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Google backtracks on search results design

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Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#341

Post by dx034 »

pb7 wrote: post #265
mattmanser wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't remember correctly, this is a persistent falsehood I see repeated in all these sort of threads. https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/du...

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so... “ In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of pa…

I've seen logs of a few medium sized sites and I've never seen DuckDuckBot really crawling any of these sites. I'm sure they use their own results to supplement some parts but most of the web results still seem to come from Bing.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#342

Post by dx034 »

Zebfross wrote: post #87
joshbaskin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched out to DDG as well today. See how it goes. Any takers for trying out Bing?

I’ve been using Bing for years with no regrets, but I live in the U.S. (and speak English) where I hear it is best.

Yeah, it really has problems if you tend to search in different languages or look for regional content outside of the US.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#343

Post by 3xblah »

nonbirithm wrote: post #335
3xblah wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long live privoxy. However, I wonder how privoxy users handle TLS. I use localhost proxies to decrypt TLS before it reaches destination programs as well as encrypt outgoing plaintext HTTP traffic from non-TLS enabled programs. Using proxies allows me to edit incoming and outgoing traffic where needed. From the privoxy FAQ: 4.15. How can Privoxy filter Secure (HTTPS) URLs? Since secure HTTP connections are encrypted S…

> As far as ad blocking is concerned, this is less of a restriction than it may seem, since ad sources are often identifiable by the host name Except if you use YouTube, which is a pretty significant service but impossible to use domain-based adblock like pi-hole with since both ads and content are served through the same Google domain. If you use the YouTube for Android app that means you have to sit through ads. Th…

"... but impossible to use domain-based adblock like pi-hole since both ads and content are served through the same Google domain."

However, ads and video are not served through the same Google domain.

Further, the ads are not served unless Javascript is enabled.

As such, aside from user comments, it is easy to retrieve the non-video content without retrieving the ads. Just use an HTTP client that ignores Javascript.

Javascript is not needed to view video from the domains that serve the video.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#344

Post by thrwaway69 »

kennyadam wrote: post #330
shadowgovt wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that restrict them from going where they want online?

For example, some students use their personal laptops in the sixth form. To access the student intranet, they need to enter the URL (and you ain't finding it on Google) and that's a huge struggle for many of them. Not understanding URLs also affects their ability to see through any bad emails that make it through the spam filters. If you understand URLs, you can hover over a link, see that it's pointing to bankcom.fz…

Which grade is this?

That's quite a shock if students don't know about urls. Can someone confirm if this is a secluded case or this is what most people end up with now a days.

I don't find this unbelievable but even here, I would expect 40% people to know about urls and 5% or so know about the technical details surrounding it.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#345

Post by Summershard »

knolan wrote: post #120
product50 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing like this is going to happen. Google Search is leaps and bounds ahead beyond anything else. And Google Assistant on top of this makes it even more effective. This was a mistake by Google and they heard the feedback and corrected it. MySpace analogy doesn't make sense since there is no Facebook, which was a competent social network, here. Search is a massive investment and you don't just have random companies…

> Duckduckgo itself uses Bing Search as its backend. Can you provide a source for this? I couldn’t find it myself, but I was searching with DDG. “DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional…

Well, it does use Bing as its backend. Not solely though.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#346

Post by distant_hat »

nonbirithm wrote: post #336

It seems every time Google ruins the user experience for its products, the reason is money. I guess that sounds obvious by now. For example, the the size of the skip button on YouTube ads on Android changed so it only has the width of the seconds counter instead of including the "Skip in N" text. Before you could keep pressing the button before the timer ran out without triggering the ad, if you were impatient, but n…

I work for an mobile ad company and we would not consider accidental clicks for billing. I wonder how Google handles it. Advertisers would complain if you got a high fraction of clicks where the user closed the window right away or did not engage with the website in a desired fashion.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#347

Post by tunap »

t223 wrote: post #272
tunap wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't go to HVAC school, but I have been moonlighting w/ a friend's HVAC business since 2002 for the exercise & appreciation of hard labor. That was well & good, and in time I was making decent, seasonal money working for someone else when not servicing IT needs of SB clients. Around 2008, as many of my clients were closing shop, I crossed paths with a "controls" guy and he showed me how to meld the technical & th…

Awesome advice, thanks. I’m happy to buy some stuff on eBay and play around. Any suggestions? How about programming software? Readily available? I recently picked up a Asco 300 w/comms module for my standby gen, DSE800 to control the engine, and a Siemens 9610 for consumption analysis. I’m working on controls for load shedding now. I put shunt trip breakers on my water heater and it’ll kick off when on standby since…

Most of the equipment & software I work with is owned/licensed by Honeywell and is proprietary, aka pricey. Older equipment can be found on reseller sites, but the developer software is expensive to license & hard to come by outside of the HON ecosystem.

