I just switched to Edge and didn't bother switching out the default search engine (Bing of course) and for most things it works just as well as Google. Ironically, Google is better at searching for .NET related errors ;)
Every Google result now looks like an ad
331–340 of 1001 posts
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair didn't internet marketers ruin things first by cramming keywords in URLS and page titles to game search engines?
Two wrongs...
Just saying IMO Google isn't ruining the internet. Of course every decision being scrutinized they can't have a perfect record. They have a search engine that due to it's popularity is the target of all kinds of stats gaming and optimizing, While at the same time trying to grow a profitable product. So it's not like there are simple solutions or easy quips like Google Ruined the Internet. It sounds like a lazy argument.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#333Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#334I've been in this A/B test for a couple of months now, so I've had time to adjust, and I still hate it. I've just become so used to seeing the complete URL in green. The complete URL! If you hover over the results, you'll see that they like to take bits like numeric components or the query string out. This is part of Google's attempt to de-prioritise the URL. Their destructive AMP service confusingly shows you Google…
I'd love to learn what % of A/B tests get rejected after the test has concluded.
I suspect there's naturally a laundry list of biases that all the work we designed and implemented needs to succeed or boy do we look silly.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#335I wish there was a way to directly help Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yandex improve their search results. I've tried both, and it's just not the same. Google I can bang in cryptic queries like > centos 7 tuned no daemon and get the 3rd link about how to run tuned in a no daemon mode. Bing/DuckDuckGo have the article at around 7th or 8th place, but prefaced by a lot of "while technically not wrong, not what I'm looking for" links.…
To me it is not so much result quality as integration. Currently, with Google no matter what I am searching for, I just type it into my location bar and hit enter. Whether I am looking for a new bar to check out on a Friday night or what does a specific compile error mean in Haskell. So in the first case, I will get a map with bars around me and in the second case I will get a link to stackoverflow. With DDG these be…
Feels like a perfect opportunity for you to try out search engine keywords. On Chrome, it's under Search Engine > Manage Search Engines. This allows you to type (keyword) -tab- (query). For example, my work computer (on which I can only use Chrome or Edge) is force-defaulted to Google, but I have Bing set to keyword "b" and DDG keyworded to "d", so I just type:
b(tab) Whatever I want to search for
and it goes to Bing with that query. It's a great example of what you're looking for. On my personal devices, I try to use Bing for as much as I can to see whether its personalized results will ever marry up to Google (it's gotten extremely close, lately), but I often prefer searching Google Maps, so I have gMaps added as a search engine with keyword "m", so I can search for anything with "m (tab) place" and immediately see gMaps results.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#336It's funny, because if you run AdSense on your website, Google has very strict guidelines about not misleading users and making a clear distinction between advertisements and your content. However, when Google shows ads on their site, they don't need to follow those rules, they blend them in as closely as possible. Also, what's the deal with showing an advertisement for the same result that's number one? See the belo…
Maybe people who can block that ad wouldn't get any result for Expedia, which would upset Expedia a lot.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like DDG, but have been using Ecosia for the past 6 months or so. I like that I've contributed to planting 25 trees (by the averages) just in my normal course of searching.
Ecosia serves Bing results (iirc). The search result quality is awful.
It's Bing. I've noticed the slightly lower quality.
It's something of a conscious choice: unfettered tracking and advertising practices but good search results, or less tracking and OK results with profits used for a cause.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#338I've been using duckduckgo and bing for a while now. Google is just a fallback.
I like the configuration options you are being offered with DuckDuckGo. So, for example, you can use your own custom font on that page.
I use the Google !g fallback for about 5% of my searches. Sometimes the google results are simply better, but the appearance just seems chaotic nowadays.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heck yeah! DDG results have gotten noticeably better in the past ~2 years. Side note - most browsers offer 'search shortcut' customization options, so you can start an address-bar search with !g or !b or whatever to seamlessly swap to your fallback(s).
> Side note - most browsers offer 'search shortcut' customization options, so you can start an address-bar search with !g or !b or whatever to seamlessly swap to your fallback(s). While you indeed can configure browsers to do this, I think you may be erroneously attributing a DDG feature to -- or duplicating a DDG feature in -- your browser, because those are built in DDG bang commands.
I know for a fact that Firefox can also implement bangs like Duckduckgo out of the box, although you have to manually set it up.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#340I've been using duckduckgo and bing for a while now. Google is just a fallback.
What does DDG use for an algorithm? Originally Google was just using pagerank but that was too easy to game by SEO. This means DDG needed to address this, and apparently they have (e.g, search for 'favicon' like the post). How long can we rely on DDG staying neutral in their algorithm?
They use this little known "algorithm" as their backend: https://www.bing.com/.
It's remarkable, BTW, that most people at the same time believe that Bing sucks, and DDG is "just as good as Google". For me that hasn't been my experience at all: Google is far, far ahead of Bing (and by extension DDG) in terms of relevance.