Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

Post by birksherty » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

notus wrote: post #168

yyyk wrote: post #50

This is a purely anti-user move. No user gains anything by it, this actually helps phishing sites. Oh, and it happens to help Google's AMP effort, which can now pretend to be the original site even more effectively. Time to get everyone to use Duck Duck Go, and to get rid of those Google CAPTCHAs which are an even bigger data harvesting operation than search.

Side note: For those who tried DDG in the past and were unimpressed I suggest giving it a whirl again. I kind of wrote it off a few years ago and then tried it recently and its pretty good. You may have to modify some search habits. If you enable location tracking they do anonymous localized results (can read about it here: https://help.duckduckgo.com/privacy/anonymous-localized-resu... ) Usually good if you're used…

Post by jasomill » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #212

danShumway wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Google for me, the link is missing. Google also does this fun thing where when you click on the link it invisibly changes in the background to a Google-wrapped URL.[0] If you right-click on the link and select "copy link location", you won't get the result you want, you'll get gibberish. So it proves that you can use DuckDuckGo to immediately get the link with no fuss, and that Google Search is increasingly not de…

Google rewrites URLs to track clicks and improve search, which is mildly annoying but not quite nefarious. The links obviously works, but if you want it to look nicer, why not just click and get the URL from the browser? That might even be faster depending on device and keyboard/touchscreen/mouse setup and usage.

Post by cynwoody » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #10

It's still regular for me but if true this will probably be the last straw for me. It's already absolutely impossible to send someone a link to a pdf you've found through google, this would make it impossible to send any link. That bloody wrapper is also a fine piece of shit. Search engines should link to content, not appropriate that content, hide who supplies it or mess with the links.

Post by jakeogh » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

maest wrote: post #278

powersnail wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that DDG is okay for two types of queries: common everyday topics and technical queries. For many other niche topic, it’s not good at all. I use DDG as the default and have been doing so for many years. I still have to add !g every time I search for violin related questions. The results are often just not relevant at all. I think DDG still has a long way to grow to be a 100% replacement for Google outside the…

Regarding technical queries, they consistently return links to the python 2 docs, never python 3. What I assume people do is they click on the python 2 docs then change the version on the python website. So, from bings perspective it looks like people want the python 2 links. It always frustrates me and makes looking stuff up longer than needed.

Post by Zetaphor » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

behnamoh wrote: post #192

tarsinge wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, switched my default search engine to DDG a few months and it took only a few days to get used to it. So much that I was very surprised to discover that I know dislike Google results UI (something I never imagined could happen). I still fallback to Google for advanced search (usually technical subjects) with !g but in the majority of common searches the DDG default results are what I expect. Seriously to al…

DDG should seriously drop the infinite scrolling on their results page. It's so annoying, even Google tried it once and gave up on it.