If you go down the rabbit hole, check out Tridium, aka Niagara AX. Most(all?) of the big controls platforms are built on the Niagara framework.

Also, maybe contact contractors of Johnson Controls, Carrier Controls, Novar Controls, etc for more pertinent info.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#348

Post by userbinator »

3xblah wrote: post #328
userbinator wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A filtering proxy can still fix the results by substituting the real URLs, since they are still unmolested in the href= attribute of the anchor tags.

Long live privoxy. However, I wonder how privoxy users handle TLS. I use localhost proxies to decrypt TLS before it reaches destination programs as well as encrypt outgoing plaintext HTTP traffic from non-TLS enabled programs. Using proxies allows me to edit incoming and outgoing traffic where needed. From the privoxy FAQ: 4.15. How can Privoxy filter Secure (HTTPS) URLs? Since secure HTTP connections are encrypted S…

Proxomitron can use OpenSSL to MITM the TLS connection and filter "encrypted" pages too. Of course you need to do some certificate setup beforehand, but once you do that it works very well.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#349

Post by kennyadam »

shadowgovt wrote: post #331
kennyadam wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, some students use their personal laptops in the sixth form. To access the student intranet, they need to enter the URL (and you ain't finding it on Google) and that's a huge struggle for many of them. Not understanding URLs also affects their ability to see through any bad emails that make it through the spam filters. If you understand URLs, you can hover over a link, see that it's pointing to bankcom.fz…

> To access the student intranet, they need to enter the URL (and you ain't finding it on Google) and that's a huge struggle for many of them. Sorry, copy and paste or clicking on a link they were emailed is a huge struggle? How are they receiving these URLs that they aren't immediately usable? >Not understanding URLs also affects their ability to see through any bad emails that make it through the spam filters. I've…

You're being downvoted, which I think is because you've clearly decided nothing I can say will make any difference to you and your replies seem a bit cranky, but I'm not downvoting you.

Here's another example for you, that just happened today:

On a shared iPad, the iPad was returned with a note saying 'no safari'. I worked out that one student had changed the default Safari search engine to DuckDuckGo. For reasons, the school's ISP blocks DuckDuckGo and visiting it on an iPad just results in a 'connection was lost' message.

The next student needed to visit a website called Kahoot and the URL for this site is kahoot.com. Looking at the history I could see the student had just been typing 'kahoot' in to the URL/search bar over and over again. They also tried typing 'google'. At no point did they try entering the URL nor does it seem they even know how to do anything beyond type search keywords.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#350

Post by kennyadam »

thrwaway69 wrote: post #344
kennyadam wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, some students use their personal laptops in the sixth form. To access the student intranet, they need to enter the URL (and you ain't finding it on Google) and that's a huge struggle for many of them. Not understanding URLs also affects their ability to see through any bad emails that make it through the spam filters. If you understand URLs, you can hover over a link, see that it's pointing to bankcom.fz…

Which grade is this? That's quite a shock if students don't know about urls. Can someone confirm if this is a secluded case or this is what most people end up with now a days. I don't find this unbelievable but even here, I would expect 40% people to know about urls and 5% or so know about the technical details surrounding it.

This is all throughout the school, so ages 11 - 18.

If you haven't interacted with kids who don't have any tech-fluent influences in their life, you would be shocked at how much isn't understood. Just mobile phones and apps for the 'internet' has meant that it's so easy to access what you need (and also so limiting in what you can access) that most kids just haven't got a clue how the internet actually works.

I suppose most of the time they don't NEED to know, but I think it's a bit problematic that unless something has an app, they probably aren't going to know it exists. Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. is the entirety of what they access on the internet.

There are, of course, exceptions to this, but the majority are absolutely clueless. Ironic when everyone is expecting them to be so tech savvy because they've grown up around it. Problem is, it's too abstracted and too corporate.

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