The ULTIMATE Search Engine Tier List (Based Tier to Surveillance Tier)

[@MirrorMansionQ]

these tier lists are awesome, i hope we see more for things like email and vpn services.

[@EricMurphyxyz]

Good ideas! We'll see :)

[@junedabat]

@@EricMurphyxyz If we're talking about email services, Infomaniak may be an interesting one to check out

[@TobyMayne1]

same i really want to see an email one. for vpn i think mullvad is prob the best

[@MirrorMansionQ]

@@TobyMayne1 sounds about right, but is it normie friendly though? I hear the speeds aren't the best and it's basically not for streaming.

[@smithy2365]

Tom Spark on yt does good videos on VPN with tier list, I recommend :)

[@DccToon]

"it gets it from yahoo, which is bing, and bing, which is also bing, you can see all of them are bing" P1 - Wait everything is bing? P2 - always has been

[@RealUniCat]

Hi

[@delmarhollenbach]

Do you feel a little greasy when you swallow?

[@JTient]

Bro American here I totally simp for Ya dex it's like Google used to be just don't look up Putin you're good.

[@suungjinu]

@@JTient lmao wht happens if u look up putin

[@AKABeestYT]

The main reason I personally have Yandex bookmarked is because of its suprisingly accurate results. Not only is the reverse image search well beyond google images, the simple search terms give me exactly what I need on the first page. Mostly looking for leaks and torrents that other search engines hide.

[@J-_-S]

most torrent sites intall spywares, malwares, making connection bridges to uknown IP. First you need to know which torrent sites are safe in order to download torrent without searching through search engines lol

[@legitimo1788]

Duck and Yandex was where I found better image results, google show more memes and strange things, and Brave didn't even has an image search

[@UhOhUmm]

Google murdered the reverse image search, it worked exactly like Yandex, but they changed it to "detect" the item you're looking for instead of the exact image and so it doesn't work at all anymore.

[@nameless_fairy]

​@@legitimo1788 AFAIK reverse image search from google was manually gimped. It was very good, actually.

[@yagami1160]

i am using yandex for pirating stuff and finding information banned from google, but looking at main page in russian it is all propaganda it is everywhere

[@MaxPanic]

Duckduckgo should be in the surveillance tier. They host on AWS and AWS are a US government contractor. Everything that flows through AWS is likely handed over to the NSA.

[@shoes4clues955]

they were also revealed to be selling data to microsoft a year or so back

[@MrEdrftgyuji]

And they censor only one side of the Russia/Ukraine war propaganda.

[@jonteet]

good luck avoiding AWS lmao

[@MaxPanic]

@@jonteet It’s not that hard to avoid AWS. What’s hard is avoiding US government boot lickers.

[@PhobosTK]

All US-based sites are bound by the patriot act anyway. Same goes for EU-based sites. You can run, but you can't escape

[@djongaGod]

One thing I'd like to add: this tier list is based only from searches in english. If you search in another language, most of the tools in the "based or excellent" tier would not be so good.

[@StarfoxHUN]

This is so sadly true. When Brave search released this was the main reason i had to drop it.

[@furdiburd]

​@@StarfoxHUNat least its now soo much better than its beta version. I use it in hungarian and the results are localised (pre set fake gps ofc) so i get like the hun edition of wikipedia at fist ect.

[@caiofranco2664]

@@StarfoxHUN dropped for the same reason, but recently i picked it up again, and i had no problems so far

[@O5MO]

I am from Ukraine and frequently search in russian. I've been using Brave for a long time, and it works decent. Although i mostly search in english, its not bad in other languages.

[@a_wild_Kirillian]

I don't understand this. They use Google's index. Both Startpage and Brave work fine in my native language currently.

[@Alorand]

I definitely use Yandex for reverse image searches. I guess I wouldn't mind an anonymous frontend so that I could get the controversial politicized stuff from them too. What I am really hoping to find is a better search for KZbin videos that have just been posted. I remember when the Notre Dame Cathedral was burning and KZbin would only show you videos from official mainstream news channels instead of Paris residents who uploaded their unique perspective.

[@echt114]

This seems to be true for almost any news event, especially if you're looking for vids of an explosion, crash, tornado, or other thing they'd apparently like to censor. So instead of getting the actual video you're looking for, you're flooded with news outlets that just have vids talking about it.

[@jmister6824]

Yeah. I'm pretty sure they don't care what you do long as you're not plotting an attack on Russia. So I don't even care if they spy and collect whatever, what are they gonna do with it?

[@alexhauser5043]

Yandex is owned by a Russian company. They're not beholden to western governments. Putin won't tell the CIA that you're into catgirls or that you larp as a traditionalist Catholic.

[@CorneliusCornbread]

4:16 I REALLY wish you mentioned Brave search's best feature: Discussions. Brave search will actually show you related forum posts related to your questions on Reddit and other forums too ocasionally. Reddit for many people, me included, is where I go when I say "I want software that everyone else uses" or "I want advice and I want it to be rated based on general public opinion." It's insanely helpful and can often times be a significantly better source of information than articles (which I'm realizing is a really sad reality now that I'm writing it out).

[@Eichro]

This aged tragically

[@kingby8499]

@@Eichro what happened? genuienly don't know

[@Grion007]

@@kingby8499 Im guessing it was the reddit blackout that happened a few weeks back

[@anonymousbloke1]

Who in their right mind would use Reddit over 4chan for something like that?

