• Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Ddg has really gone downhill lately too. They’ve started injecting ads for local businesses that are completely unrelated to the search terms. Like not even a single word in common. And they serve them as regular search results so you can’t even block them.

    Actually now that I’m thinking about it, I actually haven’t seen those in a month or two …

    • QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There’s also so much Microsoft crap now. Why do all news articles and videos send you to Microsoft Start or whatever it’s called?

    • Zekas@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So what is an actually useful search engine these days? I want to find stuff without being infuriated by the process

      • danielbln@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I just use ChatGPT+ or Perplexity. It’s 2023, why should I do web searches, that’s a robot’s job.

      • snowe@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Kagi. It costs money but there are no ads and the results are literally miles better than any other search engine in the past 5 years easy. I thought it was a bit ridiculous until I tried the free trial and I’m hooked. The results are just that much better and there’s way more features.

    • MajorHavoc@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Heh. I VPN enough that had not noticed the local business ads, as of yet.

      On the non-targeted ads, I always figure if the business is dumb enough to pay for such a poor quality match, to subsidize a tool I like using, then that’s a win for everybody.