DuckDuckGo uses Bing results. Also DuckDuckGo is not your friend.

I personally use SearXNG for best results. Public instance list.

Yeah there is definitely something going wrong with Google. I noticed that the search results got much worse in the last weeks. Either it's full of SEO Blog Spam, or it straight out doesn't find anything. Especially for technical error messages it stopped finding results. I have to directly look on Github or Stackoverflow now.

I can't be bothered to turn off my VPN and since Google Search is dropping CAPTCHA bombs on me every time I try to access it I dropped it. I Throughout the week I rotate between Startpage, DuckDuckGo and Bing. However lately I'm more inclined to use Bing Chat and ChatGPT.

Google is a trash company. although Maps and Youtube are strong products that are hard to replace. Search and email have been enshittified over last decade like no other.

Google Search has been accusing me of being a robot a lot lately, making me solve a bajillion captchas. So I've stopped using search engines entirely. I've bookmarked a lot of the sites I regularly visit and have realized I don't really need Google, apart from for getting the correct links to said websites because I can't remember their .orgs and .coms.

I spent years honing my google-fu only to see it become completely useless when google apparently decided that it was no longer interested in returning actually useful results and would instead return nothing but ads and a random assortment of clickbait in which one single word matches one of my search terms.

I stopped using Google when I became more aware of privacy concerns.
Also first page is horrible, mostly sponsored/ads related links.

Google is mostly ads and robots now, I use it mostly for typing website names, not for actually searching things.
For searching things I'm testing kagi (http://www.kagi.com) which is not free, but not being ad-driven is an interesting concept for me.

For about the last year and a half Google results have been less useful - so yes it's fairly recent(-ish).

Especially for tech stuff. We used to have Reddit to turn to as an alternative, but now that's not working.

https://www.dexerto.com/tech/google-admits-reddit-blackout-tanked-search-results-2191128/ - e.g. the Senior VP for searching in Google even admits that Google is not as good anymore, somewhat as a result of the Reddit issue but that was only propping up the problem that Google itself caused, by allowing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to rank predatory webpages over real ones with actual content.

I don't know of any solutions to this. I was thinking to search on places individually - like SlackOverflow, but now that company too is having a strike from its volunteer workforce just like Reddit. Google, Twitter, Reddit, Slackoverflow, they all are having MAJOR issues right now, as a result of not wanting to pay their workers and get something for nothing.

So they are turning to AI to solve their problems. AI doesn't understand shit, and in its current form simply parrots the answers that it gets elsewhere, without proper context or anything, or even acknowledging at all where the original content came from. So now as the sources of true content are drying up, and the well having been poisoned, true information is suddenly much more rare and precious than it ever was, yet harder to find than ever before as it is mixed in with all the sewage of people vomiting up their emotions, and actively upvoting things like snarky answers or memes rather than "real" ones.

The information age seems to be over, and in this Late Stage Capitalism we are now entering a new era, whatever it's called (maybe disinformation age?).

When I have specific questions that I want to have expanded on, I use GPT4 and then do some reference checking on Google

Absolutely.

I think there's two issues.
One is that Google's search has gotten a LOT less useful over the last few years. I blame enshittification- it used to just search for whatever you typed in, now there's a lot of 'you typed X but we think you might mean Y' type stuff that produces tons of irrelevant results. You can turn on Verbatim mode and that helps a little but it's still not 'just search for what I fucking typed in and not something else'.
The real advent of enshittification was when Google+ the social network came out- they removed + as a search operator and now you have to enclose something in quotes for 'must include'. It's been going downhill since then.

The other is that Google is either losing an arms race or simply not trying to weed out SEO spam sites. So you ask a question like 'error 0x0000001b blue screen' and you get pages and pages of 'how to solve error 0x0000001b [FIXED]' that are just 'error 0x0000001b is a common error lots of people have, it can be caused by many things, to fix it reboot your computer and if that doesn't work try safe mode and if that doesn't work try OfficialDriverFixRegistryCleanupUtility.exe number one free recommended utility to solve all system problems' (only spread out over 3 pages).
Or you get a bunch of 10 minute videos that illustrate a 20 second fix.
No thanks.

Google search has been going down gradually year by year for the last decade for me. My searches have now devolved to just having google search Reddit, like most people now. I recently started using Brave and I liked that it was recapping information for me. DuckDuckGo has been hit or Miss. I’ve started seeing people me toon SearX, which I need to try.

I wish there were a search engine that prioritized searching through places like Reddit, stack exchange, Quora, etc. vs the random clickbait websites trying to sell Amazon links.

I think Google search hitched their wagon to Reddit (whether involuntary or not is up for debate) and now it's coming around and biting them in the ass. The "hack" of sticking Reddit or using the tag "site:reddit.com" to the end of whatever your search query was has long been figured out by the masses and I can't help but think the search algorithm has been trained to look there more often by default as a lazy way of doing SEO.

Now that Reddit is rotting from the inside, Google is really having to scramble to do something and fix their SEO spam issues and build trust in their results. What is already a not so great product at the moment in Google Search will soon turn into a bad one if they aren't careful. I think they have coasted for so long as being the default since there was no one else that could challenge them. But with ChatGPT and other LLMs quickly improving, Google has a real danger of losing their biggest cash cow in Seach. Hell if they aren't careful, they could even find their way to non-existence since so much of their revenue comes from serving ads and search listings.

They're really at a turning point and need to be extremely careful in how they move from here. With their recent track record and what they've shown with things like the current Search debacle they're in, Bard, how they've managed Android hardware and software the last decade, etc., I'm not so sure they can do it.

I haven’t used it as my main search engine in years. VERY rarely I escape hatch to google search for weird queries. That used to sometimes work, now it never seems to work (or my queries have gotten more niche over time hah)

I use Ecosia, not sure if it's the best for privacy but I think that it's better than Google on that regard. They also plant trees so that's nice.

Swiss Cows users: there are dozens of us!

Switched to DuckDuckGo a while ago. Used to be able to get much better results by adding "site:reddit.com" to the search phrase. Esp. when searching for technical information or solutions to problems.

I've been using it less because I constantly get challenged with captchas when trying to use it with my VPN. I like DDG's privacy, but I'm not fond of it as a search engine. I heard good things about Brave search. I've been using their browser for about a year, so I may as well give their search engine a try.

I recently switched to Kagi. I’m happy to pay for it because it aligns my incentives with theirs. It’s not yet as good as old Google, but it’s way better than new Google.

I really enjoy being able Raise or Block domains in search results. Within my common search areas like programming or personal finance, I try to find blogs and forums I trust and Raise them in future searches. So my searching is getting better over time as I tell the engine what I like and don’t like.

I also block useless domains like Quora.

When I do use google I almost immediately go to the second page, like I dont even read the adverts im immune to it.

I've heard good things about Kagi on here. I started trying it last night. It seems good but I haven't really used it a lot yet personally though.

I kind of like https://swisscows.com

Yeah - as someone who mindlessly would google code syntax all day while working, ChatGPT has taken over that duty (and is doing a much better job at it)

I just made the switch from Google to DuckDuckGo in the last week.

DuckDuckGo with bangs! It's been pretty good as I am able to narrow down my searches by service which is more necessary than I'd like it to be.

I haven't used Google Search in years.