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Ask HN: Best way to Google? log out first

6 points by rStar ↗ HN
so, everyone on here likes to posit that google is ‘the best search engine’.

my question is, since google ‘personalizes’ search so much from individual to individual, if I want to truly take advantage of the wisdom of crowds, to get the best out of google search, don’t i have to log out first? which enables generalized search results, rather than google telling me what i want to see?

17 comments

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decrypt
I have been using Whoogle search for the last two months:

https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search

It is "A self-hosted, ad-free, privacy-respecting metasearch engine". Happy with the experience so far.

rStar
that is amazing and i will have that code on my machine soon. however for purposes of this discussion i’m interested in the best possible search results possible for myself as an individual. my question is more, has google personalized search to the point of diminishing returns. if I log out first, irrespective of surveillance, do i simply get better search results. i know it’s not the best results from an advertiser standpoint, so does that mean it’s not the best for me
greenyoda
> if I log out first, irrespective of surveillance, do i simply get better search results

Only you can answer that question, based on your own experience. "Better search results" is a very subjective measure, and means different things to different people.

gtirloni
> i’m interested in the best possible search results possible for myself as an individual

So you want Google's personalized results or not?

Just use another search engine if Google annoys you so much (e.g. DDG).

rStar
google seems to be the best search engine. google personalization seems to have the same blind spots as I do as an individual, so maybe i’m answering my own question here but I’d love more considered opinions than my own
greenyoda
If you don't want to self-host, another privacy-respecting metasearch engine is https://searx.me

And you can always use DuckDuckGo, which can anonymously search Google with "!g".

yuppie_scum
Duck duck go
rStar
google is better than ddg, doesn’t seem close. i try to use ddg a few times a year, get frustrated, and switch back.
rStar
although with this !g ddg command that’s new to me, maybe ddg with !g is the answer. that being said, if anyone actually used that, i can see google shutting that right down.
KhyberNomad
I use that a lot. Google can't really stop it since its just inserting url parameters.
mkbkn
Maybe that is true for developers. I am a non-developer and I search a lot.

Ecosia and Startpage works for me.

rStar
startpage gives me a captcha on every search. maybe its because i’m on a vpn. that is a very good solution though, and one of the things that started me thinking in this direction
DerekBickerton
DDG is good for general queries. One thing I often do is to see what TLD a site is using before blindly typing it into my address bar. "Is it slashdot.org or slashdot.com?". For more complicated and long-tail queries, Google is your man, and DDG redirects those searches with a simple `!g` bang query.
KhyberNomad
Brave Search is better. You can enable google fallback mixing so that if it can't find good answers it will just show you google answers anonymously. Also, they have their own indexing if you don't want to use bing's like ddg does.
pdevr
I open a new window in Chrome's Incognito mode. Works well, as long as that is the first Incognito window opened.
mkbkn
I use Ecosia or Startpage. Never felt the need for Google since past many years.
KhyberNomad
I've been using Brave Search. The fast answers are better than duck duck go in my opinion