
Alternative search engines to Google (2016) - moo
https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/02/25/say-goodbye-to-google-14-alternative-search-engines/
======
nxc18
Bing offers a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, its search relevancy is
actually really great, its special search features (weather, elections, etc.)
and graph tools are generally better than Google's and they overall just seem
to try harder on search nowadays.

On the other hand, search isn't the only important thing - presumably that is
why Google doesn't seem to focus there. Bing has seemingly given up on some of
the big things, like Maps, and failed to promote others (like Translator) in
ways that really compromise the core offering.

Bing Maps used to have a very legitimate edge over Google; then they stood
still for years and I'm not sure they could ever catch up.

To make matters worse, Bing has lost lots of cool, useful features; features
that I could show someone and then expect them to legitimately consider Bing.
For example, searching for a song used to let you immediately read the lyrics
without ads, listen to the song through Zune or buy the song through various
providers. Wolfram Alpha used to be directly integrated into the search
engine; it was extremely powerful and convenient.

I really would have liked to see a Bing that didn't take as many steps back as
it took forward; that Bing could be a real contender.

~~~
lucideer
> _Bing has seemingly given up on some of the big things, like Maps_

As far as I'm aware Bing (along with Facebook and Yahoo!) are backing
[https://wego.here.com/](https://wego.here.com/) these days. I'm curious to
see where that goes...

~~~
DanBC
Interestingly wego.here has more up to date satellite imagery for my house
than either Bing or Google.

------
Safety1stClyde
I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year without ill-effects. Although
sometimes I have to go to Google, often when the results are disappointing I
try !g and the results with Google are just as disappointing. It's also
actually easier to switch to an image search using !gi than it is to click the
image search with the mouse at Google's site.

~~~
rochellle
DuckDuckGo isn't that great, but the _!bang_ options make it easy to
diversify, and branch searches to multiple targets, to compare outcomes.

Two things become obvious at that point, and the main one is that other search
engines don't just customize search results to individuals, they actually
spend costly human resources currating and QA'ing results. DuckDuckGo's search
results kind of suck, and the reason they're not as good is because the
results are not groomed to the same degree, by as many eyes, nor to the same
level of quality.

The other obvious thing quickly noticed is that DuckDuckGo's _!bang_ operators
are so, so, so much more handy than some of the other horrendously mangled,
inscrutable query strings you wind up landing on, that would require 5 or 10
clicks, navigating the intended user interfaces of the parent sites that
actually host the results.

Compare using _!googleimages_ on DuckDuckGo, to what actually happens when you
click and type for results at
[https://images.google.com](https://images.google.com)?

It's kind of silly that you can't just pass a query string to Google, and that
DuckDuckGo does their query strings better than Google does for it's own
product.

~~~
petra
Is the !g bang gives you personalized results as good as google results ?

Also, it's a bad design decision to make bangs belong to search engines. In
the past the firefox extension lookpick[1] solved that problem very well: They
crowdsourced search engnines, had their own search box in the right corner of
the screen, and to make it easy to pick the right search engines, search
engines used searchable tags.

On top of that, if you add easy help for search operators for each site(also
crowd sourced), would be really useful.

I wish there was something like that for chrome.

[1][https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lookpick-
sear...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lookpick-search-
box/?src=collection&collection_id=1f728b3c-e875-9e75-7d1c-693cca77aaf2)

~~~
thinkmassive
Chrome has built-in support for multiple search engines (many sites take the
liberty of doing this automatically). You can customize the keyword that
triggers each one.

For example, if you want to search HN you could add:

URL: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%s](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%s)
Keyword: hn

Then you simply type "hn" in the omnibox, hit space, and enter your search
term.

[https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95426](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95426)

~~~
petra
Sure adding your own is possible, or using some chrome extension like
SearchBar, but having everything available, crowdsourced, and tagged, is
totally different experience.

------
Hasknewbie
With the recent news covering Google Search's often insane "sugested answers"
("Obama is the current king of America, and is planning a military coup"),
fake news SEO trickery, and the general bad feeling about how they rank their
results for the last year or so, I've had the thought that Bing/DDG might
become competitive again, not because they improve, but because Google slowly
got worse. Google is basically the MS Windows of search, due to their dominant
position they're constantly targetted, so you're more likely to get the
info/search equivalent of a virus.

