this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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Has Qwant improved recently? (i.postimg.cc)
submitted 1 week ago by Blaze@feddit.nl to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
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[โ€“] cabbage@piefed.social 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

I'm generally pretty happy with the results in Qwant.

The main thing I miss at this point is really support for !bangs. I use them all the time in DuckDuckGo, to search directly in !scholar or !wiki. Especially in Qwant there are some features missing, so if I for example want to be lazy and use the search bar as a calculator it would be nice to be able to search for !ddg 2+2.

But that's a minor criticism. For the most part it's a great tool, and I look forward to where they go with their own indexes.

Edit: Also, what's up with this graphic suggesting search engines (if you can call them that) as alternatives to Google Chrome.

[โ€“] snuggledick@lemm.ee 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

In Firefox (other browsers probably as well) you can add custom keywords for searches. For example visit Wikipedia, right click the search field and pick "add keyword" from the menu. As keyword enter "!wiki" or whatever you want and from now on you can just type "!wiki whatever" in the URL bar, no need to take the detour to duckduckgo or some other search engine.

[โ€“] cabbage@piefed.social 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks!! I should have done that ages ago!

[โ€“] klu9@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

Me too! Just added:

  • !w for Wikipedia
  • !wt for Wiktionary
  • !wm for Wikimedia Commons
  • !mar for Marginalia-Search
  • !mo for Mojeek

Will probably think of a few more over the next few weeks.

[โ€“] pascal_f@infosec.exchange 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

@snuggledick
I've shortened it to "w" wikipedia, "g" Google, "d" duckduck, "a" amazon. Also possible with "1","2",...

Typing " w Fediverse" will directly open wikipedia with the article for "Fediverse".

Even when you have abandoned the pages above it will work with your free pages too.

@cabbage

[โ€“] SkavarSharraddas@gehirneimer.de 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

At least desktop Firefox has something similar. Add a bookmark for e.g. "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s" with the keyword "wiki", then when you type "wiki qwant" into the address bar you'll get the Wikipedia page.

I guess it's easier if you don't have to bookmark each search first, but at least for sites you search often I don't see the need for search engine provided bangs.

edit: As mentioned in another comment, there's a newer way where you just right-click a search box and go to "add keyword".

[โ€“] cabbage@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I knew about this in theory, but I used DuckDuckGo for a long time and got too spoiled to a point where it didn't occur to me to just set it up myself.

Thank you for connecting the dots for me, I'll set ut up right away.

[โ€“] Kyouki@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Like the other guys, thank you for this revelation!

[โ€“] calisti@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 week ago

Why does this sharepic look like the Windows XP installer?

[โ€“] Blaze@feddit.nl 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Giving it a try at the moment, doesn't seem too bad

[โ€“] Pirata@lemm.ee 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Qwant is great. Very relevant results and not a lot of ads (if any), also private-focused and looks modern.

I tried Ecosia but it wasn't my style (a bit clunky) although their mission is absolutely respectable and worthwhile.

Qwant is is now my main search engine.

[โ€“] Libb@jlai.lu 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It still uses Bing (Microsoft) as its backend, as far as I can tell. I know they want to partner with Ecosia to build something less... USA-dependent but I doubt that will happen overnight.

[โ€“] plenipotentprotogod@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Huh, I was under the impression that they used their own index. I just did a quick search found a blog post they publisted back in 2023. Here are some relevant excerpts:

At the time of publication, Qwant has in its servers 20 billion indexed web pages

Qwant uses Bing to supplement search results on which we do not have sufficient relevance, and on images where storage capacities are very important. On the rest, the main SEO logics are often the same which explains why you often find the same search results, ranked slightly differently according to the weight given to one or the other.

Of course, that's the company pushing their own preferred narrative, so take it with a grain of salt. But assuming it's not an outright lie, then they're definitely more independent than a lot of other search engines.

[โ€“] Blaze@feddit.nl 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Is there a better alternative? Seems like all the alternative search engine rely on Bing or Google anyway

[โ€“] Libb@jlai.lu 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)
  • Full EU search (not just a front-end): no idea.
  • EU front-end to US search engines, I would suggest Startpage as well as Qwant, I mean.
  • Independant and ad-free tracking-free innovative search engine but made in USA and also not free: Kagi. It's the one I've been using for almost two years, next to Qwant and to Startpage ;)
[โ€“] Blaze@feddit.nl 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As stated in another comment

Startpage is owned by System1, an American Internet advertising company.

[โ€“] Libb@jlai.lu 2 points 1 week ago

I did not know that. Thx!