[@Mentocthemindtaker]

@@anonymousbloke1 ...anyone who doesn't want to deal with trolls and shitposting I guess 🤷‍♂

[@bradh.johnson2113]

I dropped DDG when they started imposing their (Bing's) definition of mis/dis-information. Bill Gate's definition and my definition vary greatly.

[@Damariobros]

Is there a good search engine that hasn't killed off search operators like inclusion, exclusion, and/or/xor, website filters, date, exact phrase, etc? I used to be a power user on Google and could usually find pretty much whatever I was looking for, and I was absolutely pissed when not just Google, not just Bing, not just KZbin, but pretty much every website across the entire internet seemed to all collectively kill off their search operators as part of going "minimalist." I'm still pissed because I can't ever seem to find anything I'm looking for nowadays.

[@friendlyfire7861]

Absolutely. I notice Google was getting crappy are 2014. It's curated and confining now. What used to be like a laser beam is now just fogginess.

[@SimonSCJP]

What do you mean? operators still work okay. sometimes not as accurate as before though, like not 100% respecting the operators but it's not like they're dead

[@DragonsEatTofu]

Yes, operators do sometimes work. But I’ve noticed that search engines still push really hard to show results outside of my perimeters. Lots of “did you actually mean to search for this instead???” So unless I am searching something mainstream, they really hesitate to show what I specified. I used to be able to search small personal blogs with ease but now it’s so hard to find those little gems even when I’m knowingly exact wording from those sites.

[@womp47]

@@DragonsEatTofu a good thing to remember is if youre trying to solve a problem or something, always put "reddit" at the end or just any sort of forum you think would answer it. whenever i search something, its hard to find an accurate result, but looking on reddit specifically usually answers that because pretty much every question or problem ive had has been asked before, and reddit is just the biggest place to ask things.

[@Mercurio-Morat-Goes-Bughunting]

@@SimonSCJP Operators are totally dead on DuckDuckGo. and consecutive terms are treated as OR() by default instead of AND() in order to bloat hitlists and, like, pretend that the search engine has lot's of information when, in fact, it has nothing of use or value.

[@ripleyhrgiger4669]

I know this is an older video of yours so maybe you won't see the comment. But, I wanted to say that I really love your videos. These aren't just tier list they're actually informational, instructional, and very well presented. You have a very good speaking voice, you're clear, concise, fun, and you don't take yourself too seriously and aren't afraid to poke a little fun at yourself and those of us who do sometimes go nuts with privacy. The best part though is that you're not pushing any agenda towards cryptocurrency (like some other "privacy" focused channels) and you seem to genuinely want to educate us on how we can take steps to make our online experiences more private and enjoyable. Thank you for putting these videos together and taking the time to bring us something that is entertaining and educational.

[@paulcrandall2534]

So glad I found this video. I've been using DDG full time for the past 4 years. The search results are just getting worse over time. I also search for a lot of technical information and I'm constantly finding myself needing to search Google instead. It's frustrating. It's also frustrating when these search engines are openly biased admit to down-ranking results or pushing a specific narrative or agenda. Let me be the one to research various topics and come to my own conclusions instead of trying to tell me what to think.

[@ericstoverink6579]

I remember the OG search engines, when the Internet first started becoming a household thing. This was all before google. You had Yahoo, (before it became the cesspit of the internet), Lycos, Webcrawler, Ask Jeeves, Hotbot, and Alta Vista. Ah, the good 'ol days.

[@pauljs75]

Mojeek seems like it could be a good obscure topic search if it's bringing less common results to the front. The other searches would bury that stuff behind link farms or more popular stuff with similar sounding names. So the criteria putting it lower on the list in the video may be different for some people. (It could have gotten an asterisk in that regard if it's consistent in what it did here.)

[@AngraMainiiu]

I am tired of search engines giving me the exact same crap about one result, you cant even look deeper in the pages due to the fact that most cut it off after the 5th page or so...

[@belnonaodh1520]

Same. I've been loving Mojeek for years! It's the same story for their images. They're all from royalty-free image sites, but I like that, because I can copy and paste images from it into projects without getting into trouble!

[@friendlyfire7861]

It's definitely good on certain occasions, especially for controversial things.

[@agentoranj5858]

Seems like it's better to keep a library of search engines bookmarked for different purposes.

[@StookyDoo22]

Mojeek is wonderful for finding fun obscure websites

[@sugarpolecat4781]

Google really holds a tight grip on this, cause I didn't even know there are THAT many search engines.

[@thejoman9011]

as a minor, google has a different privacy policy for me and other people under 18, if you have a google account and are under 18, as far as i know, as of 2023 google is no longer allowed to target ads to child accounts, so i only get generic ads, which is annoying but nice to know that they collect less data than normal.

[@asadfarraj]

The thing is, I had to set my age above 18, because of... you know, *stuff*

[@gamingtonight1526]

I have been using Ecosia for years - happy with the results, and helped plant 40 trees!

[@shemyaza8934]

If you believe you planted 40 trees, go look up the word 'naive' in the dictionary.

[@valetudan234]

​@@shemyaza8934why?

[@SauceyRedHN]

On the point of DuckDuckGo search results sometimes being useless, I personally solve that issue with just adding the site filter thing set to Reddit at the end, because a lot of my searches are things that probably has answers on some subreddit. Although, I don't ever really have an issue with bad search results, or at least not bad enough that I want to switch. As for the controversies, they haven't done anything that bothers me enough to switch.

