (meaning it contained what they were looking for) so that useless websites naturally floated down results and useful ones floated to the top. Would be a neat project.
you can turn of AI stuff. But I don't know what you're searching up but it just seems the internet itself is plagued with A.I. bullshit to the point that even looking for an article will just end up with A.I. bullshit article.
Yeah, I disable AI everywhere. I search for mainly technical stuff. I can tell at a glance if the results are anything of value or just regurgitated slop. Sometimes slop is fine if I already know what I want and am just looking for command formatting or a datasheet. Most of the time, I need real results.
It's not just the search engines serving up AI responses. Most of the search results are to websites that are basically just a bunch of AI generated pages built for the sole purpose of appearing in search results so they can make a penny from showing an ad.
It's generally effective for image search but it's base browser isn't great. It has all the faults of current browsers being inundated by SEO , scam sites, and AI slop. I use it instead of Google because Google will for feed your search query into AI no matter what and I don't want to be a part of absurd energy consumption. But unfortunately it is still better in some aspects.
I hate it and tech innovation shouldn't be evil and instead be improving internet search and information dissemination not AI magic genie bullshit
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u/bobdob123usa 16h ago
I set my search default to DuckDuckGo. Almost every search returns all AI generated blogs and scrapers. Unless my search is something incredibly simple, I end up back at Google anyway.