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Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

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Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised by this as well since Google is able to identify the origin of content (eg. Stackoverflow) and penalize sites for duplicating that content (or so they say). In my opinion it wouldn’t be difficult to identify the domains duplicating the content and penalize heavily. But, those sites are most likely displaying Google Ads so…

I just wish I could configure google to not show certain domains such as W3schools without adding a complex search query or installing plugins

This is such an easy optimization that Google has to have tried it and seen their ad revenue fall.

"Permanently remove this site from search results" seems like the absolute easiest "personalization" to implement.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#52
post #2

> Brave Search is currently not displaying ads, but the free version of Brave Search will soon be ad-supported. Well, there's that. I assume they won't implement ad blocking for that one.

Hadn’t thought about the native ad blocking feature^^ it is indeed a bit contradictory.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#53

Google used to be good at one point in time. Now its search results aren't very relevant, it returns what it thinks it should interest you, not what you've actually searched for. It doesn't matter if you do a verbatim search, it will still try to be smart and use alternative terms.

This can be aggravating when you're looking up an error message or exception that follows the same format as other errors.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#54

It doesn't seem as good. My first search: what's the latest minecraft version Brave: 1.14.4 Google: 1.17 Brave gives me the wrong answer that is outdated by like 2 years. Second search: 白の意味 Brave: On Japan location 6 garbage search results + irrelevant wikipedia page. On United states 3 garbage search results before a relevant result. The first result is literally a private YouTube video. Seriously? Google: Has a sn…

[deleted]

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#55
post #42

Google used to be good at one point in time. Now its search results aren't very relevant, it returns what it thinks it should interest you, not what you've actually searched for. It doesn't matter if you do a verbatim search, it will still try to be smart and use alternative terms.

I haven't used Google for many years, so I can't speak to whether it shows personalized results today. But, I recently switched to Whoogle Search ( https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search ) which shows Google results but without the tracking. I am happy with it, that I have completely ditched DuckDuckGo in favor of it.

There is also startpage.com, which gives you Google search results but with privacy. But my problem is finding relevant information.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#56

It doesn't seem as good. My first search: what's the latest minecraft version Brave: 1.14.4 Google: 1.17 Brave gives me the wrong answer that is outdated by like 2 years. Second search: 白の意味 Brave: On Japan location 6 garbage search results + irrelevant wikipedia page. On United states 3 garbage search results before a relevant result. The first result is literally a private YouTube video. Seriously? Google: Has a sn…

"Google" "private"; unbelievable someone can put these two words in same sentence. Google cannot even pull pages older than 10yrs old at the moment.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#57
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish I could configure google to not show certain domains such as W3schools without adding a complex search query or installing plugins

This is such an easy optimization that Google has to have tried it and seen their ad revenue fall. "Permanently remove this site from search results" seems like the absolute easiest "personalization" to implement.

And the most certain too. You don't need to guess whether or not the user really needs that result

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#58
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'd bet a big factor is that these spammy sites probably spend a lot of time on SEO - illuminating StackOverflow answers and official documentation don't.

True. If you search for any Python documentation the first links on Google are almost always geeksforgeeks, w3schools, etc instead of the official Python docs.

I think this is telling of how often the python docs actually solve peoples’ questions. For example, I searched “python string replace”, with the first 4 being tutorialpoint, w3schools, geeksforgeeks, stack overflow and at position 8 is the python docs.

The issue with the python docs for this search is that it takes me to “built-in types”, and starts off with things totally irrelevant to what I want. I now have to go searching for string, then find the built-in method replace. Meanwhile, the other tutorial-esque websites almost all show an example of str.replace above the fold. If you’re Google and you’re trying to get people information faster, you’re going to promote the result that has more people not coming back to the search result page afterwards because it was hard to find the answer on that result.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#59
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you spent much time with Brave Search? I use Firefox and currently have DDD as the default search on my laptop, but I often use the !g operator since the DDD results are routinely not as good as Google. I’ve had a significantly better experience with Brave Search, though. I’ll probably switch my default soon, once I learn the operators that Brave supports.

The bang operators for ddg justify it as my default even knowing that it isn’t very good for some queries. The habit of being able to reroute a search to the engine that will handle it most appropriately is a killer feature. Only drawback is that the redirect can take an extra few seconds sometimes. It’s hard to imagine replacing it. If Brave search becomes excellent then I can just use the bang for it.

Brave Search already has bangs, they imported them from DDG. I believe they’ve changed some of them though

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#60
post #7

I’ve been using Brave search for several months now. I switched the day that it was announced. The quality is fairly good, but I’m having troubling telling whether it’s just my own halo effect or if the initial quality that experienced has started to slip a little as it indexes more widely or something. At first I was impressed with how little spam ended up in top results, but lately exact queries for Python function…

I wonder maybe every other day if I could delist W3Schools, by maybe always adding a negating query aspect to the URL. But this all doesn't seem easily supported, when I looked at it. Yep, hating on W3Schools with a passion. Younger self shot himself too often in foot with W3Schools.

Just add the following in your Google search box: -w3schools.com
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