Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

dontbubble.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 219 posts

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#131

Post by SoftwareMaven »

dhimes wrote: post #122
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you went to a librarian and said "show me Egypt", she would have nowhere to start. A conversation would then ensue about what you are interested in. Keep going to the library, keep having those conversations, and eventually, the librarian will take you straight to the books you want when you ask for Norway. If you want something different, you'll have to explicitly ask. What Google is doing is no different. It jus…

What Google is doing is no different only if you can, in your ensuing "conversations," correct a misinterpretation that may have happened somewhere along the way. If your ability to do that is hampered because the only way to do it is by clicking on something, you don't see the thing to click on which will do this, then the filtering is not helping (and actually works against Google's and my mutual interests).

In theory, there are two types of corrections, one is blatant, the other is subtle:

- You blatantly correct the conversation by adding additional text to the search: "norway government" versus "norway travel".

- You subtly correct the conversation over time with more government queries/clicks/likes or more travel queries/clicks/likes.

Listening to Matt Cutt's response, it sounds like all of these signals are pretty minor anyway.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#132

Post by udoprog »

mtogo wrote: post #126
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #103

If I had to tackle the notion of over-personalization in ~5 minutes, I'd say: - If someone prefers to search Google without personalization, add "&pws=0" (the "pws" stands for "personalized web search") to the end of the Google search url to turn it off, or use the incognito version of Chrome. Personalization tends to be a nice relevance improvement overall, but it doesn't trigger that much--when it launched, the imp…

A much better alternative is https://ssl.scroogle.org , which doesn't have personalization since google can't tell scroogle users apart. It also has benefits like having a bit of privacy while you search.

Which in turn, incidentally leads back to DDG : ).

Crazy good stuff has been going on with DDG the latest couple of months, I'm just glad I've finally found a search provider who takes these issues seriously!

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#133

Post by Matt_Cutts »

mtogo wrote: post #126
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #103

If I had to tackle the notion of over-personalization in ~5 minutes, I'd say: - If someone prefers to search Google without personalization, add "&pws=0" (the "pws" stands for "personalized web search") to the end of the Google search url to turn it off, or use the incognito version of Chrome. Personalization tends to be a nice relevance improvement overall, but it doesn't trigger that much--when it launched, the imp…

A much better alternative is https://ssl.scroogle.org , which doesn't have personalization since google can't tell scroogle users apart. It also has benefits like having a bit of privacy while you search.

I think Scroogle hits Google from a relatively small set of IP addresses. Be aware that Google is probably trying to localize for those IP addresses, so your results could be less relevant (in the same way that if you searched through a proxy in Germany, you'd be more likely to get results with a German emphasis).

Personally, if I have a search that feels a bit sensitive, I just hop into incognito mode in Chrome. Control-shift-N is an easy shortcut to open an incognito window in Chrome. And don't forget that you can use https://encrypted.google.com/ to do a search via SSL as well, which provides an encrypted tunnel between your browser and Google.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#134

Post by Hisoka »

mkr-hn wrote: post #89
speckledjim wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html Searches per day in Feb average = 197,687 Searches per day in May average = 205,759 FUD certainly won't grow DDG out of the extreme niche it's in.

That agrees with what I said. Unless you don't think that much growth in searches over such a short period is significant. It's even more significant when you look at where it was a year ago. 1.2 million in April 2010, 5.9 million in April 2011, 6.3 last month, and already 3.8 a little over halfway through this month. This is significant when you consider the lack of marketing and that DDG is run by one person.

It's not significant. In the world of search engines, you need to be the #1 or #2 player to earn major revenue. People aren't gonna wanna waste any time/energy advertising on your platform if you're getting just a handful of searches per month for say... mp3 players or cellphones. DDG is just betting on an acquisition, but it's just a wrapper around the Yahoo BOSS API.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#135

Post by dhimes »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #131
dhimes wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Google is doing is no different only if you can, in your ensuing "conversations," correct a misinterpretation that may have happened somewhere along the way. If your ability to do that is hampered because the only way to do it is by clicking on something, you don't see the thing to click on which will do this, then the filtering is not helping (and actually works against Google's and my mutual interests).

In theory, there are two types of corrections, one is blatant, the other is subtle: - You blatantly correct the conversation by adding additional text to the search: "norway government" versus "norway travel". - You subtly correct the conversation over time with more government queries/clicks/likes or more travel queries/clicks/likes. Listening to Matt Cutt's response, it sounds like all of these signals are pretty m…

Not sure where you are going with your dichotomy- if you are unable to correct in either case (because you don't get the option of clicking on a correct answer) then it fails. I suppose with enough perseverance you could trick the search engine into showing you what you want- if you know it exists in the first place- but then, (1) just enter the very specific term to start with, and (2) this defeats the attempts to become more relevant.

I agree with you that these seem to be small changes. So far.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#136

Post by mtogo »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #133
mtogo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much better alternative is https://ssl.scroogle.org , which doesn't have personalization since google can't tell scroogle users apart. It also has benefits like having a bit of privacy while you search.