[@Damariobros]

Now that the ceo is killing reddit, that trick will start to work less and less, and while subreddits are still protesting that trick doesn't work at all. I'm finding more and more often, sometimes being almost every single search I make, I'm getting completely garbage search results. It's becoming rather infuriating actually, just how bad the results are getting, especially when I really REALLY need to find something. The more I need to find something the more garbage the results are and the more likely it is I have to ask the question on Reddit.

[@muriilouwu]

When he said that a lot of times he saw himself using google to find what he was looking for, got me. Every single day I need go use google 1 or 2 times to find some good results, its time to try something new now 😅

[@nou1592]

sometimes ddg shows me the best results in my life. Like, those things, that other searchers won't show me, even if I make a backflip 11000 times. On the other hand, sometimes ddg shows me THAT SHIT, that other searchers will never show me xD

[@NothingXemnas]

I don't know if it is me, maybe it comes from how i make my own search, but not once i found the needs to filter it down to Reddit. Perhaps I just have different interests that are better documented in websites and wikis (which are user kept and curated anyway), but Reddit simply shows up if the result i seek is harder to find anywhere else, which isn't THAT common to happen either.

[@kawaiihikari0]

@@muriilouwuuse google your attempts for so called privacy is embarrassing. The NSA has every packet of data about you. They know everything about you doesn’t matter what security measures you think will help protect you use whatever because nothing you do on the Internet is secure, so use Google use TikTok use whatever you want you’re just wasting your time thinking, the government or others won’t know what you’re up to go research Pegasus go research the leaked documents within the United States stating that they’re allowed to tap your phone and access your emails you’re wasting your time is what I’m trying to say

[@linkhidalgogato]

i think its also worth pointing out about duckduckgo that they censor results based on their politics when the invasion of ukraine started they proudly announced they would start censoring russian sources and just russians in general, which regardless of what u think of the conflict this is bad just as a matter of principle.

[@buddah1978egypt]

Yandex is the king of reverse image search for sure. Its essential for romance scammer exposure

[@IndieAuthorX]

Is it really hard to identify a romance scammer?

[@buddah1978egypt]

@@IndieAuthorX some can be very crafty, but the majority use models

[@dreamystone]

This comment creates more questions that it answers...

[@buddah1978egypt]

@@dreamystone unless you are a scammer, just answers

[@dreamystone]

@@buddah1978egypt It really doesn't answer how the first use case you think to mention for a search engine is catching catfish. Is that your hobby? Do you have a vendetta against them? Have you sworn an oath to protect the good people of the internet that are just trying to find love? What's your tragic hero back story? Would you list spandex under casual clothing? I could honestly go on.

[@nobelphoenix]

When we search kirby, the way our engine "knows" which kirby we are talking about is due to how they store data in the first place. If we say "kirby is a very *popular* character and yet I'm getting a diner's website as a result" then we mean it's okay for the browser to tally up the results. In a 100% private search engine no term can be popular. So what we get must be a chaotic mess of results with basically a string match. Am I wrong in thinking so?

[@katcirce]

I'd enjoy to see an academic search engine tier list from you. Google scholar has a chokehold on the academic community

[@abcdefg-hv2ks]

I use Refseek! It's pretty accurate and im satisfied.

[@mrsansiverius2083]

SearXNG is like searx but with a more tolerable UI.

[@EricMurphyxyz]

Agreed, the UI is so much better

[@angusmacgyver]

Seems like pretty minor changes what I looked briefly.

[@KBMNVLpNdLumkstz]

@@angusmacgyver I tried both and searxng seems like a better choice for low end servers and devices. Also it's faster than searx.

[@gijshollebolle]

have people actually read the github repo of searx or am i the only user that actually cares about privacy and finding stuff on the web with a selfhosted searx engine? Is searx for me? Are you privacy conscious user? Then yes. In searx we decided to double down on being privacy respecting. We are picking engine changes from SearxNG, but we are not implementing engine detailed monitoring and not adding a new UI that relies on Javascript. If you are willing to give up some privacy respecting features, we encourage you to adopt SearxNG. Searx is targeted for privacy conscious users who run their instances locally, instead of using public instances.

[@garyjonjon]

the results are garbage. just type trump and the results are cnn, msnbc etc..... not the same as searx.

[@AdroSlice]

I'm not sure you mentioned this, but the main downside of SearX is that if you do self-host it, it gets less private the less people use it.

[@luketeam5]

Or you can use a public instance

[@Kokurorokuko]

It also is extremely slow and images there suck ass

[@gokublack8342]

Microsoft and Google: You call it personal data I call it...free real estate

[@OGPimpin]

My man, this is very very very much appreciated! I loathe google because the results have been absolute crap over the past few years, and I liked DDG, but Im kinda done using that as well

[@stickman-1]

Very, very helpful video. I miss the old days of Infoseek, Altavista, Lycos, Dogpile, Metasearch, Webcrawler, etc. But this gives me hope someone will come up with a new, true search engine.

[@theerrantwanderer]

Lycos and Webcrawler are still around- Webcrawler still mostly intact, but with a new logo that was created in 2018, and Lycos is owned by some company I do not really trust

[@stickman-1]

@@theerrantwanderer Thanks. I'll check them out.

[@DoomsayerStudios]

Dogpile was the shit.

