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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

#251

Post by notreallyserio »

_fnhr wrote: post #209
charcircuit wrote: post #28

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My first search: what's the latest minecraft version Brave: 1.14.4 Google: 1.17 Brave gives me the wrong answer that is outdated by like 2 years.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…

Here is one example in Brave's favour, seach: politics influences the science of covid-19 Brave - first result. Google - no first page, no second page, no third page, stopped checking. Let's try that in quotes - it's the exact title of the article: "politics influences the science of covid-19" Brave: first result Google: no results found, searching without quotes.

Are you looking for the article on scienceblog or here on HN? Those are the first two results I get from Google when using the quoted string.

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

#252

Post by amelius »

eloisius wrote: 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 really wish a search engine would empower me to provide a URL ban list that gets applied server-side instead of filtering on the front end (if anything).

The irony is that Google wants all our information "to improve our user experience", except they don't want our ban lists.

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

#253

Post by geenew »

occamrazor wrote: post #127
eloisius wrote: 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…

Some years ago Google had the option to remove a website from search results. After a few months they discontinued. It would be nice to know why, if the user adoption was too low, the computational cost too high, or the user experience too bad because users inadvertently removed good results.

Adding a minus sign in front of a site: specifier still works for me (eg "google -site:google.com"). Works on DDG, too.

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

#254

Post by toyg »

fleddr wrote: post #249
toyg wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been here before (hell, 3% looked massive back then, and in a much smaller market). Marketshare is not an issue, the relationship with the community is. A strong community, united around a core of values and secure that the product is built with these values at heart, will evangelize such product out of a niche. Unfortunately, the current Mozilla leadership doesn't seem to understand that significant chunks of…

I want to agree, but can't. The loss of market share has nothing to do with the browser in itself. Mozilla simply has no reach. Chrome is shipped via Android and on the desktop via services having a billion+ users, like Youtube and Gmail. Mozilla has no reach or push. It's not an engineering problem.

It's not like FF was ever shipped with Windows. It's just that enough people saw enough value and purpose in it, to go out and get it themselves.

You can install FF on Android in a second on the Play Store, it's easier than it's ever been on the desktop; but you have to want to install it in the first place. Some of this want can be generated by feature excellence, some by peer pressure; but for a long time now, FF has lagged in producing the former and its leadership has actively sabotaged the community that can provide the latter.

Obviously FF was helped by MS dropping the ball in a way Google has not (yet), but in my opinion what happened then could be done again. Antitrust action is coming for both Apple and Google, Mozilla should be ready to pounce right there and then - but it cannot happen if the leadership does not understand that there is a problem.

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

#255

Post by prirai »

tommica wrote: post #87
eloisius wrote: 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 remember reading in HN an idea about allowing people to customize the weights used to filter search results - a search engine that provided that, where I could use some curated configuration file. Maybe I could have profiles like "cooking", "programming", "news" and help the search engine even better to understand my intent. Or just have the "don't show results from this site again" button from youtube taken into g…

Searx can make you do exactly that. It's really easily to get started with a self hosted serverand then you can customize it the way you want.

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

#256

Post by tyingq »

eloisius wrote: 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 really wish a search engine would empower me to provide a URL ban list

With Google, you can append -site:site1.com -site:site2.com to a query, though I don't know if it provides the same result as filtering them out after a query.

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

#257

Post by _fnhr »

notreallyserio wrote: post #251
_fnhr wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is one example in Brave's favour, seach: politics influences the science of covid-19 Brave - first result. Google - no first page, no second page, no third page, stopped checking. Let's try that in quotes - it's the exact title of the article: "politics influences the science of covid-19" Brave: first result Google: no results found, searching without quotes.

Are you looking for the article on scienceblog or here on HN? Those are the first two results I get from Google when using the quoted string.

Google, when used with double quotes and exact title, finds aggregator sites, but I was simulating looking for the original: https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/07/08/politics-i...

Here is one more, search: Ten Elements of the False COVID Narrative

Google: nowhere

Brave: first result

And it's not like Google just didn't index the site, it works for topics that are "less controversial", search: Universal Clock implies Universal Clockwork

Google: first result

Brave: first result

Whatever the explanation - either Google censors some topics, or its search engine works differently - the result is the same, for this example Brave outperformed Google.

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

#258

Post by matwood »

kodah wrote: post #141
tommica wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading in HN an idea about allowing people to customize the weights used to filter search results - a search engine that provided that, where I could use some curated configuration file. Maybe I could have profiles like "cooking", "programming", "news" and help the search engine even better to understand my intent. Or just have the "don't show results from this site again" button from youtube taken into g…

I use Neeva.com and I think one of their features resembles this idea. It is a paid for search engine though.

I think neeva is interesting. Once payment and a login is required it changes the incentives and opens up new feature possibilities. One cool feature is linking your private cloud document storage making search very personal.

It remains to be seen if they can get enough people to pay in order to keep going though.

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

#259

Post by Closi »

thestepafter wrote: post #33
eloisius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I’m surprised that it’s not possible to quickly deindex these spam farms and render their SEO spend a waste. Especially Google, I’m surprised they can’t detect and ban SEO rings more effectively.

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 would assume this is easier if you are indexing more frequently and have been indexing for longer, and Google has more resources to allow them to crawl more often (another advantage to scale in search, which combined with other advantages of scale, is why Google has an effective monopoly IMO).

If you recently started crawling you won't be able to detect which content was 'first', and if you don't crawl as frequently as google you are reliant on your crawl frequency being quicker than the 'content stealing' speed.

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