[โ€“] cabbage@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Mojeek is probably the closest thing right now to a normal-looking search engine that is completely independent from Google and Bing. UK based.

[โ€“] Blaze@feddit.nl 1 points 1 week ago

Thank you

[โ€“] cabbage@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

They'll start with the German and French web, so if you're searching in English you'll probably have to wait for a while indeed.

[โ€“] nuko147@lemm.ee 5 points 1 week ago

I miss the time limits. They only have for last day, week and month. I used a lot the last year or 2 past years (they have custom date table) like Google has, and i go back to DuckDuckGo when i need more recent information but not that limited of one month.

[โ€“] HeartyOfGlass@lemm.ee 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Question for the Ecosia fans in the audience - The "we plant trees with ad revenue" is pretty cool, but they're just a front end for Google (or Bing), yeah?

If so, isn't their whole "we're green" thing misleading? Does it really support EU interests if the backend is still US?

[โ€“] neons@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They and Qwant are working together to create their own index

[โ€“] HeartyOfGlass@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago

Hey, that's cool! I hope they can keep up the environmental message as they wean off Google/MS. Have they given a timeframe on when they hope to implement it? Seems like a huge task.

[โ€“] Pirata@lemm.ee 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not exactly misleading since they do donate money to plant trees, that's the only claim they make.

Yes, they use Google/Bing frontend, but they have also shown interest in changing by teaming up with Qwant to build an EU-based indexer.

I don't use Ecosia BTW, I use Qwant, but I'm trying to be fair here.

[โ€“] HeartyOfGlass@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

That's a fair point, "misleading" might've been a poor choice of words, but - one of the points on their page reads

"Our solar panels produce enough energy to power your searches twice over, meaning more renewables (and fewer fossil fuels) in the energy grid."

So fair enough, they're offsetting enough to power the connection from their users to Google/MS; I just thought this quote (and their home page in general) glossed over their reliance on those 3rd parties to "do the dirty work", so to speak.

[โ€“] Pirata@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I understand your view. It's just, I don't see what other choice they have/had.

Search engine backends are remarkably scarce, and very expensive to run. And if you're trying to build a front-end search engine today, you're pretty much limited to:

  • Google (US)
  • Bing (US)
  • Baidu (China)
  • Sogou (China)
  • Mojeek (UK)
  • Yandex (Russia)

Between these choices, and before the US decided to become a fascist state, realistically which of these engines made more sense to pick? Being honest. US tech has always been seen as trustworthy and the golden standard for all things tech, until very recently.

Sure, they could also use metasearch engines, but those are remarkably consumer-UNfriendly and would require tweaking beyond the capabilities of the common tech company.

The only thing I cannot explain here is why they didn't use Mojeek as their backend, and here we can only speculate..

Maybe it would have made Ecosia financially inviable if they had to pay for their API. Maybe they were concerned Mojeek's finances were too uninspiring compared to the colossal capacities that Google/Microsoft have.

Or maybe they thought people didn't want to have a radically different experience in results from what they are used to, and so decided to basically just give these two platforms a green makeover and promise to plant some trees. I don't know.

My point is, I wouldn't necessarily hold it against them. If anything, I am glad they agreed to join forces with Qwant in building a true EU-based search engine. Its sad that it took us so long to realise we need the basic infrastructure that other big economies have, but I suppose better late than ever.

I'm optimistic.

[โ€“] HeartyOfGlass@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago

I share your optimism. I'd love to see Ecosia + Qwant (or whoever, really) succeed.

[โ€“] SnowChickenFlake@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

Fhat about Mojeek? Is Mojeek working well?

[โ€“] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Any reason I should choose Qwant over Duckduckgo? DDG having bangs and Qwant being not hosted in the US means I see them as about equal. So I wonโ€™t bother changing. Anything else Iโ€™m missing that Qwant beats DDG in that might make it worth changing.

(Iโ€™m definitely gonna change if the index thing works out)

[โ€“] state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Qwant is building their own index, while DDG is using Bing's (Microsoft) index. I haven't tried Qwant yet, but I guess that would make a noticeable difference.

[โ€“] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah. I mentioned that in my comment at the bottom.

[โ€“] 31ank@ani.social 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I mainly use Startpage, also a ~~european~~ search engine (like qwant it uses microsoft/google search in the backend)

Edit: as nuko pointed out: they are owned by an american company

[โ€“] nuko147@lemm.ee 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Startpage is owned by System1, an American Internet advertising company.

[โ€“] 31ank@ani.social 2 points 1 week ago

Pain didnt knew that, guess I'm switching back to Qwant, thanks for the info!