[@stst77]

I remember when a yahoo search was precisely what you wanted and had endless pages of results. Then the results started getting more limiting so I went to Dog Pile and that made up for it. Then Dog Pile disappeared and I switched to Google until realizing how little privacy I had there so I found DDG but lately the search results there are just pathetic to put it bluntly. I am thinking of switching to brave but I don’t like that they use Google which limits its search results with a leftist agenda.

[@luisaguilar5343]

Dogpile is still around

[@-bazoona3654]

this video is sponsored by kirby

[@giachiz5510]

This is amazing. Thank s for putting this together. Any view on Kagi?

[@valerianmp]

Honestly Yandex ain't bad when all you want to do with it is reverse search some anime art to find the sauce. They tends to be much better than Google even

[@swagmoneybuge]

what kind of art in particular? 😂

[@ameron3136]

@@swagmoneybuge any of them 👍

[@bishnoi969]

@@swagmoneybugehentai

[@YourNormalProgram]

​@@swagmoneybuge"Hen Tie", I find it odd that people reverse search anime out of all things to find chicken themed ties.

[@mgord9518]

"anime art" "sauce" You can just say spank bank

[@Scoo]

Mojeek seems to return the most Jack Kirby results, this should bump it up one tier.

[@TheSast]

This man searches Kirby. This man is based. This man has one more subscriber.

[@EricMurphyxyz]

Agreed, I was literally obsessed with Kirby when I was a kid

[@Dara-wk5ty]

I use Startpage but only for web searches which I do 95% of the time It's quite eh when you wanna click on images, videos, news News is the worst because it won't give you anything most of the time So you're kinda forced to use another search engine just for the other tabs

[@EricMurphyxyz]

Yeah, they could definitely be better. For me, using different search engines for something like image searches isn't that big of an inconvenience though.

[@FengLengshun]

After DDG tanked my trust in it, I just moved to Brave. I honestly can't live without Bangs anymore at this point, it's just so much faster to be able to directly search the AUR or nixpkgs over navigating manually to the site or even using Google, and I'm glad to have a Bang search that's also attached to a... semi-usable search engine that's somewha more trustable than DDG (for now?). I still need to use Google sometimes, but if I'm just searching for Reddit post then Brave is usually fine (though lately I need to use Google more for that for their Cached Pages - I wish there's a Cached Pages and Proxy/Preview on Brave as well).

[@fisheatergaming]

I dual boot arch and nix currently oh

[@mytech6779]

DDG has bangs, but if you trust them it isn't super relevant.

[@GraveUypo]

ah, this video is a gift from the heavens. i was trying to figure this stuff out just the other day, but i don't even know that many search engines. ty

[@wannabedal-adx458]

Great info and great list. Between this list and your browser list I might start using Brave search only within a Firefox variant. I do kinda think Startpage and Swisscows are interesting. Honestly, not sure why you gave Whoogle such a high rating. I didn't here anything about their privacy policy or actions to support privacy.

[@juanpaulofricke1506]

its open source and self hosted, exactly the same privacy policy or actions to support privacy as searX

[@energeticgorilla]

how’s the experience been? i’m thinking of doing the same.

[@JohnSmith-vn8dm]

@@energeticgorillaI find Brave search to generally be pretty good. Not quite Google level but good enough for 95% of my searches. On rare occasions I do use the !g bang to get results from Google.

[@friendlyfire7861]

Brave turned out to be totally woke and more biased than Google, unfortunately.

[@juanpaulofricke1506]

@@friendlyfire7861 do you have some examples of why it is worse than google? It`s looking like there is no reliable search site :/

[@damunzy]

Google search results relevance have gotten worse recently (last few years). They might still be the best but Google from a few years ago was better

[@belstar1128]

Seems like these days you got to use a lot of search engines because you never know which will be best. non are as good as old google but a lot are on par with modern google .

[@theshadowking3198]

Bro it’s gotten so bad I especially noticed this when I was researching for a project I asked a question and they answered with an answer for a completely different answer

[@Holland1994D]

27:10 reminds me of the firewall my school tried. Almost everything useful was blocked so we were not even able to open some wikipedia pages because certain keywords. The firewall just lasted 1 week haha

[@LRM12o8]

Ah yes, when you can't research any information regarding the German "Staatsexamen", because your boomer high school teacher who volunteers as the school's system administrator on the side set up a "safe search" filter that blocks every query containing the letter sequence s-e-x 😂 Even though "Staatsexamen" is a combination of "des Staates", the genitve case of _ger_ "state" (noun) and "examen", from Latin for "examination", thus has nothing to do with sex(ual intercourse).

[@weridplusho]

Very accurate tier list from my own attempts. I've used, and liked, Qwant. It may have been Bing but it gave me nice results. Shame they wernt the way of DDG. I also tried Yandex. The problem is that it's very finicky at times - good for general results but not so good at anything else. Searx is the best, with Startpage a close second. Brave is aight, feels like DDG did back in the day, but I barely used it. Guess that's gonna change now. lol

[@ecnop9961]

Yeah, after using brave, duck duck go and qwant it was qwant that gave me the most reliable result, even though I was sometime forced to hop on google to get something too specific.

[@PCsSabotage]

Give a shot to swurl it's different and good. There's also kagi (a premium engine) which is stupid but they have a free trial. But if you want just a simple and secure search engine I suggest alohafind it's so good but not pretty looking

[@hughjass2534]

Strange notice, but KZbin actually didn't display the two replies this comment had at my time of posting. This is a commonality with Facebook in how it lists that replies exist but does not display them in the general UI. Currently using Brave for browsing.

