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Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

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Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#181

Post by freediver »

netsroht wrote: post #167
freediver wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi already provides a way to search anonymously via a random email address (we do not really verify it or need it for anything) and Bitcoin/Lightning payment [1]. Since you are interested in cryptography, there is a discussion on Kagi feedback site along the same lines as your idea, about possible ways to achieve this without the need for cryptocurrency. [2] [1] https://blog.kagi.com/accepting-paypal-bitcoin [2] ht…

Thanks for the links. Using a disposable email with crypto payments and occasionally generating a new account to unlink from previous searches could be a viable intermediate solution. Also, I found this link [1] in the thread you mentioned. They seem to have implemented something like that. [1] https://metager.de/keys/help/anonymous-token

Just to make it clear, Kagi does not link searches to an account already, to begin with. Refer to our privacy policy [1]. We simply do not need that data for anything and it would be just a liability for us. Our philosophy is that users should personalize the search feed themselves and this is why we built features like the aiblity to block or promote domains, create search lenses and many more.

However there is no technical way of proving it. So cryptocurrency and cryptography are ways to achieve anonimity from a perspective of a user, regardless of what we are doing.

[1] https://kagi.com/privacy

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#182

Post by baja_blast »

snide wrote: post #34
TradingPlaces wrote: post #18

Kagi. Never have I been so happy to send someone $10 every month. When you become the customer, not the product, it’s amazing what can happen.

100% agree on Kagi. Happy customer. Thought it would be just another one of my attempts to use Duck Duck Go that dies after two weeks of !g usage. Turned out Kagi just works. The biggest improvement / gains is on mobile, where you suddenly don't need to scroll through 5 screens of ad results to get to the content.

Yeah, me personally I am more upset with how irrelevant and bad Google search results have become than I am worried about privacy. I know and have accepted that Google invades my privacy, but the trade off used to be I could find whatever I am searching for, but now I can't find anything on Google and it has made my job so much harder.

The Google search algorithm from 5 years ago was amazing, why they decided to change it for the worse is something I will never understand! And no I do not blame SEO entirely since that existed 5 years ago, what I am often looking for but can no longer find is information that has nothing to do with any products. It's not ads that I need to page through, but unrelated and bad results that are limited. I do not want to see the same results from page 1 on page 3.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#183

Post by carlosjobim »

EA-3167 wrote: post #128
netsroht wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being logged in while making search queries in search engines poses significant privacy risks. The searches can paint a comprehensive profile of the user, and these data often remain stored for extended periods. There's a chance this information might be shared with third parties. Coupled with other user data, these logged-in searches can pave the way for targeted advertising, sophisticated predictive analysis, and p…

I'm not searching for anything terrifyingly illegal, and for the rest Google and MS already scrape and compile every byte of data I've ever generated. Why would it suddenly be a problem when a more reliable and less vicious company is doing a fraction of that? You have to understand that most of us aren't fighting some battle for "perfect privacy," I just want a search engine that works for me, rather than advertiser…

What is counted as "terrifyingly illegal" changes without a moments notice on the whims of your rulers. So even if you're not googling on how to bomb the government, there are hundreds of other subjects and opinions that could in the future make the majority of your neighbours, family and workmates think you deserve to be shunned, fired, in prison, or worse. That is why people want to protect their privacy.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#184

Post by phil9909 »

smsm42 wrote: post #165
boredpudding wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any system that can check balance, can link searches to a user. There's no way around it. In your case, Kagi would need to trust the client with the balance, which would be insecure. There's only one solution, and that is that you need to put a bit of trust in Kagi. Compared to the major one, Google, you can chose between one that promises to not store data, and one that promises it does (and does a lot). It's always…

> Any system that can check balance, can link searches to a user. I don't think it's true. I can immediately see at least two ways how it can be done without identifying the user. 1. Each user gets X tokens at the beginning of the month. When searching, user supplies a token, which is immediately burned. The token does not contain the user identity, just signature validating it's a valid token. 2. Variation of the ab…

In both these cases the search engine provider could easily store your identity together with your token while issuing it and recover the identity once the token is used without any way to prove this from the outside. They could even issue tokens in the form AES_ENC("SOME KEY ONLY THEY HAVE", USER_ID | counter) and you would not notice. You would have to trust them that they won't do this, which is no improvement to the current thing Kagi does (saying they won't collect any data, while admitting they can't prove it, you just have to trust them).

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#185

Post by carlosjobim »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #85
snide wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree on Kagi. Happy customer. Thought it would be just another one of my attempts to use Duck Duck Go that dies after two weeks of !g usage. Turned out Kagi just works. The biggest improvement / gains is on mobile, where you suddenly don't need to scroll through 5 screens of ad results to get to the content.

I wonder if part of why its better is due to other users providing feedback about results, but also you can pin results from specific domains to the top. Like I can pin any results from StackOverflow, instead of the garbage StackOverflow rip off sites Google keeps giving me, its pretty obvious its ripping off SO because I just read the same thing word for word on StackOverflow three links ago. Thanks Google.

> I wonder if part of why its better is due to other users providing feedback about results, but also you can pin results from specific domains to the top.

I think that matters very little. Kagi had excellent quality results for me from the start, in a huge variety of topics in several languages. Their user base is probably 90% American hacker, and I'm getting good results on queries they would never use.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#186

Post by aspenmayer »

up_o wrote: post #10

For locking to a particular domain I had always added `site: example.com` to the query, rather than adding domain to a double quote statement. I have used double quotes to limit to a particular _phrase_ as recently as last week. I'm not privy to the improvements you mention, do you have a link?

The site:domain.tld syntax should not have a space between the colon (:) and the (sub)domain.

Incorrect:

site: domain.tld

Correct:

site:domain.tld

The - modifier to exclude a word does not have a trailing space.

Incorrect:

- site:domain.tld - query

Correct:

-site:domain.tld -query

I’m less certain about excluding a verbatim phrase, but I believe you can do as follows.

-“exclude this query string”

While this space rule still applies, so don’t insert a space, although this needs more testing by me to know for sure that this exclusion works properly.

- “this is not correct syntax imo”

https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#187

Post by gremlinsinc »

freediver wrote: post #164
yieldcrv wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve replaced most of my google searches with LLM discussions and some bullshit checking I usually only need to understand a concept, not understand if the personnel and company names it made up actually exist everything else I use google for are just addresses so I’m wondering if a paid search engine would shift my behavior back to search engines, or if that ship has just sailed

LLMs can not yet replace good web search. There are whole categories of queries whera a LLM is more or less helpless with. Think navigational queries, shopping /reviews, location aware, 'grep the web' style queries just to name the few. For example: nyt crossword cheap iem reddit starbucks near me M7FFALP Likely, a good search product in the future will be a combnation of both.

have you tried this on phind.com? it'll create multiple queries to find and organize data and it's very good and saying it doesn't know something rather than give a BS answer.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#188

Post by glimshe »

yegg wrote: post #23
mkl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duck Duck Go has similar problems for me. It's also recently started sometimes ignoring the "-" when you try to exclude a word.

We put out a partial fix for that recently and a more complete fix is forthcoming.

Thank you! As a heavy DDG user, PLEASE don't become Google. Stay great and private.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#189

Post by replwoacause »

TradingPlaces wrote: post #18

Kagi. Never have I been so happy to send someone $10 every month. When you become the customer, not the product, it’s amazing what can happen.

This is the answer. I’ll never use Google search again.
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