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Teclis – Non-commercial web search

teclis.com

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Re: Teclis – Non-commercial web search

#71

Post by qwery »

This is the first time I've tried Teclis and it was a very positive experience. Always happy to see anything new in this space (search engineering?) and this seems particularly aligned with my interests.

My queries didn't get (obviously) mangled behind the scenes! Thank you for treating me with respect. Having said that, Teclis doesn't seem to treat alternate spellings of '-ise' words (e.g. normalise/normalize) as equivalent -- this is one case of auto-correction that I do appreciate in other search engines.

I just noticed the semantic search mode tip. I haven't tried it yet, but I like that it's not the default way to interpret my query.

I found it easy to find "technical" results and even (relevant) websites that I've never seen or heard of within the first ~10 hits. I wonder about the link between "non-commercial" as Teclis defines it and authentic, non-abusive, or otherwise desirable search results.

Also good:

- I didn't need to turn on javascript.

- clear info on the front page (the info itself and the fact that it's right there)

- results are actual normal links

- result snippet is normal selectable text (not a giant link)

Re: Teclis – Non-commercial web search

#72

Post by marban »

dbrereton wrote: post #10

Lots of great new search engines popping up that search the rest of the web that Google tends to ignore. Other ones worth checking out include: - https://search.marginalia.nu/ (A non-commercial search engine) - https://wiby.me/ (Tends to have those really weird and cool indie sites) - https://searchmysite.net/ (An index of personal websites) - https://indieweb-search.jamesg.blog/ (Search IndieWeb websites) - https://…

http://yup.is for business news

Re: Teclis – Non-commercial web search

#73

Post by m-i-l »

researchers wrote: post #32
marginalia_nu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a few of you noticed, narrow searches do not work very well because this is not a general web search engine and has a tiny index compared to Google. Use Teclis to discover more about a broader topic you are interested in and to discover writing from 'clean' websites on the web. Are you getting better results with vector search? I've been looking at this problem with my search engine as well. I've recently side-l…

Not OP but I am working on a search engine with vector ranking. Why do you say that vector search would help with narrow queries? In my experience, semantic search helps broaden the query to search for adjacent ideas without exact term marches. Hybrid approaches that use vector search for broad matches and rerank using BM25 could be what you’re looking for. See https://blog.vespa.ai/efficient-open-domain-question-ans…

> "Hybrid approaches that use vector search for broad matches and rerank using BM25"

Hybrid approaches, e.g. Learning To Rank, normally do it the other way around, given the main benefit of hybrid is to mitigate the cost (time) of vector search, i.e. use a non-vector search (e.g. BM25) to get a broadly relevant set of results first (and quickly), and then the much more computationally expensive vector search to rerank the smaller results set. There are various approaches to try to make vector search more viable across large corpuses, e.g. Locality Sensitive Hashing and Approximate Nearest Neighbour Search, but if you've implemented one of those than I'm not sure there'd be any benefit in retaining a hybrid approach.

Re: Teclis – Non-commercial web search

#74

Post by drexlspivey »

freediver wrote: post #13

Hey all - creator here. It looks like next page of results does not work currently because wrong query param (should be "q" instead of "topics"). Easy enough to manually change if you need it. As a few of you noticed, narrow searches do not work very well because this is not a general web search engine and has a tiny index compared to Google. Use Teclis to discover more about a broader topic you are interested in and…

Teclis is the name of a High elf wizard in Warhammer (a miniature fantasy strategy game). Is that where the name comes from?

Re: Teclis – Non-commercial web search

#76

Post by chris_f »

Seirdy wrote: post #55
chris_f wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit to them for trying some new things on the UI front, but it looks like the organic results are from Bing (like most other alt/privacy search engines). It would be interesting to learn more about how/if they plan to build their own index, or set themselves apart. IMO, Kagi and Brave search are the two best alternative general search engines right now. Runnaroo was pretty good as well ;-)

I think Mojeek is a better alternative "general" engine than Brave because Brave's ranking algorithm was optimized against Google SERPs (back when it was called Cliqz), making many SERPs too similar to Google's. Kagi uses a mix of Teclis and other engines (claims to use Bing and Google) but the ability to adjust ranking yourself is its wild card. Neeva is similar, combining its own index with some ability to influenc…

Mojeek is excellent, and because they use 100% their own index they have a much higher hill to climb.

When I say "Best"for a general search engine, my definition is that it would fulfill the needs of myself and my non-technical family members. Kagi and Brave Search both do that while being different enough to not be just another Bing clone. I use Mojeek often, think it is great, and having their own index is a tremendous asset, but it doesn't quite meet that full definition yet.

Re: Teclis – Non-commercial web search

#78

Post by neya »

Does anyone know of a decent search engine that searches and shows results of only vintage type sites - you know, the ones built with the old school HTML tables or frontpage kind of stuff? Often, these are the most valuable in content, with less promotional bullshit like a random popup asking to signup for a newsletter or perhaps some dubious GDPR notice with all personal data collection toggles set to "off".

Re: Teclis – Non-commercial web search

#79

Post by freediver »

drexlspivey wrote: post #74
freediver wrote: post #13

Hey all - creator here. It looks like next page of results does not work currently because wrong query param (should be "q" instead of "topics"). Easy enough to manually change if you need it. As a few of you noticed, narrow searches do not work very well because this is not a general web search engine and has a tiny index compared to Google. Use Teclis to discover more about a broader topic you are interested in and…

Teclis is the name of a High elf wizard in Warhammer (a miniature fantasy strategy game). Is that where the name comes from?

Yes, although I was more of a Wood elf player in WHFB.

Re: Teclis – Non-commercial web search

#80

Post by JSONderulo »

dbrereton wrote: post #10

Lots of great new search engines popping up that search the rest of the web that Google tends to ignore. Other ones worth checking out include: - https://search.marginalia.nu/ (A non-commercial search engine) - https://wiby.me/ (Tends to have those really weird and cool indie sites) - https://searchmysite.net/ (An index of personal websites) - https://indieweb-search.jamesg.blog/ (Search IndieWeb websites) - https://…

you.com is worth checking out
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