[@DosonTheGreat]

Yandex is great for reverse image searching. I use it for nothing else. If saucenao can't find it, yandex usually can, or it can find something with which saucenao can work.

[@moke7658]

searXNG is my personal favorite. it’s the same as searx with a better UI, more support, and more public instances available

[@4NeonFun]

Thanks! I've been thinking of trying another search engine other than duck duck go or Google. I also really appreciate how searX is open source and a grassroots co-op alternative to having to rely on a massive corporation for search queries.

[@garyjonjon]

searxng results are trash. cnn, msnbc, nbc etc etc... totally different than searx. you've been had!

[@andrewhooper7603]

The only issue I see is simply searching for "kirby" to test doesn't seem that useful. Without some previous search history to help navigate what "kirby" you might be interested in, they're just going to give you everything Kirby. And now Kirby has reached semantic satiation.

[@MrEdrftgyuji]

I don't want search engines monitoring my search history. If I want something more specific, I would use a more specific search term.

[@andrewhooper7603]

@@MrEdrftgyuji that's fair. Just a trade off between convenience and privacy.

[@mytech6779]

Yeah, The video bagged on results that included very relevant results just because they weren't related to some childish pink blob. If I search for kirby I am not interested in 20 links to a pink blob, I want the link I saw to vaccum cleaners or to info about Jack Kirby.

[@4NeonFun]

This is valid and shows how unbiased the search engine is for not automatically making these assumptions. What may be considered a bug is actually a feature in uncovering our own biases. It may not be what we like but going for the completely unbiased route can be considered a flaw. This has unblocked some of my own personal qualms with anything other than Google, which is powerful since that's the one I've been using to get what I want and I've personally overlooked the privacy concerns with this since it would automatically tailor the results to what I was looking for which is biased in itself and I reckon that other users appreciate how intuitive this may feel and be ok with being treated as a product, but considering how website domains will pay to be the top result, this SEO function has really become skewed, especially in the last decade and primarily during the pandemic where clicks are especially important.

[@Aetohatir]

kinda crazy how yahoo isn't even mentioned anymore

[@Monkeymario.]

0:18 Google used to be the most accurate but it's not accurate anymore

[@joaoleite8451]

It's sad that Google really has an almost unshakeable monopoly on good search results. At least we can circumvent the tracking and surveillance, but it's hard to escape their grip

[@allesarfint]

My experience with Duck is literally the opposite, Google only shows me unrelated crap while Duck gets me actual useful stuff. Brave, I wont touch, not since the browser was found to add their own referral codes for crypto trading sites.

[@emil.steiner]

if i already know what i'm looking for duckduckgo is amazing. But if i'm exploring a topic the partially related results like in google are missing

[@nicolozss]

Agree with you on Brave. Since they were found putting refferal codes for crypto, I ditch them. I know for same people could seems a frivolous reason, but trust is the first thing. And, coincidentally, they disclose it after beeing discovered. Classic corporate move.

[@doommaker4000]

Wasn't DuckDuck also involved in some controversy? I'd rather trust the crypto company since I'm not interested in crypto at all

[@Is_kitten]

​@@doommaker4000yeah I think they were found out for not protecting your security at all

[@galaxybuzz6765]

​@@Is_kittenI think it was that they were allowing Microsoft track you

[@NerfedOnGod]

An Opera GX sponsor here would be legendary

[@smirkjuice]

Too bad that it's 1. Spyware, and 2. it's not an engine

[@alexnikolov]

Love the tier lists. Any chance you'd do one for linux distros? =D

[@EricMurphyxyz]

Good idea, maybe in the future!

[@jeffholmstrom8713]

Linux users are like vegans, lol

[@4NeonFun]

​@@EricMurphyxyz Since you've mentioned how AI could change the way we search things in a way that this information would be out of date, I'm curious of what you would have to say about the search engines/ browsers that are considered defunct and how these same tech advancements have made these fallen to the wayside. For example, Avant is a little known browser and engine that was ahead of its time with features that rivalled many others you have listed on your channel. I've used it over a decade ago for example for gaming as the community has noted that you can use it to glitch out game servers to gain more items using its single process and split screen. Avant was an OG when it came to antispyware/malware blocker with adblock as a base feature and it was much faster and less data intensive than any other option. There's a dedicated niche userbase and something like that has been really responsive with changes. Also, there's absolutely no risk of data leaks as it doesn't store data and it goes away when you close it. Some things like that might come off as terrible to the average user but when it comes to data security, you know that there won't be any accidents if someone else on a shared computer was to reopen the application. They've gone a long way and while it was only available on windows, considering that it's been around for decades and quit updating around the pandemic, Avant kinda has some nostalgia around it for me as a quirky option that isn't talked about a whole lot.

[@giorgosygros1757]

ecosia has fixed most of the privacy issues you mentioned you gotta give it another chance or review it, i pretty much agree with everything else tho

[@skayland]

4 months have passed and no, AI has not revolutionized searching.

[@leonfa259]

It kind of has

[@LRM12o8]

Eight months have passed and it definitely still hasn't!

[@Korobka737_]

11 months later and now i know that i need to eat at least one rock a day

[@chainerdets]

1 year and women need to smoke during their pregnancy

[@andreizhukow9905]

Yandex whole ecosystem is superior to other giants, simple as that. Search is extremely accurate, image search is extremely usable(compared to google and alike), reverse image search - i guess, well, it is very good too, i just don't use it often. I am biased, cuz im russian, but i really can't daily drive anything else, Yandex is just better at everything(except privacy).

