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

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

#341

Post by marginalia_nu »

gmd63 wrote: post #335
marginalia_nu wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, I'm not sure the data corroborates that. If this is a web problem and not a search engine problem, then I'd expect every search engine to have the same pattern of scam results. I'd also argue that finding relevant results among a sea of irrelevant results is the primary function of a search engine. This was as true in 1998 as it is today. In fact, it was Google's "killer feature", unlike Altavista an…

If the web is being polluted by a nefarious search engine provider that is excluding the polluted pages from their algorithm, you wouldn't see the same pattern across search engines Not saying or even suggesting that's happening, but the logic isn't airtight

Well, there's always the Münchaussen trilemma, by which no reasoning is airtight.

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

#342

Post by brobinson »

infamia wrote: post #50

Try uBlacklist, it's like uBlock, but for search results. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublacklist/ https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmia... You can sync the settings and your personal blocklist to either Dropbox or Google Drive. It also has the ability to subscribe to blocklists. Mind, you need to manually turn on search engines and subscribe to lists. The uBlacklist subscript…

Does this exist for DDG?

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

#343

Post by marginalia_nu »

bee_rider wrote: post #329
marginalia_nu wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a user POV solution, speaking from the search engine POV.

Based on your handle, I suspect you have much better insight into this than the rest of us! But can the search engine mind-read by assuming Windows users don’t want to use a command-line utility?

They can based on user tracking and profiling, but that's murky waters I personally don't want to dip into.

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

#344

Post by gzer0 »

infamia wrote: post #50

Try uBlacklist, it's like uBlock, but for search results. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublacklist/ https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmia... You can sync the settings and your personal blocklist to either Dropbox or Google Drive. It also has the ability to subscribe to blocklists. Mind, you need to manually turn on search engines and subscribe to lists. The uBlacklist subscript…

Appreciate you sharing this; I've been searching for something similar for quite some time.

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

#345

Post by bscphil »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #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…

> Bing, and thus DDG, has switched to prioritizing local results

From what I can tell this is an issue with the Bing API that DDG uses that the DDG folks have been unable to resolve. I've tried many identical queries between DDG and Bing and while Bing does occasionally return incorrect local results, the completely irrelevant local results that appear on almost every DDG search do not seem to happen with Bing itself.

From what I understand, DDG is aware of the issue. I don't know why it isn't more of a priority.

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

#346

Post by freediver »

feanaro wrote: post #218
mrweasel wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get that sentiment. Currently Kagi is just as dependent on Google as DuckDuckGo is on Bing. That might only be temporary of course and Kagi does seem to be working on a search engine of their own. Rather than wanting Kagi to take the place of DuckDuckGo, it would would be better if Kagi could take users from Google, and then when ready, drop Google as a search provider.

Kagi should hire the Marginalia author.

We already include Marginalia results in Kagi [1]

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.htm...

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

#347

Post by greggh »

whakim wrote: post #130
Renaud wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription model like Kagi seems to work pretty well against gaming the results. Their only remaining incentive is to be good enough that people keep paying for the service.

But the author tried Kagi and the results don't appear to be noticeably different, filled with scammy adspam just like Google and Bing. Kagi's results seem to mostly aggregate existing search engines [1], so this isn't much of a surprise. Perhaps a subscription-based service that operates an index at Google's scale might help, but no such thing exists to my knowledge. [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/sea…

Right, but Kagi has built in tools to make it easy to fix that. Blocking those spammy sites from ever showing up again. Moving certain sites up the ranking, and so on. These features mean that over time my Kagi results have become nearly perfect for myself.

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

#348

Post by naet »

shaldengeki wrote: post #155
naet wrote: post #133

I think the result grading is too opinionated here. For example, the first query is "download YouTube videos", for which Google is ranked "terrible" for not showing you a command line open source program. But the literal first result is an ad supported site where I can paste in a YouTube link and download it right from the browser. That seems like exactly what most people would want or to the CLI tool the author is s…

The author describes that site as such, which seems fair to rate as "terrible": > Some youtube downloader site. Has lots of assurances that the website and the tool are safe because they've been checked by "Norton SafeWeb". Interacting with the site at all prompts you to install a browser extension and enable notifications. Trying to download any video gives you a full page pop-over for extension installation for som…

That's how he described it but I tried it myself and found it perfectly functional to download a video with different options for size / quality. It has ads but not nearly as bad as described.

It's a service that is quasi illegal and explicitly breaks the YouTube terms of service. I think the search engine did a good job surfacing what was searched for, there just aren't going to be any free online YouTube downloaders without advertising.

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

#349

Post by fumeux_fume »

haizhung wrote: post #256

What always confuses me about the „search has gotten so bad“ mentality is that it is often based on anecdotal evidence at best, and anecdotal recollection at worst. Like, sure, I have the impression that search got worse over the last years, but .. has it really? How could you tell? And, honestly, this should be a verifiable claim; you can just try the top N search terms from Google trends or whatever and see how the…

So you're confused why other people aren't doing research for you and when they do provide some evidence, you dismiss it because it's not a large-scale scientific inquiry into search quality? Get frickin a grip.

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

#350

Post by freediver »

the__alchemist wrote: post #292
hannasanarion wrote: post #165

I'm not able to reproduce the author's bad results in Kagi, at all. What I'm seeing when searching the same terms is fantastic in comparison. I don't know what went wrong there. In the Youtube Downloader search, NortonSafeWeb is nowhere to be found. I get a couple of legit downloader websites, and some articles from reputable tech newspapers on how to use them or command line tools. In the Adblock search, ublock Orig…

I use Kagi because I'm trying to remove Google from my life, but their text search is worse than Google in my experience, and the image search is abysmal. I'm wondering how long I can keep this up. I already revert to Google for image search, and am finding myself using either Google or ChatGPT over Kagi more and more for text as well.

Kagi had a pretty substantial image search update just few days ago [1]. Do you still the issues with it?

[1] https://kagi.com/changelog#2793

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