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Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

danluu.com

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Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#61
post #17

I noticed that the author uses ChatGPT3.5 rather than 4, which is a rather large difference. I don't have the knowledge to rerank all questions the author asked, but I will say that a test of ChatGPT 4 leads me directly to youtube-dl, which is better than every other search engine listed.

That was the first thing I checked reading the article. Although the argument would be 3.5 is free - any comparison of systems against ChatGPT that isn't using ChatGPT 4 can be dismissed almost out of hand; there is not much point talking about ChatGPT if it's not using ChatGPT 4 and making proper use of its capabilities.

That is not to say that there aren't valid criticisms of and shortcomings in ChatGPT 4 - just that it's not useful to say ChatGPT when it's referring to 3.5

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#62
Blah blah blah. Could you lay this article out any worse? What are the queries you used to test? I want to try them too. Buried in here somewhere.

Using an adblocker is not expert anything.

That you've defined your own opinion for what some of the results should be blows the thing up.

Searching youtube downloader, many people would be fine with some of the ad covered but totally functional sites that pop up on Google. I use some of them every day for quick conversion tasks. I don't want any youtube-dl result. The average users don't either.

Download firefox? What's that? All the top links are fine? No one's looking at the 7th listing for a simple query to download a program.

Why do wider tires have better grip? .. what, sites like roadandtrack, prioritytire, reddit, some physics and stackexchange sites aren't good enough? they are.

The Vancouver snow report one also. Lots of major news sites. Some weathernetwork and almanacs. All totally acceptable results for a sort of variable question.

blah blah this is just a hate on for Google and a HN/nerd view of the world that the average user is nowhere near living in.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#63

Blah blah blah. Could you lay this article out any worse? What are the queries you used to test? I want to try them too. Buried in here somewhere. Using an adblocker is not expert anything. That you've defined your own opinion for what some of the results should be blows the thing up. Searching youtube downloader, many people would be fine with some of the ad covered but totally functional sites that pop up on Google…

[dead]

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#64

Blah blah blah. Could you lay this article out any worse? What are the queries you used to test? I want to try them too. Buried in here somewhere. Using an adblocker is not expert anything. That you've defined your own opinion for what some of the results should be blows the thing up. Searching youtube downloader, many people would be fine with some of the ad covered but totally functional sites that pop up on Google…

[deleted]

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#65
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In particular I block Youtube, not because they aren't sometimes correct, but because I don't want videos polluting the regular results - it just takes too long to get info from videos. Funnily enough, lately I've been prioritizing YT videos more when searching. So many sites now are just regurgitated SEO farms with minimal quality, and easy to see why: it's minimal effort to produce and cheap to host. But making a…

Would a browser feature that skipped to the relevant parts of the video based on closed captioning and understanding search intent be useful? It seems like this would be a good way for Google to fight to stay relevant in UX vs having the chat bots just quickly spitting out a readable answer. Hunting through ad laden webpages is annoying. Seeking to the relevant section of the video is a solvable problem, especially f…

I've definitely seen Google do this already: https://searchengineland.com/google-tests-suggested-clip-sea...

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#66

Blah blah blah. Could you lay this article out any worse? What are the queries you used to test? I want to try them too. Buried in here somewhere. Using an adblocker is not expert anything. That you've defined your own opinion for what some of the results should be blows the thing up. Searching youtube downloader, many people would be fine with some of the ad covered but totally functional sites that pop up on Google…

> Download firefox? What's that? All the top links are fine? No one's looking at the 7th listing for a simple query to download a program.

They are if the first six results are SEO bullshit. Which is the de-facto state of affairs for Google today: advertising traipsing around as search.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#67
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In particular I block Youtube, not because they aren't sometimes correct, but because I don't want videos polluting the regular results - it just takes too long to get info from videos. Funnily enough, lately I've been prioritizing YT videos more when searching. So many sites now are just regurgitated SEO farms with minimal quality, and easy to see why: it's minimal effort to produce and cheap to host. But making a…

Would a browser feature that skipped to the relevant parts of the video based on closed captioning and understanding search intent be useful? It seems like this would be a good way for Google to fight to stay relevant in UX vs having the chat bots just quickly spitting out a readable answer. Hunting through ad laden webpages is annoying. Seeking to the relevant section of the video is a solvable problem, especially f…

Didn’t Google try this already? It seems useful to me, at least. IMO the next frontier of search is not better hypertext, it’s podcasts, audio, and video.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#68
post #28
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually more complex to provide good results, or is it just more profitable not to? I have a hard time believing an organization like Google doesn't have the resources to provide a search engine that's just as usable as what they had 6 years ago (around the time I feel like the decay really set in). Seems a lot more likely that it's just more profitable to serve up garbage sponsored content.

Definitely more profitable not to. Especially as Google is an ad company, not a search company. I’d rather see a world with numerous paid/subscription search engines, that are motivated to do nothing but return search results well. I expect you would see some of the SEO crap getting solved.

i cant remember where i read this, but something about how google ranks site that have google ads higher than sites that dont. makese sense, its evil, but makes sense, thats why we get all this scrapped spam. is there any more info on this?

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#69
Can someone tell me why Bing, and thus DDG, has switched to prioritizing local results? I'll search the most inane things, like lyrics to a song, and get results for local businesses containing maybe one word in common.

It's most frustrating with phone numbers. I picked up the habit of searching the random numbers that called me, to try and find out if they were possibly important. I used to get a bunch of spam sites that clearly existed to profit off me making those searches.

Both Google and DDG have removed those spam sites, even though they were useful at times. Google will tell me the number is in some random PDF that contains a few of the digits, then no other results. DDG will say the top result is my local police department, something that freaked me out the first few times.

Re: Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for single word queries like that Wikipedia covers more ground than a dictionary. Personal preference, perhaps. If I need a definition I search for "define dildo" (Kagi shows Merriam-Webster, Oxford, etc dictionary entries).

Marginalia supports the old Google syntax, e.g. "define:dildo"

Thanks! If you are that "single person" who built Marginalia... hope you are not taking my criticism personally. I am more annoyed by this blog post that uses a few handpicked queries to present generalized long winded conclusions that are completely disproven when using a different set of queries.
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