This pushed me over the edge to switch to DuckDuckGo. So far so good.
Every Google result now looks like an ad
881–890 of 1001 posts
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#882Earlier quoted context omitted.
DuckDuckGo is great, but Searx[1] is even better. It's a metasearch engine that aggregates several search providers that you can self-host, or access via one of several public instances. I run an instance on my local network, but you can run it for free on Heroku, AWS or GCP or even on a Raspberry Pi. There are several Docker images you can choose from. [1] https://github.com/asciimoo/searx
Anyone know what DDG's !bang operator is for Searx?
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#883Earlier quoted context omitted.
More like specifically asking a clerk where the Lays Salt & Vinegar chips, and they walk you to the chip aisle and respond with "Here are the Doritos", but sure...
Except this store only makes money on showing you where the chips are and not on the sales so if they can't show you the Doritos first, there's no store and no chips of any kind. If that's what you'd prefer, then pretend the store doesn't exist and go to a different one.
That's not the only way they make money though. Even if it was the only way they make money, giving accurate results in those cases is the cost of keeping your users for cases you can serve them ads that are relevant. The only reason they got big was their accurate results so it is a shitty thing to do.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#884A little while back I started experimenting with changing the user agent string and found that there are actually many different variations of Google’s search UI that are currently accessible. For example, I was surprised to find that by setting the user agent string to Netscape Navigator 4, I could get a lightweight, no-JS version of Google that looked like it was from the early 2000’s. By using a user agent string…
Your post got me excited, sadly it doesnt work :( I installed "User-Agent Switcher for Chrome" and played with strings from this extension. Even verified in dev console "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)" was being send, cookies/localstorage deleted. At best what I was able to get is "Second Alternate Mobile UI". I was really hoping for "Last-gen, Black Bar", but it seems unattainable :(
try this: Mozilla/5.0 (PlayBook; U; RIM Tablet OS 2.1.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/536.2+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.2.1.0 Safari/536.2+
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#885Earlier quoted context omitted.
They display both because Google is selling ad space on searches like these, where people search the name of a site. If that site doesn't buy the ad, their competitor will. So sites are being forced to buy ads on their own trademark.
Do you have an example where the competitor website shows up first because the searched company hasn't bought the ad? Haven't seen that before.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#886https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/ It's a little confusing to read now, so for context: at the time Google published this, it only put ads in the sidebar to the right of search results. This post was written to criticize the practice of putting ads atop search results, which competitors sometimes formatted almost indistinguishably from organic search results.
I searched for "google search advertisement" in the period 2000 to 2005, looking for screenshots of how Google ads have changed in style and placement over the years. Turns out the first result was this page... oh, the irony.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#887Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#888For what it's worth, Bing doesn't make the distinction much clearer. Ads have a tiny little Ad icon, but both the background and the text look just like regular search results.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#889A little while back I started experimenting with changing the user agent string and found that there are actually many different variations of Google’s search UI that are currently accessible. For example, I was surprised to find that by setting the user agent string to Netscape Navigator 4, I could get a lightweight, no-JS version of Google that looked like it was from the early 2000’s. By using a user agent string…
They intentionally show a broken UI if your user agent is Vivaldi. [1] In my opinion this is really concerning. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkayN3xiRDc
Crazy. User agent strings are such a broken concept where every browser pretends to be another. How anyone is still attempting to use them to do anything useful is beyond me.
If you a building a webapp, use feature detection not user agent strings.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#890Earlier quoted context omitted.
> From the very beginning it was intended that users would follow links, not type in URLs. so, about that 4.6 Locators are human transcribable. Users can copy Internet locators from one medium to another (such as voice to paper, or paper to keyboard) without loss or corruption of information. This process is not required to be comfortable. you can't copy a page title into a client and expect it to find the right reso…
I agree with most this... but have somewhat of a counter point to "you can't copy a page title". You (often) can copy a page title into a client (Google) and expect it to find the right resource. This is usually done with articles, etc. Even your comment provides a perfect example - you didn't link to RFC 1736, but the text "Locators are human transcribable" is unique enough that the first Google result is correct. S…
>You (often) can copy a page title into a client (Google) and expect it to find the right resource. This is usually done with articles, etc.
So web was designed with using Google in mind? woot