Page 1 of 14

Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:42 pm
by joby_toss
I was just reading this topic and I was wondering what search alternatives to Google are you guys using (not yahoo, bing, ask or some other giant)?

I like Duckduckgo very much and I occasionally use Yippy (to quickly find download packages).

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:57 pm
by m^(2)
DuckDuckGo. Though for me it's not a "Google alternative". It's simply the overall best search engine around.

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 11:50 pm
by guinness
The DuckDuckGo API is something I could probably incorporate into an application, maybe a DuckDuckGo Portable app?

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 1:26 am
by joby_toss
I like the idea, but I'd like to know more about what this app would be able to do. Will it be able to display the results in its own window? Or something to be used by Executor, for example?

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 1:35 am
by joby_toss
Has anyone tried to search Duckduckgo for "portablefreeware"?
In the results there is something like this. :)

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 8:28 am
by webfork
joby_toss wrote:In the results there is something like this.
Yes -- that's the cool future home of something that's cool. Oh yes.

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 6:39 pm
by Hydaral
I've been using Bing, simply because I did not know about these others. I boycott Google years ago when it went from relevant searches to popular searches, but Bing seems to be going this way too.

Thanks for the suggestion for DuckDuckGo, I'll have to try it out and see if the results are actually relevant to my parameters.

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 8:26 pm
by I am Baas
DuckDuckGo is one of my favorites too. I use the encrypted ssl version.
Here's a list of parameters to add to a search query.

Also, there was a way to access it through TOR but I do not remember the link.

Another one I use is blekko.

Bonus for reading to this point... a cool way to search / browse Flickr.

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 11:57 pm
by m^(2)
I am Baas wrote:Also, there was a way to access it through TOR but I do not remember the link.
I don't understand. If you have Tor installed, there's no need for a special url. If you don't, then you could use it only via some gateway and the only difference between contacting ddg directly and via gateway is that the gateway would know who you are and what you search for. I don't think it's better in any way.

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 12:19 am
by carbonize
Quite impressed with DuckDuckGo. Particularly when I'm searching for PHP functions such as mysql_query as it knows exactly what I am looking for and shows the information right there on the results page.

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 12:37 am
by m^(2)
I think that you're just used to dealing with some idiot that tries to act smart (and fails miserably) by replacing underscores with spaces. :P

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 1:00 am
by carbonize
If that was in reply to me I haven't got a clue what you mean.

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 1:19 am
by m^(2)
It was a mistake. I remember when Google was such idiot, but apparently they fixed it.

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 9:07 pm
by webfork
I am Baas wrote:DuckDuckGo is one of my favorites too. I use the encrypted ssl version
I like the auto-SSL firefox plugin. Good stuff.

Re: Alternatives to Google search

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 9:40 pm
by I am Baas
m^(2) wrote:
I am Baas wrote:Also, there was a way to access it through TOR but I do not remember the link.
I don't understand. If you have Tor installed, there's no need for a special url. If you don't, then you could use it only via some gateway and the only difference between contacting ddg directly and via gateway is that the gateway would know who you are and what you search for. I don't think it's better in any way.
OK, did some digging (a link to a blog post explaining the TOR hidden service is in the quote below)...
if you want to prevent sites from knowing you visited them at all, you can use a proxy like Tor. DuckDuckGo actually operates a Tor exit enclave, which means you can get end to end anonymous and encrypted searching using Tor & DDG together.