Is it just me or do search engines suck nowadays? It seems to me a few years ago I could enter a search phrase and get hundreds of relevent results now I get maybe 5 that match my search phrase, the rest being totally useless.
Yes I agree it seems like the first page or two is relevant the rest are just miles off topic, useless junk.
I stay FAR away from google search. Haven't used it in years because Google is far too nosy, but since this isn't in the Privacy forum, I'll just say search engines are not what they used to be. I think it's all to do with who pays the most to get on the top of the list among other things. Also it depends on the nature of what you're searching for. Sometimes a generic result suffices, usually on the first page, other times you want to dig deep and get a good cross section of results. Junk results are annoying for sure. One thing I've noticed is hits can be the OPPOSITE to what you were searching for.
I pretty much use only StartPage or DuckDuckGo these days. Google is too much into spying on me - so I stay away from them. Makes me pine for the good olde dayz of AltaVista - sigh. Of course I really miss DEC as well. I have been playing with Cliqz browser and it has a built-in search that is sooper fast.
Good question @Circuit. I've wondered the same thing. I use Startpage and ixquick(proxy) occasionally DDG.
Doesnt duckduckgo just retrieve google results by proxy? Ive tried a lot of search engines only to find out they are using google. At one time there were tons of independent search engines and it seems one by one they just dissapeared like boardsearch, used to return results from community forums retrieved a wealth of info now its gone. Another thing, the garden web forums were huge, discussion topic catagories on a wide range of topics, not just gardens. There must be litterally millions of posts on their servers over the years but I cant remember the last time a web search turned up any results from there. These days its seems web search forum post results seem to come almost exclusively from reddit and quora yet there has to be millions of web forums out there.
Startpage is also doing it, it fetches results from the Google search engine. Not only from Google but also other search engines.
As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy. https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles
There is too much info now, you need to be more specific when searching for something. In the past, you would type "Milka" and the popular chocolate brand would popup. These days, you would get: Milka - fonts, sports, porn, music, etc. You need to type something like: "MiIka chocolate". I usually get what I am looking for, when searching like this. That depends, how you look at it. Considering how much information is out there (see above), even with filtering, you are getting too much to digest. I for sure do not need search engine to show me recipes, politics or info about cars, so I am glad for even a partial filtering. In that video, his friend did not see any info about riots, because was not interested in that, he would not click on it. Google and StartPage are filtering results, they do not display "illegal" content or what is considered illegal at the moment (like RT news). DuckDuckGo is un-censored, for now.
Quality of search engine results depends on language you are searching. For english language there are more search engines, but for languages used by smaller population usually only one, most popular in these area, search engine gives good results. It also depends whether search query is geographically related to some region.
[Edited] Well there is also evidence (leaks from employees & former employees) out there that Google, using Filter Bubbles (as do Youtube, Twitter and Facebook), is also filtering things so that they show you what Google wants you to see and eliminates a lot of things you might like to see. Social Engineering by an organization that wields a lot of power. But they ARE private so they can censor what they like. Try a Google search for happy white couples (images). Now try a Google search for happy black couples (images). Jeez - must be a bug or something, eh? Truly is too bad that DEC - via AltaVista - gave the founders of Goggles a turn down when they visited DEC.
Goggle must have fixed that, I tried the two searches and got pictures of smiling happy white people, and then happy smiling black people.
No. happy black couples produces exclusively black couples happy white couples produces white, black, interracial couples
I guess that list is outdated? It says: "* Lukol : http://www.lukol.com/ - anonymous search, Google custom search via proxy, so no IP, no cookies, image search too."
lukol is obsolete - needs cookies, itself, several scripts from google and ofc google cookies -> no gain, forget this crap
