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Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

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

#61

Post by vasco »

raverbashing wrote: post #51
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.

Weird things that DDG does: - No geo prioritization. If I'm searching for things in (city I'm current in) I don't care for sites from companies located in (city in the US/Canada with the same name). - You write "X in Y" (generic example) and autocomplete tries to "fix it with "Z in Y" thanks but I really mean "X in Y". Or sometimes it tries to fix it with even more unrelated things (though sometimes it makes sense).

Google does the same. Search for Warsaw while in Poland, yet use english search words. Most results will come up for things in Warsaw, Indiana. Including pages which google has tagged with "Warsaw, Indiana" so they clearly know that's where the results are coming from.

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

#62

Post by PostOnce »

raverbashing wrote: post #55
PostOnce wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They specifically advertise that they don't lock you into a filter bubble. A geo-bubble is a filter bubble.

Not necessarily A filter bubble is building a story of previous searches to get more relevant results. So the first time you search 'Python' on Google with no history it might prioritize snakes or the computer language, but after some clicks it will know better how to prioritize Now, DDG correctly detects the country I'm in, but even with that set the results are weird and not always relevant.

Filters come in various forms, search history, language, location, OS, account-based history, etc.

Filtering my results based on my location is still a filter bubble. Filtering it based on anything, and not just showing me exactly the same results as everyone else who searched the same query is the definition of a filter bubble.

People who don't want to be bubbled use DDG. It's a big part of the reason it exists, and you want that changed. What you actually want is another search engine, which is probably Google since they have the most functional (in the sense of utility derived by the end user) filter bubbles.

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

#63

Post by atacama »

novaRom wrote: post #60

On any new device I normally do the same thing each time: 1) Install Firefox Nightly 2) Install uBlock Origin add-on 3) Enable Duck Duck Go as default search engine 4) Enjoy I am still looking for a good replacement for Gmail.

gmail has been easy for me. Do you absolutely need the (nice I admit) web ui? I thought I did until I completely switch to using mails clients (mail on macOS and iPhone). I don't miss gmail at all! I realise how long it took to check my email before. I'm using Mailbox.org btw. Cheap, lots of aliases, exchange server etc ... I switched 10 months ago and I don't regret.

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

#64

Post by IloveHN84 »

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.

That's depending on what you search. In my searches as developer, I do less than 5% of my searches with the !g

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

#65

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

vasco wrote: post #61
raverbashing wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird things that DDG does: - No geo prioritization. If I'm searching for things in (city I'm current in) I don't care for sites from companies located in (city in the US/Canada with the same name). - You write "X in Y" (generic example) and autocomplete tries to "fix it with "Z in Y" thanks but I really mean "X in Y". Or sometimes it tries to fix it with even more unrelated things (though sometimes it makes sense).

Google does the same. Search for Warsaw while in Poland, yet use english search words. Most results will come up for things in Warsaw, Indiana. Including pages which google has tagged with "Warsaw, Indiana" so they clearly know that's where the results are coming from.

Same in Sweden. If you want to know what channels football matches are airing on here the following searches yield entirely different results:

Fotbolls vm

Football World Cup

The former gives you the correct site with the channels listed as the first answer but the second one doesn’t even have the channels on the first page.

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

#66

Post by josefresco »

I searched for "nba finals game 1 replay" and the like during the finals and was only presented with pirate options. There was no legal/legit way to view or purchase these games - and Google was ranking pirate sites all over the first page. I wonder if this has changed.

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

#67

Post by FabHK »

weavie wrote: post #58
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.

I hardly ever find I need to use !g. I wonder what we are doing/searching for differently.

Same here. And I miss the bangs (!w, !i, !a, !yt, !wv etc.) when I'm on a non-DDG search engine.

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

#68

Post by terramex »

vasco wrote: post #61
raverbashing wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird things that DDG does: - No geo prioritization. If I'm searching for things in (city I'm current in) I don't care for sites from companies located in (city in the US/Canada with the same name). - You write "X in Y" (generic example) and autocomplete tries to "fix it with "Z in Y" thanks but I really mean "X in Y". Or sometimes it tries to fix it with even more unrelated things (though sometimes it makes sense).

Google does the same. Search for Warsaw while in Poland, yet use english search words. Most results will come up for things in Warsaw, Indiana. Including pages which google has tagged with "Warsaw, Indiana" so they clearly know that's where the results are coming from.

I'm from Poland and I just searched for 'Warsaw', 'Warsaw car rental' and 'Warsaw law office' using incognito mode and google.com and all of the results were for Warsaw, Poland.

It also detected that I'm in Poland and asked me if I want to switch to polish Google and filter results in polish language.

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

#69

Post by josefresco »

atacama wrote: post #63
novaRom wrote: post #60

On any new device I normally do the same thing each time: 1) Install Firefox Nightly 2) Install uBlock Origin add-on 3) Enable Duck Duck Go as default search engine 4) Enjoy I am still looking for a good replacement for Gmail.

gmail has been easy for me. Do you absolutely need the (nice I admit) web ui? I thought I did until I completely switch to using mails clients (mail on macOS and iPhone). I don't miss gmail at all! I realise how long it took to check my email before. I'm using Mailbox.org btw. Cheap, lots of aliases, exchange server etc ... I switched 10 months ago and I don't regret.

I use GMail for the stability, longevity and ubiquitous access.

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

#70

Post by oldcynic »

dstick wrote: post #49
oldcynic wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I must be using it wrong. Very wrong. I find it better than Google for code / technical searches, and all things work related I find it better than Google for historic or old content as Google barely acknowledges such content is possible any more. Admittedly DDG is "least worst" in this respect but it hasn't entirely thrown the results out with the obsession with recency and update frequency (I consider this to…

Interesting.. since most of my searches are code or tech related, how exactly does DDG compare positively to Google? What difference do you notice that makes you prefer it? Right now I end up on SO or a handful of other forums depending on the subject. Might be worth a shot if you say you get better results faster!

When I know I'm asking an SO sort of question I can !so directly. The whole ! system transforms ease of use - I miss them elsewhere!

TL;DR I mostly find what I need quicker with least faffing around changing terms to try and fight them "knowing best".

Google shot themselves in the foot when they removed code search, and "improved" results by constantly knowing better with synonyms and other semantically linked results. It rather broke code searches and led to more of the wrong language turning up instead. Language reference and standard library type searches they do just fine at.

Google spoiled it for the obscure and code when even + and - modifiers and advanced searches became optional. They felt able to give a page of results with only one result having my must-have term. Makes searching for a specific release hellish - not everyone integrates latest and greatest v9 the week of its release. No, I really do want v7. I never fathomed the rationale of that change for anyone.

DDG do the least additional messing with my search terms with helpful expansion, pluralisation and so on. DDG got a little worse at obscure error searches when they started on some "oh you also meant" games fairly recently. They still do the least of this. There's still occasional cases where the content simply isn't there - but they're far better than say a year or two ago.

When I first tried DDG a few years ago I was !g or !sp all the time and it was barely worth the effort. Now I very rarely go near Google and don't feel I'm losing out.

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