[@Sunlight91]

I think I try mojeek. Often my search results are littered with corporate content. Nearly every word in the English language is part of a movie or song title.

[@theshadowking3198]

Google has that too it’s so annoying you’ll search up a word and some random c list artist made a song using that name

[@Monkeymario.]

16:02 2-in-1 Cordless Vacuum Cleaner in "kirby" search results XD

[@StrikerEureka85]

i used to be one of those yandex simps until brave came along. as you said, they definitely keep track of your info but I didn't mind since they're halfway across the world. they do have a good search engine, online docs, storage, and email service and I've always liked their clean interface. they also have a decent chromium-based browser too, which i used for a few years.

[@Yes-uf2je]

Yandex? Non Russians use that 💩?

[@patrickday4206]

So we basically have Google and bing with flavors

[@mytech6779]

I find DDG results better than google in most cases, aside from google-scholar searches but that those aren't really a general web search. Of course DDG isn't really open source which means trust is inherently limited, but good enough for practical use and doesn't feed the 800pound gorilla.

[@КонстантинАктыбаев]

I feel sorry for yandex, because it used to be a very good company with a lot of bright minds, before the government got its vile paws on it. Their services are of very good quality, even compared to big american corporations. Prices for paid services are also very very moderate compared to american. Probably because russians are not that wealthy. And their reverse image search has absolutely no competition. I didn't use their regular search much, but any time i need to search an image i go to yandex

[@alexhauser5043]

Every large, national corporation is in bed with its government. Why would you - as a westerner - care whether the KGB monitors Yandex searches? No Russian court can prosecute you, and Russian intelligence won't rat you out to your own government.

[@egor_dmitrievich.8351]

Подписываюсь под каждым словом

[@LOogt]

27:29 "violent or even pornographic content is already blocked here in advance... so for most people this probably isn't going to be for you" 😆

[@friendlyfire7861]

Ya that had me spitting milk out through my nose.

[@BigFatSeal10]

Idk, if you are so obsessed over privacy you guys probably have something worth hiding… You people obsessed with privacy probably have cp or something on your hds lets be honest, I don’t trust yall

[@Lohlund]

Can you do an updated tier list for 2024? I'm curious if something changed. Brave search improved a lot in the last year from what i've heard.

[@dedfish2945]

If you dont care enough about privacy or bias to sacrifice usability then thats up to you, but i'd rather not support google or bing if i have a choice. I used gigablast before it shut down a few months ago and it had the same issues as mojeek (which im using now). GB was the only search engine i know of to be completely open source.

[@friendlyfire7861]

Mojeek has good uses and I hope it keeps improving.

[@mockemperor953]

I can't believe you forgot to include the grandma search engine ask jeeves

[@sethbessinger2025]

Awesome list! When you were on Metager, I noticed the Warren County Public Library. I actually live in Bowling Green. Anyway, awesome job! Hope your channel grows!

[@ChordRunner]

it needs to be said that it's not the ranking focusing on privacy, but on search relusts quality.

[@Dragonfire511]

Yandex is pretty good for *whispering* pirated software search.

[@DoomsayerStudios]

Russians are the best at pirating shit, lol. Used to download so many mp3s from a Russian site...

[@mikejfranklin7000]

You've done the research (extensively!) so we don't have to. Thank you so much.

[@Somerled_Pox]

SearX is incredibly based indeed

[@zhihao1123]

I recently discovered your channel and liked your content keep it up! 🥳

[@seanalexander3436]

I prefer the silly little duck tbh

[@Pappalardium]

Legend, I didn't know there was so many options for search engines.

[@user-tw2kr6hg4r]

Brave sadly started to redirect image searches to google about a week ago, which basically made it unusable for my needs.

[@EricMurphyxyz]

Same, that was a big disappointment for me too. I've been using DDG images and Searx's image search but they're not that great

[@user-tw2kr6hg4r]

@doomposter at least you didn't have to visit bing for them

[@debugdan_]

Yahoo should have been included. Just because it uses a bing frontend doesn’t mean anything because you included other engines that use bing as a front end

[@Exile51]

Where's Presearch? That's a privacy-based search engine too.

[@Masta_E]

What distro are you using and what's the 1-8 number thing in your panel? Thanks for the great content

[@abbynormal7036]

I love this review, I now tend to put Brave Search above your top choice, but you reasoning makes it work for you... I also like the family safe searches offered by a few that you didn't seem keen on... I also fully agree that Google Bing are bias to the left (though you didn't say which direction, I will)... Unfortunately because certain search engines are "fed" info from Bing/Google you will find trying to find both sides of a story nearly impossible, I hope Brave doesn't navigate the same as Google/Bing... Brave/Startpage top my lists, but I might give SearX a try now too.

[@friendlyfire7861]

I used Brave for a long time but finay realized it is even more biased than Google. Great privacy, crap results for anything even slightly political.

[@Guarrow]

Brave Browser really does not deserve more than « decent » I think. It's not as bad as Qwant, search-wise. But damn, it's just not as good as Startpage. It's really not. I work in IT and sometimes searching for stuff has been painful. It's very very fine for most use I think, but when you need more it just doesn't deliver. Startpage have been serving me for years. Tried Brave for months but came back on Startpage.

