Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#31

Post by chatmasta » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 9:36 AM UTC

cpmouter wrote: post #24

pcr0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I'd like that to be true, I end up having to use !g in half my searches. It does okay at keyword matching, but can't infer what I'm actually looking for, falls short at finding obscure/niche topics and its pageload speeds are frustrating compared to Google.

DDG is super super bad. I don't know why people recommend it at all. Now that you mentioned !g I remembered all my DDG experiments... 1) change my default search engine to DDG, 2) use it for some time, 3) use !g in half of my searches, 4) use !g in all of my searches, 5) say "fuck it" and switch back to google

This rings so true. I’m currently at #4. :( I really tried for six months... but at this point can’t remember the time I didn’t add !g.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#32

Post by Zeebrommer » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

pcr0 wrote: post #15

cup-of-tea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make DuckDuckGo your default search engine now. Just do it. You won't miss Google.

As much as I'd like that to be true, I end up having to use !g in half my searches. It does okay at keyword matching, but can't infer what I'm actually looking for, falls short at finding obscure/niche topics and its pageload speeds are frustrating compared to Google.

I love ddg exactly because of the bangs! I make queries like !wiki (wikipedia), !gm (maps), !gi (images), !imdb, !yt, !gsc (scholar) directly from the address bar all day.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#33

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 9:38 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #5

I often find that Google sends me to scam sites like Elsevier instead of Library Genesis or TPB when what I am searching for can be found there. Is there a better search engine out there that solves this problem?

beside the ddg suggestion, there's https://unpaywall.org

an extention that tries to find free legal hosted version of publications when you're reading, say a springer page (you'll see a green icon on your screen right's side).

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#34

Post by ikt » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 9:40 AM UTC

cpmouter wrote: post #24

pcr0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I'd like that to be true, I end up having to use !g in half my searches. It does okay at keyword matching, but can't infer what I'm actually looking for, falls short at finding obscure/niche topics and its pageload speeds are frustrating compared to Google.

DDG is super super bad. I don't know why people recommend it at all. Now that you mentioned !g I remembered all my DDG experiments... 1) change my default search engine to DDG, 2) use it for some time, 3) use !g in half of my searches, 4) use !g in all of my searches, 5) say "fuck it" and switch back to google

I switched very early on and had the same issue however it has improved a lot for me lately. I use Google for maybe 1 out of 100 searches I do now, a lot of those 1 in 100 are maps related.

I'd recommend giving it another try if you haven't recently.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#35

Post by ItsMe000001 » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 9:42 AM UTC

AngryData wrote: post #7

Google has been trash for pirate content for awhile now. 9/10 sites it does show are fake and straight up malicious with like 50 different things trying to hijack your browser and make you install shit. Not that real pirate sites are exactly safe, but at least they actually provide what people are looking for.

I run all such queries in a dedicated Linux VM so that I visit any "strange" websites only in that VM. I use a browser not connected to my (sync) account and don't login to any of my usual websites. uBlock Origin with all kinds of lists enabled is on, uMatrix is installed but it was too much of a hassle so it remains disabled.

I hope my feeling of relative safety is justified, but I'm not a security expert(?).

PS: Before anyone gets upset that I use such services, I'm not a heavy "pirate" by any measure. When I needed it I purchased software like Adobe Creative Suite or Jetbrain IDE licenses without hesitation. I only use it for things I don't really need and only use once, such as checking out a TV series (I very, very rarely watch anything, relying on specific Youtube and Twitch content instead, leaving two - one came with the apartment rent, one with the Internet - cable TV subscriptions unused).

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#36

Post by icebraining » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 9:42 AM UTC

terminalcommand wrote: post #22

I seriously think we need torrent trackers solely residing on ipfs. The popular trackers (such as ptb) remove content very easily. It is getting really hard to find tv shows on the net. What we need is a completely anonymous distributed solution. We won't need google then.

https://www.tribler.org/, which is developed by a not-for-profit research group supported by EU and Dutch research funding, does distributed torrent search without any central server. It's been around for almost a decade now.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#37

Post by oldcynic » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 9:48 AM UTC

quikoa wrote: post #9

cup-of-tea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make DuckDuckGo your default search engine now. Just do it. You won't miss Google.

What I miss with DDG is better date ranges. Filtering by date can help a lot in narrowing down what you want to get.

I dislike the "last month", "last six months" way of doing ranges oh so much.

Where are the 2 years or older, 4 years or older options at the other end of the scale or let me specify two actual dates.

Sadly I often need to search for older content - DDG are least worst, but they're all poor to hopeless at it.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#38

Post by oelmekki » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 9:53 AM UTC

pcr0 wrote: post #15

cup-of-tea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make DuckDuckGo your default search engine now. Just do it. You won't miss Google.

As much as I'd like that to be true, I end up having to use !g in half my searches. It does okay at keyword matching, but can't infer what I'm actually looking for, falls short at finding obscure/niche topics and its pageload speeds are frustrating compared to Google.

Did you try it recently?

This was my usual experience as well. But a few months ago, I started using tor-browser for laptop and orfox browser for mobile (equivalent of tor-browser, but for android) as my main browsers and couldn't use google search with them (search blocks tor).

I started using using ddg for almost everything and was surprised how good it was. I could launch firefox to use google, but almost never did it (except to use apps from G suite). I wonder also if in my latest previous attempts, I wasn't most of the time using "!g" because I wasn't trusting ddg results.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#39

Post by jdeca568 » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 9:58 AM UTC

pcr0 wrote: post #15

cup-of-tea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make DuckDuckGo your default search engine now. Just do it. You won't miss Google.

As much as I'd like that to be true, I end up having to use !g in half my searches. It does okay at keyword matching, but can't infer what I'm actually looking for, falls short at finding obscure/niche topics and its pageload speeds are frustrating compared to Google.

I had the same problem with an almost automatic !g.

A while back i decided to put more effort and try to survive with !so, !gh, !hn, !r, !w, and a couple more depending on the context.

DDG may not give exact results in less than a second, but i believe that blindly giving priority to the fastest result is a critical issue, in many areas.

For the very niche topics, i basically maintain myself lists of sites.

I still use !g as fallback or when i'm too lazy. And also for pentest reconnaissance, i have a hard time seeing how to do it without Google honestly (which is scary).

Page load of DDG is not quite good indeed, but i don't mind let it a few seconds.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#40

Post by hetspookjee » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 9:59 AM UTC

pcr0 wrote: post #15

cup-of-tea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make DuckDuckGo your default search engine now. Just do it. You won't miss Google.

As much as I'd like that to be true, I end up having to use !g in half my searches. It does okay at keyword matching, but can't infer what I'm actually looking for, falls short at finding obscure/niche topics and its pageload speeds are frustrating compared to Google.

I use it by default and wind up using !g half the time as well. Though often DDG comes up with results I couldn't even dreamed of. As for today I was looking for the elevation of the nurburgring (in light of the track record and the insane performance of the 919 on the uphill section) and I ended up on this brilliant website with the entire height maps: https://veloviewer.com/segment/5539685

On the phone I switched back to google as default as inserting the !g was a horrible experience to go through every time I wanted to look something up quickly.