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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?

#191

Post by andrewinardeer »

netsroht wrote: post #107
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.

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…

> 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 potential exploitation by governments or malicious entities. In the event of data breaches, the user's logged-in search histories can be exposed. Furthermore, users typically don't have clear insight into how their data is utilized when logged in.

This reads and smells like ChatGPT / AI.

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

#192

Post by idonotknowwhy »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #191
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…

> 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…

Was thinking the same thing. Not even gpt4

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

#193

Post by bromuro »

izzydata wrote: post #67
lc5G wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm the experience that sometimes searches for quoted terms yield pages that do not contain the quoted term exactly. I don't have a specific example from the top of my head.

Is it possible that the results simply don't exist and instead of giving you nothing it gives the next possible match?

It could be this - but you would notice it after opening the search result.

I spend some time reading a random website until I realize the sentences i was looking for is not there. Useless and frustrating.

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

#194

Post by MichaelZuo »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #151
MichaelZuo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, is this story a metaphor/allegory for something? Why not 'challenge' yourself if you've already done quite a bit of groundwork? Or at least the comment suggests you've already put more thought into this than me.

I’ve already put maximum financial and personal time inputs into my particular project, which is unfortunately insufficient to get started in earnest. I need 200k to actually start what I want and currently have 5k in my bank account and a lot of mandatory overhead (kids etc). If you’re legit interested I’ll tell you all the details 1:1

Sure we can talk, DM me on twitter.

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

#195

Post by ComputerGuru »

cwoolfe wrote: post #13

When this happened to me, I found better results on https://duckduckgo.com/

DDG has started injecting completely untreated recent news stories to the results of a search with few hits. Like searching for a programming error with specific class names will give you several articles about the woes of the Democratic Party in recent days!!

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

#196

Post by yieldcrv »

vdqtp3 wrote: post #180
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

> I usually only need to understand a concept You should know by now that LLMs will and do lie in subtle ways that are not apparent to non-experts. Using them to understand complicated concepts is a great way to "learn" incorrect information. To be fair, the same can be said for humans, but humans are worse at bullshitting.

I’m aware

I really just need to converse about a topic for more inquisitive-ness and to form structured thoughts

It will tell me if I’m conflating concepts, before bullshitting about the ways theyre different. Thats fine, my blind spot would have been that I was conflating a concept for the next decade.

In that regard its the same or better than a human

I don't need it to be the source of truth, I need it to be conversational. It can make urban legends just like a person does, I don’t care, just give me a way to talk about a concept and decide if I want to learn more and it does that extremely well

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

#197

Post by lofaszvanitt »

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.

Kagi copied the same lame-ass google search experience.

Search engines should be able to support even those who are not SEO experts and not the first ones to arrive and sit on specific keywords. What I mean under that, if you have multiple good, exhaustive answers for a query, why not offer varying/random good results, so every link would have a chance? Let people break out of their bubbles.

Same power pyramid scheme. Yukk.

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

#198

Post by SkyPuncher »

netsroht wrote: post #107
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.

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’ve gotten tired of these boogey man arguments.

There are sooooo many other ways to fingerprint than an account.

Oh look, this MacBook with X by Y resolution from this IP address has had 100 searches for the past 2 hours. Oh no! He switched to incognito.

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

#199

Post by eindiran »

crazygringo wrote: post #162
marcosdumay wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't work for any query. A verbatim search was very similar to putting every word in quotes. That's very obviously not your experience, so it's either a personalization thing, or Google silently changed it. Anyway, there isn't a pattern to find, it works or it doesn't. But then, I've seen it work too. And stop working again.

OK, so can you supply any query then? Any example will do. This is just about verifying the behavior, that it's not finding a verbatim result that it should. And it has nothing to do with personalization -- it's easy to run these logged out. Also, "A verbatim search was very similar to putting every word in quotes" is not an example of it not working. The question isn't whether they're similar -- your claim was that…

I think OP's point is that this isn't a deterministic system for a given query. The feature flags set for the particular user (are you in the verbatim or no-verbatim branch of today's AB test), and the timestamp are also inputs.

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

#200

Post by DoItToMe81 »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #195
cwoolfe wrote: post #13

When this happened to me, I found better results on https://duckduckgo.com/

DDG has started injecting completely untreated recent news stories to the results of a search with few hits. Like searching for a programming error with specific class names will give you several articles about the woes of the Democratic Party in recent days!!

Are you sure this isn't from SEO on the part of the news sites? I have not seen this at all.
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