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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

#391

Post by wongarsu »

jb1991 wrote: post #49
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 have personally found that when searching for developer documentation, as you mentioned, unfortunately nothing beats Google. I can always find what I’m looking for very quickly. But when I try DuckDuckGo, it’s a mess of irrelevant or weak pages.

Same thing with bing. It's a fine search engine for lots of things, but for searching documentation it's really weak, showing sites like w3schools and tutorialspoint far above the results I actually want.

It kind of makes sense that w3schools would spend much more time on the SEO game than docs.python.org, but it just drives me back to google

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

#392

Post by notreallyserio »

_fnhr wrote: post #257
notreallyserio wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s odd, for the first example the exact article you were looking for is the first result for me whether or not I am searching signed in or from a private session.

The second example, “Ten Elements of the False COVID Narrative”, assuming you’re looking for it at scienceblog, is the fourth result. Above the fold, at least. (Edit: Sort of nevermind, I missed that you didn’t use quotes for that one. Without quotes the scienceblog page appears in slot 11).

I am in the US and get my results in English, if that matters. I checked to see if toggling safe search changed anything, but nope.

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

#393

Post by crocodiletears »

yonaguska wrote: post #345
that_guy_iain wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read this as "Google is perfectly capable of determining the truth". Well, OP was the one that defined the info they were looking for as misinformation as far as I can tell. And then I stated I could find offical sources for politcs and COVID. These are not Google's opinions but simply a fact. WHO, RKI, CDC, etc are all offical sources of information for COVID, etc. This is not them define what is true or false b…

Nope, I'm not looking for misinformation. I said that Google's attempts at combatting misinformation often hinders my searches. Oftentimes, I'll be looking for a pre-print or something from a scientific journal that is tangentially related to Covid, but Google will basically spam the official CDC, WHO, and news articles urging people to get vaccinated. For any political news, sometimes I'll be looking to verify a sto…

This is what drove me off the platform. Searching Bing (primary), Yandex (rarely turns up gold), and DDG (generally useless for the news) each seems to mitigate these issues. But you really shouldn't have to check three different search engines to not feel like you're being denied information.

And yes, Yandex is a Russian operation, something to keep in mind.

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

#394

Post by bodge5000 »

Whitespace wrote: post #358
bodge5000 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to." Can anyone explain what this actually means? It sounds like she's saying that taking a lower pay by 5x is too much to ask of her, but then "people and their families" doesn't make any sense, because its 1 person and 1 family. Thats not even getting into how true is may or may not be, or how its still a lot of money overall, even if its not…

I read it as, "that's too big a discount to ask [qualified CEO candidates] and their families to commit to." In other words: good luck finding a qualified person to run Mozilla.

ohhh that makes a lot more sense actually, cheers

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

#395

Post by SllX »

hbn wrote: post #388
freediver wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really wish a search engine would empower me to provide a URL ban list Brave discussed implementing similar concept called Goggles: https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf Kagi Search already has customizable 'prefer' and 'mute' lists for domains, as well as customizable 'lenses' which are similar to goggles concept from Brave. (disclaimer: founder at Kagi) https://kagi.com

I'm not even sure how much manually blocking domains would help remedy the problem with Google results, which is that so much of the top hits are copy-pasted blog spam with very little information, scrambled together (very possibly by a non-human) purely to game SEO. It seems like it's gotten even worse just in the past few months. I'll try to Google something common, like "can you feed X to dogs" and all the results…

Sure it would help. Adblockers have had custom filter lists for years. If all you need to do is upload a text file every once in a while, that would go a long way to improving search results in general.

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

#396

Post by infinitezest »

mehphp wrote: post #375
symlinkk wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need to be an “authority” to talk about what you saw with your own eyes on a search engine?

You don't think it's dangerous for someone with a platform like Rogan has to spread misinformation? That's what I'm referring to.

Which of his claims are you asserting is misinformation?

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

#397

Post by notreallyserio »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #294
Kiro wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of your examples do what you say for me. I see everything on Google including your comments here.

Interesting, let me share two screenshots of what I see: 1. http://karolis.koncevicius.lt/data/google_example1.png 2. http://karolis.koncevicius.lt/data/google_example2.png

Do you get a Josh Mitteldorf scienceblog result for the search (no quotes): weight and aging a paradox part 1

It’s the first result for me with or without quotes. I’m curious if the site is somehow blocked.

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

#398

Post by zionic »

pmurt7 wrote: post #235
skinkestek wrote: post #176

I'm actually tempted to start using Brave. I'm still holding out with Firefox despite Mozilla trying very hard to get rid of us (to the point where the thought has struck me more than once if the current CEO of Mozilla is in the pocket of Google). If at some point the last competing mainstream browser engine is gone I'll probably go for Brave and I might start testing it this week.

Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO) makes $3 million a year, and Mozilla asks you to donate "to help a nonprofit organization". "On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit…

FWIW, I had been using Firefox since it was called “Mozilla” and I switched to Brave last year. Firefox under her “leadership” is a disaster.

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

#399

Post by JohnWhigham »

mehphp wrote: post #375
symlinkk wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need to be an “authority” to talk about what you saw with your own eyes on a search engine?

You don't think it's dangerous for someone with a platform like Rogan has to spread misinformation? That's what I'm referring to.

No I think it's more dangerous when wide-reaching platforms like CNN spread misinformation about him and are completely unapologetic about it [0]. The most Joe Rogan has done regarding "misinformation" is telling people they should not get the vaccine and discussing vaccine side effects that, while yes they are not great in number, for every other platform it's a taboo topic for some weird reason.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHWkvaQmxvI

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

#400

Post by hbn »

SllX wrote: post #395
hbn wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure how much manually blocking domains would help remedy the problem with Google results, which is that so much of the top hits are copy-pasted blog spam with very little information, scrambled together (very possibly by a non-human) purely to game SEO. It seems like it's gotten even worse just in the past few months. I'll try to Google something common, like "can you feed X to dogs" and all the results…

Sure it would help. Adblockers have had custom filter lists for years. If all you need to do is upload a text file every once in a while, that would go a long way to improving search results in general.

I didn't click into the paper, but I see now it also mentions crowdsourced filters. That would be much more effective than everyone creating their own blocklists
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