Alternatives to Google search

guinness · **Joined:** Mon Aug 27, 2007 2:00 am **Posts:** 3740

Seems DuckDuckGo is starting to become recognised as a good alternative search engine. Seems their figures for number of visits is increasing exponentially.

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2012/02/16/duckdu ... aaaaay-up/

SYSTEM · **Posted:** Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:29 am

guinness wrote:

Seems DuckDuckGo is starting to become recognised as a good alternative search engine. Seems their figures for number of visits is increasing exponentially.

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2012/02/16/duckdu ... aaaaay-up/

Excellent.

I think they have potential to challenge Google one day.

P.S. DuckDuckGo became my default search engine at the beginning of the year.

guinness · **Joined:** Mon Aug 27, 2007 2:00 am **Posts:** 3740

Quote:

P.S. DuckDuckGo became my default search engine at the beginning of the year.

Brilliant!

It's just a pit http://lmddgtfy.com is still down, this would definitely increase the traffic to DDG.com. Perhaps they (DDG) should acquire the domain or...?

WhoIs >> http://www.whois.net/whois/lmddgtfy.com

carbonize · **Posted:** Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:58 am

Well I'm spreading the word in my own inimitable way http://www.webmasterbb.net/search-engin ... ngine.html

webfork · **Posted:** Fri Feb 17, 2012 7:00 pm

carbonize wrote:

Well I'm spreading the word in my own inimitable way http://www.webmasterbb.net/search-engin ... ngine.html

Quote:

Google tailors your results based on what it knows about you. If a post from one of your friends on Google+ contains the search term then that will come at the top. If a site you have visited before contains the search term then that will score high. What this theoretically means is all your SEO work aint worth shit as far as Google is concerned as it will push you down the results in favour of G+ posts and sites the person has visited before or sites Google thinks you will like based on sites you have visited before.

Yeah when I'm logged into my gmail account, I have to see links associated with someone from my past that I have absolutely nothing in common with because he is in my contact list and bookmarked it or something. Its not just a poor search result, its annoying.

guinness · **Joined:** Mon Aug 27, 2007 2:00 am **Posts:** 3740

I've heard about this too. Someone once told me they had advertisements for dog products in a message sent by someone who is fascinated with dogs, though the message didn't mention or contain the word dog at all! A very clever system indeed.

webfork · **Posted:** Sun Feb 19, 2012 12:40 pm

guinness wrote:

I've heard about this too. Someone once told me they had advertisements for dog products in a message sent by someone who is fascinated with dogs, though the message didn't mention or contain the word dog at all! A very clever system indeed.

They quit looking for keywords as far as I know and started looking at circumstantial links. So a complex set of data over time that would suggest possible interests. Although there's also some failures, some of these algorithms are good and getting better.

Aggregate data, or sort of a related-to-related data is definitely going to define (good and bad) the next 10 years. So if you shop at stores that people with bad credit shop at, your credit score will go down (American Express is doing this) and Target will start sending you baby catalogs based if you have a female in your household that's statistically likely to get pregnant.

If that sounds creepy, quit using Google and credit cards.

freakazoid · **Joined:** Wed Jul 18, 2007 5:45 pm **Posts:** 598

carbonize wrote:

Good reason not to use Scroogle other than it being ugly. I did a search for Lazarus Guestbook which I write and it returned saying "Google is temporarily blocking this Scroogle server when it sees the pattern of search terms you just entered.". Performed same search on Google with no problems. tried it again and got a 403 from Scroogle servers.

I'll stick with DDG.

Since Scroogle was becoming less reliable and recently went down altogether, Startpage appears to fit all the prerequisites for me:

* Use Google
* No tracking, no logging
* Use HTTPS

Read their FAQ and privacy policy for more info.

Toxteth O'Grady first mentioned Startpage here and Magibon has been using it. Now I am!

I am Baas · **Joined:** Thu Aug 07, 2008 4:51 am **Posts:** 2591

freakazoid wrote:

Magibon has been using it

You are jumping into conclusion here or using the wrong verb tense.

freakazoid · **Joined:** Wed Jul 18, 2007 5:45 pm **Posts:** 598

I am Baas wrote:

freakazoid wrote:

Magibon has been using it

You are jumping into conclusion here or using the wrong verb tense.

I'm jumping to conclusions here. Thanks for catching me on that!

Either way, I'm using Startpage now.

carbonize · **Posted:** Mon Feb 20, 2012 3:34 am

Anyone else noticed that Google results page in Firefox has started to be different to other web browsers since this weekend? No sidebar and no personalised results. Maybe it's just Firefox 13 or maybe Google is starting to cripple it's services to Firefox users just as they already do to Opera users.

Edit: Just installed Useragent Switcher and made Firefox ID as Chrome. No surprise that the results page shows with sidebar and personalised results as expected.

guinness · **Joined:** Mon Aug 27, 2007 2:00 am **Posts:** 3740

I just came across this >> http://ddgg.nfriedly.com/ though I haven't tested it myself.

Edit: Didn't really work as expected, though I'm using V11.62.

guinness · **Joined:** Mon Aug 27, 2007 2:00 am **Posts:** 3740

Scroogle has shut down >> http://www.ghacks.net/2012/02/22/scroog ... s-website/

freakazoid · **Joined:** Wed Jul 18, 2007 5:45 pm **Posts:** 598

guinness wrote:

Scroogle has shut down >> http://www.ghacks.net/2012/02/22/scroog ... s-website/

Yeah, that's a shame! Hopefully other Google scrapers pop up.

carbonize · **Posted:** Wed Feb 22, 2012 11:35 am

I see Google has miraculously fixed whatever was messing up the results page in Firefox.

Alternatives to Google search

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