Hardly comforting.

~~~
vkorsunov
We developing [https://bubblehunt.com](https://bubblehunt.com) \- it's search
platform, where every user can create own search and provide independent
results, like miniGoogle. Now it is alpha version. We love this project
because we can provide information that we think is important, interesting and
truthful. More info:
[https://medium.com/@bubblehunt/faq-9dd92c741b23](https://medium.com/@bubblehunt/faq-9dd92c741b23)

~~~
ronsor
Needs a non-facebook and non-twitter way to signup. Not everybody has social
media accounts.

~~~
vkorsunov
Maybe Github, G+, ...?

~~~
ronsor
That works too; perhaps I should create my own authentication service and
api...

~~~
vkorsunov
It is good idea, but for developers...many users can't create own
authentification method Tell me please about your search engine Ronsor, it is
your code? Or you use some open-source project? Why you create this search?

------
abawany
I recently discovered Ecosia (ecosia.org). Seems to use results from Bing,
maps from Google, and has an easy 'out' to show results from Google.

Nice 'hook' as well. From their About Us page: 'Ecosia is a social business
run by a small group of dedicated people. We work together to create tools
that empower everyone to easily do good by planting trees. We believe our
trees have the power to make this world a better place for everyone in it.'

~~~
odiroot
Thanks for mentioning Ecosia. I was actually working for them over a year ago.

They're a bunch of really good people on a great mission.

------
skocznymroczny
Bing is very good for doing... umm... "movie" searches. The preview
functionality works well and is very useful.

------
elorant
The problem I have with most alternatives is that they are mediocre at best in
regional results. Google really excels in that area. I tried Bing a few years
ago and every time I had to search something in Greek the results were
dreadful when compared with G. I guess it might be better nowadays but I'm
already hooked with G. so no point moving on.

~~~
scandox
Tried using Duck Duck Go in Ireland I find myself switching back to Google a
lot

------
cuonic
One search engine to consider is Searx [0], you can easily host your own
instance locally or on a public facing server [1]. What it does is aggregate
search results from multiple engines (Bing, Google, Yahoo...), proxying your
request making tracking and profiling impossible.

[0]: [https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/](https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/)
[1]: [https://searx.laquadrature.net/](https://searx.laquadrature.net/)

~~~
unhammer
I remember trying yacy years ago – do you know how they compare?

~~~
rascul
Yacy is a search engine. Searx passes your query off to other search engines.

------
richardboegli
What the article skips over is !bang searches in DuckDuckGo.

This allows you to search other engines, but still have theirs as default

All the engines mentioned can be searched via it. !b !bing !s !startpage
!vimeo !giphy etc.....

~~~
Insanity
Absolutely love the bang searches in DDG. The most used for me is !w for sure,
easily go to a wikipedia article.

Only issue I have with it at the moment is that it tends to look for articles
in my native language instead of in English but you can probably configure
that somewhere and I just have not looked yet. It falls back to English anyway
when it can not find one in Dutch.

EDIT: For people on here, !hackernews might be useful :-)

~~~
ggus
!wen goes to english wikipedia

!wit goes to italian wikipedia

and so on

~~~
Insanity
Thank you!

------
known
[https://searx.me/](https://searx.me/) and
[https://www.qwant.com/](https://www.qwant.com/) and
[https://www.startpage.com/](https://www.startpage.com/) will respect your
privacy

------
cyberferret
I've been slowly transitioning to DuckDuckGo recently, I love some of their
quirky features [0] - though old habits die hard. I guess it is a matter of
making their engine the ubiquitous one via the default browser URL/search box
etc.

[0] - [http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-really-cool-things-you-can-
do...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-really-cool-things-you-can-do-with-
duckduckgo/)

------
finid
Stopped using Google a while back. Used
[https://www.startpage.com](https://www.startpage.com) for years. Just
switched to [https://www.qwant.com](https://www.qwant.com) late last year.

~~~
h2hn
Cool but requires shit (js at least)

~~~
scenequeue
[https://lite.qwant.com/](https://lite.qwant.com/)

------
LeoPanthera
This article doesn't seem to say, so, how many of these search engines use
their own index and don't "borrow" one from another larger engine? DDG uses
Bing and Yandex, for example.

~~~
gambler
I'm willing to bet no one* does their own search crawling aside from companies
the size of Yandex and larger. Google carefully manipulated web standards to
make sure you can't do that effectively without tons of upfront investment.
You pretty much have to run a customized headless browser to get real content.
And then you have to figure out how to interact with whatever you get, since
increasing number of websites are SPAs. Google itself has it easy, since
developers actively modify their site to fit Google's capabilities.

But hey, everything is "fine" as longs as the Web keeps a bunch of developers
employed with six-digit salaries. They will put up with any amount of
accidental complexity and ignore any effects on future innovation as long as
their jobs are secure. (And those jobs are more secure than ever because you
need ever increasing number of specialized professionals to keep the
increasingly complex technology stacks operational.)

\--

* One exception I know of: Web Archive. But their coverage is pretty spotty and they aren't strictly speaking a search engine. Still, it's an awesome effort. At lease someone tries to swim against the tide.

