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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

#371

Post by pixl97 »

hyperpape wrote: post #284
marginalia_nu wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point he's trying to make that the search results page from the mainstream search engines are a minefield of scams that a regular person would have difficulty navigating safely. If he was looking at relevance, yours would be a solid point, but since most of the emphasis is on harm, a smaller sample works. Like "we found used needles in 3 out of 5 playgrounds" doesn't typically garner requests for p-values…

I agree we can say "this is a minefield of scams" without doing a comparison. There still is a question about when it got bad--I think Dan mentions 2016 as a point of comparison, and there were plenty of scams back then, so you might wonder whether the days when a query wouldn't return many scams. If you go back far enough, then there wasn't the same kind of SEO, and Internet scams were much smaller/less organized, b…

I think the automation tools for scams are what the major change is. In the distant past it was humans doing this, now I'm guessing there are a few larger businesses and likely nation states that have a point and click interface that removes 99% of the past work.

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

#372

Post by ametrau »

Nextgrid wrote: post #109
stevage wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time believing it's so difficult for a search engine to distinguish between a credible, respected website that has been around a while with some generated garbage that exists to be a search result. We humans can tell them apart, so in principle, computers can too.

Yes, this should be table stakes for a classifier - a company with the resource of Google can definitely solve that problem if they weren't themselves in the business of spam (advertising) and benefited from spam sites (as they often include Google ads/analytics).

> table stakes

Always “table stakes”. Do you think in buzzwords also? I’ve always wondered this. Or do you think normal words and then translate it into this bandwagoning / membership proving garbage ?

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

#373

Post by notnullorvoid »

berkut wrote: post #100
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…

Yeah, I've noticed this as well with DDG recently: even with the localised checkbox disabled it still prioritises them, which often is very frustrating as the results are then almost totally useless. However, more generally, I've personally found that DDG (and maybe Bing's then?) localised results are just really bad, and have been for the multiple years I've been using DDG and it's had this feature: I'm in New Zeala…

That's a bit surprising that you're seeing spam sites with .ca, those are illegal here and all .ca domains must be registered by someone in Canada.

You can report them: https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canada-anti-spam-legislatio...

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

#374

Post by _benj »

cratermoon wrote: post #361
EA-3167 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi is just the best, it feels like Google did before a decade+ of enshittification and ad tech.

Did anyone notice that Kagi showed as barely better than Google in the article?

Yeah, for the the results of kagi are so much better than anything else, that it makes me wonder how objective can one be measuring search results.

I use google in a clients computer and it’s just horrible.

But it could also be a factor of the customizations I’ve made for my kagi. Ban quick a few paywalls sites, always put Wikipedia articles on top, prefer blogs than stackoverflow stuff…

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

#375

Post by ta988 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #11

While I've made huge improvements to the algo recently, I do think Marginalia Search got a bit lucky with the sample queries, as it is still IMO far more hit and miss than many alternatives, but that also speaks for how hard evaluating search quality is. Its efficacy is also strongly dependent on understanding that it's a keyword search engine with no semantic understanding.

Just my feedback after trying to finally get to what it is exactly.

I tried to find marginalia on DDG, not on the first page. Google has it after some garbage. If I go to marginalia.nu I get a SSL error. search.marginalia.nu works

If i search on marginalia for duckduckgo there first link is somewhat relevant but is about the app, all the other links are related to DDG but of curious relevance.

If I search for ublacklist mentioned above, I do not see anything directly relevant.

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

#376

Post by pixl97 »

bee_rider wrote: post #314
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 I am left to wonder why there are so many posts about the sentiment that search got worse without anyone ever verifying that claim. I suspect it has gotten worse, so posts complaining about it resonate. But, it is not really a huge problem, and anyway it isn’t as if there’s much I can do about it, so I’m not going to bother collecting statistically valid data. I think this is generally true about a lot of things…

When it comes to human psychology what we believe tends to be more important than what is when it comes to future predictions of our actions. If people think search sucks then it's likely they'll use less of it in the future and it opens up companies like Google for disruption.

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

#377

Post by ametrau »

asah wrote: post #217
freediver wrote: post #158

Current Kagi results for those without an account to compare: youtube downloader https://kagi.com/search?q=youtube+downloader&r=us&sh=_szITdy... ad blocker https://kagi.com/search?q=Ad+blocker&r=us&sh=-BHzV2ZoCDpmgOu... download Firefox https://kagi.com/search?q=Download+Firefox&r=us&sh=zkkmc_EQX... why do wider tires have better grip? https://kagi.com/search?q=Why+do+wider+tires+have+better+gri... why do they keep m…

Kagi gives me websites that require more clicking; Google just gives me reasonable answers and I don't see spam in your examples. "why do wider tires have better grip?" Wider tires provide more grip due to a larger contact patch with the road. While it's true that friction is not directly dependent on surface area, a larger contact patch allows for more even weight distribution and better traction, particularly durin…

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

#378

Post by bee_rider »

pixl97 wrote: post #362
bee_rider wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An adblocker is necessary, and IMO a script blocker as well. I feel vaguely like search has gotten worse over time, but it is not a huge problem—usually a good site is on the first page or two, and so I can just go check them out. But if clicking a site meant I would be under attack, that really increases the stakes, I start to care strongly about the absence of bad sites, not just the existence of a good one. Other…

It would suppress linking to malware executables, but just general programs I don't see why they would.

By the time you know enough about a site to download some random executable off it and run it, you know more than enough to just enter the URL, so there’s no point to having it show up in search results.

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

#379

Post by [deleted] »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #337
latexr wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't understand why anyone writing articles about ChatGPT uses 3.5. Because that’s what most people have access to. It’s absolutely worthless to most readers to talk about something they’ll never pay for and it’s not the job of random third-parties to incentivise others to send money to OpenAI. What I really don’t understand is why anyone gets so hung up about it and blames the writer. If you’re bothered…

> Because that’s what most people have access to. I’d agree with this rationale if the author clearly communicated their choice of model and the consequences of that choice upfront. In this post the table of results and the text of the post itself simply reads “ChatGPT” with no mention of 3.5 until the middle of a paragraph of text in the appendix. > It’s absolutely worthless to most readers to talk about something t…

[deleted]

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

#380

Post by ta988 »

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…

Yes to get an accurate comparison we would need to have results from queries 10 years ago.

I still remember myself having to really often go to page 3 and more of google searches to find things even really early on.

I think it has never been good, got a bit better before SEO farms took all the gain out. That's my feeling with nothing to back it.

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