Better than Google, looking for best search engine

[NimaSepassi]

Which is the best search engine? Why do you like it better than the others?

[ShexNivis]

I like ask.com but really got nothing to complain about google.

[barryp]

You might like to look at Ecosia:

http://ecosia.org/

Why is Ecosia the greenest of all search engines?
We are the greenest search engine for two reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, we donate our income to protect rainforests. Secondly, our servers run on green electricity.

Operating a search engine consumes massive amounts of energy. There are various estimations by experts, which claim that a single search causes up to 7g of CO2 emission. Most of these emissions are caused by the huge server networks of the search engines.

Like the other search engines, Ecosia also has to access a network of servers to deliver search results. Our own servers run on green electricity, but since Bing and Yahoo servers do not, an Ecosia search still causes almost the same amount of emissions as a Google search does.

So what makes Ecosia so eco-friendly? The positive impact of Ecosia comes from the rainforest we protect. A single hectare of rainforest binds about 600 tons of CO2. Thus, Ecosia prevents approximately 120kg of CO2 emissions with each search. So the positive impact of the rainforest protection is a million times higher than the negative impact caused by the CO2 emission of our servers!

By donating 80% of the advertising revenue for the protection of the rainforests, Ecosia really helps the environment. In contrast to all other search engines, the total CO2 balance of an Ecosia search is vastly improved and no other “eco-friendly” websites compare to this.

[asymmetros]

It sounds an interesting question. You see, i am kind of a "search-o-hopper" as i am testing various search engines. I dont trust google in general terms. My favorite search engine is metacrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com) cause it combines results from different 'engines' (goole, yahoo, bing, ask).

Next, http://www.dogpile.com is doing practically the same thing -their differences are only a matter of taste.
I can recommend also http://eu.ixquick.com/. They are telling that they fully respect user's privacy.

The very last days, i came across various search engines and some of them look really promising.
http://www.metaglossary.com/ which combines search results with dictionary /definitions.
http://www.zuula.com/ an amazing amount of results from different sources
http://clusty.com/ well organized
http://www.quintura.com/ interesting layout

So, my opinion is that they are really many search engines out there and its up to everyone to find out which of them matches his/her needs. Or, to use in parallel 2, 3 or more of them -his favorites and do not stuck in a single one.

PS: there are also /www.iconfinder.com/ and http://www.findsounds.com/. Each of them very hand if you want to find for some reason an icon or a sound

PS2: This ecosia... i think it gets a position in my set of search engines. thanks for the recommendation...

[linuxviolin]

Try DuckDuckGo... Currently it's my default search engine.

[markcynt]

Try DuckDuckGo... Currently it's my default search engine.

Looks pretty good.

I think I'll try it for awhile.

[byronlewis]

Sometimes I use Yahoo. Else than that I have never tried any search engine than Google. My search ends with Google as I find out almost what I would be looking for.

[iironjade]

Bing has found a couple of things Google missed.

[FranzB]

This thread is already an old one. But still.....
@ Barryp: By accident i found this Ecosia search engine and was wondering whether it would work on Linux. So I used the "Search" function here on the forum and lo and behold.....it has found its way on the Linux forum.
I got to Ecosia by searching for Tim Jackson (economist). In the following link he uses that search function when giving a talk/lecture.
You and others may be interested:
http://www.kickitover.org/2011/03/28/ti ... lity-check

You can start the video at 12:00 minutes (for the Ecosia) if you don't want to listen to all of his talk.

[lmintnewb]

X2 or 3 for DuckDuckGo, someone beat me to it.

Just an opinion and I need to stop burning time on these forums. Google's probably the best all around search engine. Though there are specialty SE's for specific tasks depending on what you're looking for that could either supplement or be better to use than google for certain goals.

Friggin net research can be a science I guess. Google is always one of my 1st stops and still has like 65% of the US search engine market between all it's combined web search properties.

[AlbertP]

Yahoo search is a good choice when searching for Linux. Google sometimes displays pages without the word 'linux' when you use this in your search phrase, Yahoo does not. My opinion is that you can more easily get to the right page with this. If you are looking for Windows things, I prefer Google.

[MALsPa]

Try DuckDuckGo... Currently it's my default search engine.

I'm currently using this one, too. But I don't know which search engine is "best." Depends on what you mean by "best," right? I've been happy with Google for a long time now but decided to try Duck Duck Go because they say they don't track anything. Seems to be okay so far.

[jharris1993]

Actually, all these suggestions are good ones - and like one of the earlier replies said, it's really a matter of taste.

IMHO, rather than use a single search engine - like Google, yahoo, or bing - I prefer a meta-serch site that searches a whole host of search engines.

The two I can recommend are dogpile and ixquick. I have used both and I am pretty satisfied with the results obtained.

It's actually not a bad idea to have more than one arrow in your quiver, and more that one search-tool is a good idea as well. Just remember that they're tools, use the one that fits the task.

What say ye?

Jim (JR)

[Kevin108]

What about AltaVista?

I've tried the other search engines. I used Dogpile for years when it was new but Google has always given me the best results. http://mycroft.mozdev.org/ is how I add it back to my Mint Firefox.

[xenopeek]

Moved it here, as it is chat topic. Locking it, as the topic was over a year old. As per the forum rules, please don't revive topics older than six months.

[exploder]

I am doing the same as MALsPa. I do not like the idea of being tracked and DuckDuckGo works just fine for searching.