~~~
ronsor
My search engine crawls its own results. The downside is the index is very
tiny, under 100,000 pages.

------
Apocryphon
No Baidu? Yandex aside, I'm curious as to what other major non-English search
engines are there.

~~~
dafrankenstein2
[https://chorki.com/](https://chorki.com/) This is a search engine for Bangla
language serving more than 1milion informations, a startup from Bangladesh.

------
theprop
I tend to use EpicSearch.in as much as possible (generally in the Epic Privacy
Browser), then click to Bing/Google if the results aren't good. EpicSearch's
results are so-so (built on Yandex), but it's TOTALLY private and has no ads
so it's my first go-to option. Maybe 25% of the time I'll click onto Bing or
Google.

------
oregontechninja
I find that each search engine has a slightly different "dialect", and I've
been tuning my search wording for years on google. Using other search engines
is actually sort of challenging and often frustrating. I do like peekier.com
though. I feel like it's a step forward for innovation with great layout/menu-
design.

------
squarefoot
Thanks! I was completely unaware of Boardreader; if done right it could solve
the problem Google created when they stupidly removed the discussion search
filter.

------
triode3
I don't know why no one linked [https://peekier.com](https://peekier.com) in
the comments yet.

------
paradite
I run a personal blog and occasionally I see some traffic from Ecosia:

[https://info.ecosia.org/what](https://info.ecosia.org/what)

It uses money generated from ads seen in search results to plan tree. Nice
idea, not sure if the underlying implementation is Google.

------
rodionos
For the record, DDG has past 15 million direct query threshold in March.

[http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/13/](http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/13/)

They really started growing again since August last year.

------
steanne
is it really an alternative if it's using google's data?

------
zerop
Question: Why vertical search engines dont succeed much?

~~~
garysieling
There are tons of successful vertical search engines, but the line between
"search" and an app gets blurry. As examples, Amazon, Octopart, Spotify (if
you count music search), the DPLA (a non-profit library search), Shodan,
IconFinder, etc.

I've explored this in personal projects- a search engine for lectures
([https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com)) and stock
photos ([https://stickstock.com](https://stickstock.com)).

~~~
nostrademons
Also Kayak, HipMunk, Yelp, YouTube, Netflix, AirBnB, Alibaba, etc.

It ceases to be considered "vertical search" and becomes a category in its own
right if you do it well enough, even though the way you interact with many of
these apps is that you type in free-form text into a search box and it
performs some fuzzy matching.

------
cicero19
Can anyone tell me if I am logged into chrome and use a non-google search
engine, are they tracking the queries I make in the omni box?

------
interfixus
[2016]

~~~
sctb
Thanks! We updated the title.

------
known
[http://tsearch.in](http://tsearch.in) is also a good alternative

------
losteverything
Always trying to find options for my genealogy searches

DDG "gave" me unknown family bible location recently (in La)

What about millionshort?

------
haritakid
Some Boardreader linkes are broken, especially ones from stackoverflow. It
could be useful.

------
Markoff
most of the engines don't pass my simple test - enter name of movie and i
expect to see aggregated basic info and ratings of movie at least from 2-3
websites without opening them

it's a bit better with currency exchange 5USD to EUR

~~~
sveme
Duckduckgo is pretty good in that respect:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=arrival&t=ffab&ia=meanings](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=arrival&t=ffab&ia=meanings)

However, the real reason your wish will not be granted is that those 2-3
websites are absoluely opposed to such a scenario, as people will not visit
their websites anymore. If I remember it correctly, Google had that feature
years ago and was sued by Yelp(?) because they basically stole all their
traffic.

~~~
Markoff
no ratings, no basic information, now let's compare it to this

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=arrival](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=arrival)

unless there will be another engine which will provide me with same
information as you can see on right side of screen I am not even bothering to
try it, it's such basic feature that I think every engine should provide it

Google has this feature, so I am not sure why they can and others can't.

------
krystiangw
I like Bing webmaster tools. In some areas it is even better than Google's

------
HillaryBriss
bing isn't half bad, but i still use google a hell of a lot

