[bad_user]

What I do is to use multiple search engines and specialize my searches.

I use "smart keywords" [1], which work similarly to DuckDuckGo's !bangs [2] and most of the time I noticed that I know what the source I want is — if I want a Wikipedia article, I search with "@w" in front, if I'm searching for a dictionary definition, I search with a "@define", if I want to search for a location I search with "@maps", if I want a StackOverflow answer I search with "@so", etc, etc.

I have bookmarks for such search engines, neatly being synchronized between my Firefox instances (works on mobile too) and I got quite used to them. I prefer my own bookmarks, b/c I can always add custom stuff and b/c I don't want an extra round trip to DDG anyway.

Also DuckDuckGo is fine for English results, I often find that searches yielding bad results on DDG will often lead bad results on Google too. When not finding what I'm looking for, sometimes I search on Google too ("@g"), in order to double check. But you won't catch me searching for very personal stuff on Google — e.g. I'll never search for health advice on Google and even if DDG's results are bad, it's either that versus nothing at all.

I'm also not super strict — we do use Gmail and Google Docs at work and that's fine, but I do prefer native clients for Gmail too and I prefer text files in my Dropbox for my own notes. I also pay for YouTube Premium, because otherwise my son is getting exposed to ads, plus I watch YouTube anyway and I'd rather have the ads-free experience on every device I own.

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Smart%20keywords

[2]: https://duckduckgo.com/bang

[dannyw]

> I still can't find a good search engine where I don't spend more than 5 mins trying different keywords to get the results google gives me.

[bad_user]

Right and the TL;DR of my reply is — if I spend 5 mins on DDG or other websites, then I would have spent 5 mins on Google too, because in my experience Google's search results have degraded too — due to spam, plus I noticed the results further degrading after I toggled off the search history in my profile, but that's another discussion.

[base698]

I find some programming related things hard to find in DDG. Most recently anything related to Deno. I've found some other esoteric corners of programming that are only surfaced with Google.

[oefrha]

If I want to search Wikipedia, I just directly search Wikipedia. I have a browser search bar shortcut “w ” for exactly that. So I type “w firefox” and it takes me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox directly. Similarly for many other sites I use regularly.

Really there’s no point in asking a middle man to do that for you, whether they claim to track you or not.

[visarga]

On the contrary, my experience is that I prefer the Google results even when I want to search in a site that has an internal search engine, such as Wikipedia, StackOverflow and Reddit. Both the formatting and the quality of the results are better in Google.

[oefrha]

I was responding to the DDG bangs (e.g. @w) usage. A custom search shortcut is strictly better by achieving the same effect without a middle man.

When I actually need to search Wikipedia, Reddit etc. I do use Google. I only use shortcuts when I know they will take me directly to relevant result(s), e.g. with many Wikipedia pages for well-known subjects.

[Semaphor]

> Also DuckDuckGo is fine for English results

German as well with the toggle to search German sites.

[egeozcan]

Which is very helpful because with Google, in spite of some available settings, it's impossible to know what kind of custom/localized results being served.

In DDG, I turn it on (mine is Germany toggle as well) for finding restaurants and local support sites, and turn it off when I search anything programming related. Works well so far. I used the infamous "!g" rarely in the last few months.