I suspect that this is the direct result of AI generated content just overwhelming any real content.

I tried ddg, google, bing, quant, and none of them really help me find information I want these days.

Perplexity seems to work but I don’t like the idea of AI giving me “facts” since they are mostly based on other AI posts

ETA: someone suggested SearXNG and after using it a bit it seems to be much better compared to ddg and the rest.

  • zanteEnglish
    44·
    2 months ago

    Not just you.

    DDG has deteriorated to absolute nonsense, I’ve used it for years and years.

    Recently gave startpage another go - maybe marginally better but still really poor

    • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      2 months ago

      I switched to DDG right after Google added the ai answers to search and in baffled by how fast DDG seemed to go down hill. Just a few months ago it was still giving me on point results on the first try, now it almost feels like I’m using one of those malware search bars from back in the day.

      • zanteEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        yes - it’s a recent thing, no more that a few months I think

    • toddestan@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      DDG has also really gone downhill for me. It’s still noticeably better than Google, but DDG nows does a lot of the same shit that originally made me give up on Google years ago. I’m assuming a big part of this is because DDG heavily sources their results from Bing, and while Bing does manage to be better than Google, it’s not much better.

      I really need to put some effort into trying out a few more search engines and seeing if they are any better. Last time I looked, many of them were also pulling results from Bing so they all had similar issues.