[@friendlyfire7861]

Agree, and it's more biased than Google for anything slightly controversial. I got frustrated enough I said bye after using it a long time. Just look up who is jn charge and you'll lose a lot of confidence in the results although the privacy is great, which is why the browser is a decent choice. But not the search.

[@docilelikewintercatfish]

Been using Brave for years. By far the most versatile engine ever made. Love everything about it

[@Sunlight91]

For years? Brave search isn't that old.

[@docilelikewintercatfish]

@@Sunlight91 was I on a alternate universe for 3 years?

[@Flairis]

@@docilelikewintercatfishbro was living in a f different timeline 💀

[@friendlyfire7861]

It's woke.

[@4NeonFun]

​@@friendlyfire7861 Oh no! The lion is aware of how marginalized communities are still being treated, how terrible!! /S

[@excancerpoik]

brave is so underrated not just the search engine idk much about it but the browser is really good

[@friendlyfire7861]

I think the search engine turned out to be more biased than Google.

[@kawaiihikari0]

By the way Bing has become much better with Copilot integrated inside. It’s pretty much same or better than Google search engine. Google has been slipping for the first time in a while

[@GuiSmith]

I think Google’s been slipping for half a decade at least. The reason nobody, including Google itself, ever noticed was because it was so far ahead of the competition already and all search engines were in need of some improvements. Finally some competition has snuck up from behind while Google has been faltering. All their recent degradations to their browser and search have probably been bandaids to avoid confronting the writing on the wall, but they have already lost their exclusive foothold in search power. It’s only a matter of time before it gets worse.

[@kawaiihikari0]

@@GuiSmith I very much agree I personally use MS 365 and with MS edge so much better I love the extra features. How good Bing is (much better than Google search engine) and literally has ChatGPT 4 (Bing chat) and dalle 3 built in which I use everyday. And it’s free. Bing is very good now it’s not the same search engine even 3 years ago. Also no adds you don’t have to scroll down just to find a non add website

[@savage5757]

8:44 great consolation. the problem is not that I can't find the information, it's just that the search engine is bad. PS to some extent, this is funny, but I didn't think before that a search engine could really be bad.

[@JJ-un8do]

All I want to know is why my jar of jif peanut butter is extra watery than normal. Everything that comes up is people with the same answers, either saying it doesn’t have hydrogenated oil (it does) or its natural (it isnt) its impossible to find any other search results so I guess Ill have to find out if this peanut butter is bad by fucking dying 😃

[@minhajurrahman-ih1bk]

A like for your hard work and 33 minutes long video

[@EricMurphyxyz]

Thanks, these long videos take a lot of work!

[@madthumbs1564]

Yeah, these tier lists can be very subjective and he prioritizes things that I wouldn't like privacy. I really appreciate that he not only is aware of the politics of these SEs, but also puts some stress into alerting us to them. I would have liked to see Yandex get up there as I'm far more concerned about the civil unrest that some are behind than what a foreign entity will do with aggregate data on me. Also SearX still sucks *tried it again after this video.

[@BrianGlaze]

The thing that makes it hard to stop using the Google search engine is the search operators.

[@andbenn]

Add Neeva to your next list. Great for tech searches. I'd guess you'd at least put it decent, maybe the excellent tier.

[@EricMurphyxyz]

Will check it out!

[@PhilipStomp]

@Dimguru also a subscription based search engine.

[@wolfenstein6676]

Noob question, Eric, but how did you get that search bar in the middle of 'Brave'? 7:10 . I have to use the address bar, which is quite annoying when you've been used to 'Firefox'.

[@nightmarerex2035]

i heard there was other decent alternatives better than duckduckgo that is apprently starting to go rogue.

[@TuTAH_1]

What I don't like from most search engines is that they have fixed pixels-defined width of the results, what looks like a very narrow column with a lot of empty space on high resolution screens.

[@JensenSarpy]

Excellent video and good work on the tier list and I agree with the rankings!

[@harrydparkes]

I don't agree that duckduckgo results are useless, I've been using it as my primary engine for over three years and it's been all i've needed

[@friendlyfire7861]

It's good but you have to keep your eye on it and compare with other engines.

[@shadowseek27]

Hey wheres web crawler at??? Lmao

[@polymorphesquirrel]

I'd bump stargpage to based, because google is peerless if you search not by literal term, but by description. Google's AI is doing a very good job at *understanding* what you are asking, and results include also sources which are based on synonyms and, in general, other wording. I found that Brave doesn't even compare.

[@Mr.Mister96]

StartPage doesn't receive the original search results from Google , they receive watered down results especially on niche and/or controversial topics

[@thayenburtenshaw557]

Have you tried out You? It's a really cool search engine that seems to be attempting to be a privacy oriented Bing/DuckDuckGo hybrid. Still in it's early stages so I don't know how private it is/will go but if it sticks to it's claims and improves it's technology it feels like it could be a defacto alternative to Google or Bing.

[@aprilmauricio9975]

You is underrated but I also like it. It even has integrated GPT on it which is pretty similar to Bing's AI and has a neat UI

[@JJ-un8do]

Why do so many search engines use bing when its literally memed on for how horrible it is

[@corb805]

​@@JJ-un8doit is probably a cheaper option to pull from compared to Google

[@someoneelse4811]

​@@JJ-un8doI assume Microsoft is more lenient about frontends, so they can indirectly compete with Google.

[@friendlyfire7861]

​@@JJ-un8doIt's not that bad anymore, less biased than Google. But I avoid it because of the telemetry. And their AI has been lobotomized. It's lied to me on several occasions.