I think Scroogle hits Google from a relatively small set of IP addresses. Be aware that Google is probably trying to localize for those IP addresses, so your results could be less relevant (in the same way that if you searched through a proxy in Germany, you'd be more likely to get results with a German emphasis). Personally, if I have a search that feels a bit sensitive, I just hop into incognito mode in Chrome. Con…

Your reccomendation is hilarious because it still does not give the user any privacy. Neither private browsing mode nor SSL will give the user any privacy from google, which is the real concern. You still log searches and IP addresses for an extremely long time.

One solution that actually does solve this is to use Scroogle or to access google through Tor.

EDIT: I feel that i should clarify that of course SSL is a very important feature to have for a whole slew of reasons and that i'm glad Google supports it, just that it wasn't relevant to my point.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#137

Post by mkr-hn »

Hisoka wrote: post #134
mkr-hn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That agrees with what I said. Unless you don't think that much growth in searches over such a short period is significant. It's even more significant when you look at where it was a year ago. 1.2 million in April 2010, 5.9 million in April 2011, 6.3 last month, and already 3.8 a little over halfway through this month. This is significant when you consider the lack of marketing and that DDG is run by one person.

It's not significant. In the world of search engines, you need to be the #1 or #2 player to earn major revenue. People aren't gonna wanna waste any time/energy advertising on your platform if you're getting just a handful of searches per month for say... mp3 players or cellphones. DDG is just betting on an acquisition, but it's just a wrapper around the Yahoo BOSS API.

Nothing starts at #1. Expecting DDG to displace an oligopoly built over a decade and a half in a year or two of existence is asking too much of anyone.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#138

Post by nextparadigms »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #103

If I had to tackle the notion of over-personalization in ~5 minutes, I'd say: - If someone prefers to search Google without personalization, add "&pws=0" (the "pws" stands for "personalized web search") to the end of the Google search url to turn it off, or use the incognito version of Chrome. Personalization tends to be a nice relevance improvement overall, but it doesn't trigger that much--when it launched, the imp…

I don't want to jump so many hoops just to do one damn search. Personally, I hate the country specific personalization, and perhaps it's useful to most people in my country rather than showing more US results, but I'm really not interested in those types of results myself. I wish I could just check a box in my Preferences and then be able to see the universal search results.

I know I can use /ncr at the end, but I'd rather not have to do that all the time, and I think you can't even make that the default search for the Omnibox in Chrome, which means I have to give up Omnibox, which I love using, in order to get away from personalization. And even then, I think it just means I won't see my country specific results, but it probably still personalizes my search results through other types of signals.

So fine, don't make universal search the default way to search, but just give me a checkbox so I can turn it on when I want to. I want to see the best results, period - not the best results for me (or whatever Google thinks are the best results for me).

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#139

Post by joesb »

TheBranca18 wrote: post #4
yanw wrote: post #3

This assumes that 'filter bubble' is something more than a nonsense term. There is little difference between personalization and the relevance of search results. How would you go about ranking then? alphabetically?! it's a matter of tuning the relevance 'dials' and it's all in early stages so a solution to this imaginary problems is more research and not to create bullshit terminology in order to sell some books.

Most people don't realize that Google and other companies are doing this. That's my main problem. It's not about selling books in my mind as much as it about communicating why something is in a search list for person A vs. person B. I don't want my Internet censored.

Do you see search result #1,000,000 on your first page? Congratulation, your internet is censored.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#140

Post by jannes »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #103

If I had to tackle the notion of over-personalization in ~5 minutes, I'd say: - If someone prefers to search Google without personalization, add "&pws=0" (the "pws" stands for "personalized web search") to the end of the Google search url to turn it off, or use the incognito version of Chrome. Personalization tends to be a nice relevance improvement overall, but it doesn't trigger that much--when it launched, the imp…

I agree, I don't believe that over-personalization is an issue. (As I already said in another comment.)

But here's why some people probably don't like personalization: It's invisible. There is nothing on the results page that tells you whether your results are personalized or not. Sure, you can look at whether the browser is in incognito mode or you can look for some parameter in the URL, but these things require that you already know about personalization.

In contrast to personalization there are various indicators that a page is localized. The most prominent is obviously the language of the text. As soon as all the search results are in my local language it is very obvious to me that I got localized search results. I can also detect localization by looking at the Google logo on the homepage (localized versions have the country name in grey text below the Google logo), by looking at the language of the Google interface, by remembering the domain name I used to access Google and by looking at the sidebar on the left that even displays a guess of my location on the city-level.

There are no such indicators at all for filtered/personalized results. Every user around me starts with the same version of Google results. That's how everyone got acquainted with Google in the beginning. Same results for everyone. There is no reason for a user to question that until you see the differences by comparing search results, which most users won't. Someone who doesn't happen to work at Google or didn't hear about the "filter bubble" can't know that search results will start to diverge from vanilla results over time.

So personalized Google results violate the principle of least astonishment.

While I can't speak for other people, I think that the concerns that some people have about this are rooted in the fact that you can get trapped in some sort of feedback loop without ever knowing. If you could see that your results are personalized you could compare them to unpersonalized results and decide for yourself which you like better.

Post reply on HN