Someone commented on a repost of this guide: "Missing stract.com, it’s like old school google before the ads. A little slow to update to latest web crawl, but much better content returned"
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
63 points (97.0% liked)
PurchaseWithPurpose
383 readers
1 users here now
A community driven to showing our voice through the things we buy and use.
founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS
I’m confused about Gmail listed as a search engine. Google is the search engine, as I understand it, and Gmail is a mail client. Or you could put Alphabet I guess.
Sorry.. was a mistake as I copied over the structure from a previous guide. Meant to say Google Search.
I like this graphic format you're using. The information is presented clearly and succinctly; as a summary graphic, it's quite nice that you limit the information density. Viewers can use it as a jumping off point for further research.
If you designed this yourself, kudos.
Thanks! Exactly the balance I am trying to achieve. There are a lot of in-depth guides, but they can be overwhelming to the average person.
Note: kagi has also 100 limited search queries and to get more you have to pay
I pay for Kagi, and it’s well worth it.
This is a huge thing to note. Kagi works well but if you set it as your default search engine and use the internet like a normal person that goes online a lot you’ll burn through 100 searches in like 2 days. 300 searches is $5 and unlimited is $10 iirc, though it’s less if you pay yearly. It also includes ai stuff
I just use a combo of mojeek and ecosia. Mojeek is more private. Ecosia is privacy oriented but searches are still passed to microsoft, though with most (but not all) identifiers stripped out
I do note that Kagi is paid, but could have made it more prominent. The free version isn't enough to use as your default search engine.
It was hard to keep this guide light on text with all the specifics that need to be covered. Feedback is always welcome!
DDG has a shady founder. They also build their own index tough.
Qwant has a problematic owner and had a significant privacy issue.
iirc I read Startpage is owned by a US company
Edit: thanks for another edition @FallenWalnut@lemmy.world, I do appreciate them :)
This was helpful, but I wonder if years a way to indicate where some of the engines primarily source their results? Duckduckgo uses Bing by default (although you can search with Google via the !g prefix), I'm not sure about the others?
As always, these guides are highly valuable and easy to understand!
I found a search string that cycles through available public instances of SearXNG. It has been an awesome experience
I'm planning to experiment with my own instance soon