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.

  • Fizz@lemmy.nzEnglish
    572·
    2 months ago

    Yeah DDG is great. The only thing I find is its not good at local results but a quick !g on the end gets me the local results im looking for.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyzEnglish
        40·
        2 months ago

        Redirects your search to Google. You can put it anywhere in the search; for example !g how do i shot web, how do i shot web !g and how do i !g shot web will all land you into Google.

        There are other 13k (yup) bangs like this. Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Yahoo, Quora, most gaming wikis, etc. A few sites (like Google and Bing) have multiple bangs, that land you directly into a specific page (e.g. !bv searches Bing videos). More info here.

      • zanteEnglish
        10·
        2 months ago

        If you’re using ddg without !bangs - you’re only having half the fun.

      • pyre@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        !w Wikipedia

        !imdb IMDb

        !gi Google images

        there’s tons more. if ddg is the default search engine these bangs save you the time to go to the site first and click the search bar. basically changing your default search into a specific search.

    • Varyk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      oh, good tip. I didn’t know about that.

      you tack !g to the end of whatever the resulting search URL is?

      • reev@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        10·
        2 months ago

        Can be anywhere in the search.

        “cute dogs !g” “!g cute dogs” “cute !g dogs”

        Those all work the same, though clearly one is more cursed than the others. They have those for a bunch of other sites as well, for example if you want to search YouTube specifically/directly you can use !yt but I can’t kick the habit of just going to those sites first and then searching directly on there.

    • MTK@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      87·
      2 months ago

      That’s how I felt until about a month ago, now ddg is really useless

    • randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Holy shit the bangs work at the end of the search query too!? I’ve always painfully pressed Home on my keyboard to add a !g whenever I realise I had better searched this on Google