This was the worst time I've seen. Here's a screenshot. The search term was benaroya hall if you want to try yourself.

I second this. DDG, Searxng and various LLM are my daily drivers depending on the queries. I don't recognise DDG being bloated with ads like Google. I have adblockers but I put sites like DDG on the whitelist because hey support the good guys.

Is it topical? Regional? Does OP have malware that is transforming the browser document? Is OP searching for niche content and confusing singular domain results for ads? Has DDG shifted owners and doing some tests?

I would like to know more.

Or even just use any public instance found here. Different instances may have different defaults, but under Preferences you can enable/disable whatever search engines you want.

I've been using Kagi for the better part of a year. I find it removes about 2/3 of the time and effort between search and goal. There are a lot of very simple quality of life things that every search should have (and would have if not for user tracking).

Some people have fairly said that paid search is inherently privacy unfriendly. You have to log in to use it. That doesn't really bother me, and if it doesn't bother you, it's great to use a quality search where you are not the product.

I've been using it for a number of months now and have been really happy with it. I think it saves me time and aggravation compared to using Google.

I have. It didn't seem ridiculously priced and the results have included what I want the majority of the time. No complaints so far, and it's been about six months.

There's a trial, you get a handful of searches per month for free

Try it, they give you 100 free searches.

I've been using it for months and really like it. It's so refreshing to get clean and useful search results.

I do. Just the feature where I block domains and they pop up in the results when I search something is a reason to pay for it for me.

And people voting down those spam sites means that you also won't get them in your results. 5/5

I've been using it for over a year. It makes my life easier, to be honest. I'm on the 5€ plan because I don't need more than 300 searches per month.

I like how customisable the search results are, the lack of SEO stuff and I'm a big fan of the "small internet" results.

I couldn't live without it. Love being able to up/down-rate my results. I've been trying to de-google my life but search was always the one thing I couldn't give up. DuckDuckGo being Bing results just didn't have the quality. Kagi's results are S tier. As I understand it, they're sourced in a privacy friendly way from Google and then they apply your preferences on top of them. Definitely went in skeptical and now I can't imagine not having Kagi.

I tried Kagi and found the results to be significantly less helpful than Google. Searches for local businesses, open source libraries, and Canadian history missed useful sites that Google provided.

I guess I'm an outlier, because other people seem to have a good time with it.

I am somewhat tempted to sign up and give it a shot. DDG is pretty solid for me, but it would be interesting to try a search engine where I'm not the product, it is.

I've been using kagi for months. I love it.

Super impressed so far

I use it. I like it and would recommend it.

Read about it here, tested it, and was hooked on the first search. It's magnificent.

Yeah, but for those on a budget that subscription is a pain point. So long as you can afford it easy it is good because you are no longer the product, but that will keep allot of people at bay.

Nice this one sounds great! I actually like cards in moderation, just not so many I can't see the results without scrolling.

That sounds like a big plus. Someone else said this was some self hosted thing though which is over my head unfortunately

What about it is worth paying for?

Or use https://searxng.world/

Wait you can really turn the ads off?

This one looks really good. I'm not sure how they make money though.