[@daemon1143]

Nice work, but damn that's a dismal array of bing & google front ends. No wonder folk think the net has gotten stale.

[@GnomeEU]

Yandex sounds interesting tho when Google tries to censor all the results

[@tri99er_]

Yandex just censors other search results.

[@stst77]

Something i hate about ddg lately is the majority of my top search results are YT videos. If i wanted a YT video I would search yt myself. I don’t need a search engine for that! Some things i want to see in black and white not hear an intro, commentary, music, etc. If I want a recipe i want to quickly go to it and that’s it. I don’t want a 30 + minute cooking video with someone talking. I want to read it. YT used to not be in the search results and I prefer it that way.

[@claudiusvier]

I’d love to hear your opinion on Kagi.

[@EricMurphyxyz]

I'm too poor to pay for a search engine. But in all seriousness, it looks interesting and I want to try it out some time

[@Dara-wk5ty]

I rather get private ads then pay 25 dollars per month for a search engine The 10 dollar pack only includes 700 searches in a month which isn't enough for me

[@u9vata]

I always forget what the "chinese yandex" is, but should be mentioned. Also why there are no yandex-frontends with based qualities like searxNG (or maybe it does support it?) I honestly care much more for the bias than for the collected information so for that reason I would totally put yandex one tier above the bottom - after all you put that green-eco-bullshit there which basically sends all private stuff but capitalizes on the planting trees thing. I have no idea how to check if those trees got planted and also have no idea where the money for it is coming from (but sounds suspicious like nothing else - totally prefer literally putin viewing my messages instead of that shady thing as at least you know what to expect). Self-hosting is key but tricky: If you self-host but only you are using the self hosted instance that might just as well mean you are tracked by the original service... These only work if the instance is shared and its hard to tell who search for what...

[@EricMurphyxyz]

Searx used to proxy Yandex but they made changes making it impossible to use their search with a front-end. I agree, it's probably the best unbiased search engine but it didn't feel right putting it any higher

[@temari2860]

Ecosia makes money through ads of course, as any other search engine including privacy respecting ones. You can read about how to check whether they actually invest in trees on their FAQ. Yandex is very biased, just not towards the same western bias that Google and Bing are. It will and it does censor things actively.

[@friendlyfire7861]

Yes,I wonder if you can verify what they count as a planted tree. I'm guessing it's totally arbitrary.

[@BeefyBoy909]

what linux distro are you using in this video? it looks super cool

[@hanhthien2948]

its Arch btw

[@VirtualGab]

Where is yahoo

[@LRM12o8]

Who the F cares about Yahoo in 2024? That shit's been dead for decades! 😂

[@SoopCanSam-EthoPlaylists]

Lol he mentions it in the video

[@fattony9227]

Yahoo is pure crap.

[@qupufu]

yahoo doesn't exist 🤷‍♂️

[@AlgAlgorithm]

Its under the surveillance tier, covered up by his facecam

[@TheSussiestGuy]

The problem is mainly because an avg blogger/news company/platform will always upload their site on a well known search engine (bing/google) so they will be also well known, an avg person doesn't care about privacy, they are always like idgaf just hit that accept button, but basically there is no privacy if you are online, at least trackings and others can be lowered but it is what it is, like did you know that if you are in usa or using any usa related thing you are constantly monitored from FBI or CIA.

[@klebleonard]

Yandex is good if you speak Russian and you want to search for pirated content. All browsers have their own usecases so, try to take advantage of all or most of them.

[@belnonaodh1520]

I love this video! Regarding Yandex, even if the people who simp for it do just want something non-American, Mojeek is British, Ecosia is German, and Qwant is French, and they're all more privacy-conscious than Yandex

[@chimagamer4157]

if it has to do with political "sensitive" stuff, yandex can be a good alternative to google, that is why people like it, because it is like google, while not being google.

[@fargoth391]

​@@chimagamer4157 yeah but it loves showing you russian state media stuff, not much better...

[@PhobosTK]

@@fargoth391It's a russian search engine made for russians living in russia and the CIS at large. It's only normal that it'll show their media first. It's the same thing that happens with google, bind and baidu

[@rullebullerdmule6703]

My friend, you literally mentioned three other NATO countries that are run by allied western intelligence services in favor of the same military industrial complex that has been waging wars against poor nations around the world, for power, profit and to plunder natural resources since centuries back. Oh and btw here's a fun fact, all three (Great Britain, Germany and France,) have attacked and attempted to invade Russia on separate occasions in history. I'm not simping for any search engine, or country for that matter, but I do mind when I'm being actively conditioned into accepting certain geopolitical narratives stripped out of historical context. Often crucial context that our western search engines actively hide because propaganda works better on ignorant minds. Of course all sides seems to curate, censor and push their propaganda in their respectively controlled search engines, hence it's crucial to be able to read information, for example about geopolitical conflicts from all kinds of sources with different perspectives, especially in these times of gaslighting and propaganda from everywhere we look, just to get a little more grip of what actually is going on. So I personally will keep on using 3-5 different search engines, including Yandex when I feel it's necessary for my geopolitical research. So there's that.. /🖖👽✨️

[@belnonaodh1520]

@@rullebullerdmule6703 Don't politically read too much into it - the video mentioned Yandex wasn't American but didn't mention the same for Mojeek, Qwant, etc. I thought it would be relevant to mention that there are other non-American search engines.