My go to search engine is (please boost for greater exposure):

[carlos@social.perceptiveconstructs.com]

@osma @ctt

I'm using Qwant too.
It is temporarily unavailable fairly often for me. Do you see that as well?

[nen@mementomori.social]

@carlos @osma @ctt I do

[urlyman@mastodon.social]

@skylark13 thanks, I already do that on desktop but cannot on iOS 15.x.

And the cookie for dismissing Search Assist on regular DDG frequently expires

@ctt

[me@social.taupehat.com]

@ctt grep

[carlos@social.perceptiveconstructs.com]

@nen @osma @ctt

Yeah, it's enough to require a backup, which is DDG in my case.

[inya@mastodon.social]

@ctt Qwant

[musevg@23.social]

@ctt
Qwant seems to be a bit better than DDG for me. I'm switching between both.

[jtinmi@fouroclockfarms.club]

@ctt Startpage

[karen5lund@mastodon.social]

@ctt Duck Duck Go on the tablet, which I use most. Ecosia on the laptop, but it's based on Bing so it tends to repeat results beyond the second screen.

[lianna@micro.webgarden.click]

@ctt I switched to #Marginalia years ago & never looked back.

[miamarktwo@syzito.xyz]

@ctt Voted DDG but to clarify, it's the noai version.

[chuff@bark.wolp.chat]

@ctt@social.lol

Start Page, works well enough for the occasional search

[kete@mstdn.social]

@ctt
local friends' searxng

[bardmoss@autistics.life]

@ctt
Mojeek

[dolanor@hachyderm.io]

@ctt I'm using duckduckgo, but I'm getting more and more shitty AI content.

So I said a few months back that I would setup a YaCy node and use that. I haven't yet, but now I'm getting too pissed about those results.

YaCy is a distributed search engine. The more we participate, the better we will be.

[jbrownesq@mastodon.social]

@ctt none. I dont use current search. I use Wikipedia, and I access websites directly. (I began using the internet in the 90s. None of these modern "problems" are real problems for me, and I gave up the "smartphone" and all their appy thingies years ago. My young kids, too, arent chained to any of this nonsense and know how to live withoit it)

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@ctt Funny how 0% say they use Bing but it looks like 58% use Bing without knowing it...

[steter@mastodon.stevesworld.co]

@annasdtc @ctt The noai.duckduckgo.com URL shuts it all off. In Firefox, I had to add it under "Additional search engines" and then I could choose it under "Default search engine." It could be made easier.

[ruthoday2@chaosfem.tw]

@ctt

Startpage

[just_one_bear@mastodon.social]

@ctt I selected "other" because I can't control the default engine on a lot of machines I use and for the ones I can control, I seldom use the default settings in the search. (It's wishy-washy nuance, I know)

Most used if I can is noai.duckduckgo and if I have to use Google I use udm14 and literal mode (made a search shortcut for it). No-optimal but those cut out most of the cruft.