Neat article here:
https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/

With Ycombinator discussion here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31820149

Covers a few smaller search engines with their own indexes (so, not
Bing, Google, or Yandex). But concludes they're all of rather limited
use.

Me I'm having fun playing around with:
* Kagi
* Marginalia.nu
* Wiby.me
* Searchmysite.net

They're each limited in their own way, but:
* Google search is getting subjectively worse at doing the basics
* The DDG agreement with Microsoft really irks me
* There's not much else out there

The GOOG is now so bad at the basics I'm starting to wonder if they've
adjusted their algorithm intentionally to feed me a steady diet of
tripe. Youtube is similar. "People who searched for [performance
comparison UFS ZFS] also searched for [best Kardashian wardobe fails]
etc." Yeah, well who the F asked you to discuss what other people search
for? Give me what I asked for, ya obnoxious, arrogant tw*t, and try to
stay on topic.

Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2022, um 06:52:40 Uhr schrieb Retrograde:

> They're each limited in their own way, but:
> * Google search is getting subjectively worse at doing the basics

What do you exactly mean? Censorship, removed results, tracking?

> * The DDG agreement with Microsoft really irks me

DDG also implements censorship, at least in the EU, for me it is over
with them.

> * There's not much else out there

There is. I use searx. There are multiple instances available, the
search results are good - but a little bit worse than Google.
Also, no censorship in their search results in the EU - yet.
https://searx.be/

In article <20220621155200.67f31855@ryz>, Marco Moock <mo01@posteo.de> wrote:
>Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2022, um 06:52:40 Uhr schrieb Retrograde:
>
>> They're each limited in their own way, but:
>> * Google search is getting subjectively worse at doing the basics
>
>What do you exactly mean? Censorship, removed results, tracking?

You're looking for a poem that has the exact phrase "the great grey plains
of ooze" and you search for that with quotes around it and you get a million
things that are not that exact string and somewhere buried in with all of
those spurious results you will find the exact match. When in fact by using
quotes you specified an exact match.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 2022-06-21, Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
> In article <20220621155200.67f31855@ryz>, Marco Moock <mo01@posteo.de> wrote:
>>Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2022, um 06:52:40 Uhr schrieb Retrograde:
>>
>>> They're each limited in their own way, but:
>>> * Google search is getting subjectively worse at doing the basics
>>
>>What do you exactly mean? Censorship, removed results, tracking?
>
> You're looking for a poem that has the exact phrase "the great grey plains
> of ooze" and you search for that with quotes around it and you get a million
> things that are not that exact string and somewhere buried in with all of
> those spurious results you will find the exact match. When in fact by using
> quotes you specified an exact match.
> --scott

Well said. I was going to respond simply, "worse at showing me results
for the thing I'm searching for." You might not even get that one hit
buried in the rest of the shit; it might just all be shit.

I interpret it as arrogance. Google is more focused on showing you what
they want you to see than on what you were searching for. Amazingly,
there's room for disruption here, suddenly. Just, it needs a firm with
a lot of financial backing to make it happen.

"You are looking for a certain poem. Here are some things you might
enjoy clicking instead:
* ridiculous click-bait article
* listicle related to some pop subject
* latest rage subject
* some stupid thing about politics
* some SEO thing with a bunch of key words in it
* something vaguely sexually suggestive"

On 21 Jun 2022 14:37:01 -0000
kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
> In article <20220621155200.67f31855@ryz>, Marco Moock <mo01@posteo.de> wrote:
> >Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2022, um 06:52:40 Uhr schrieb Retrograde:
> >
> >> They're each limited in their own way, but:
> >> * Google search is getting subjectively worse at doing the basics
> >
> >What do you exactly mean? Censorship, removed results, tracking?
>
> You're looking for a poem that has the exact phrase "the great grey plains
> of ooze" and you search for that with quotes around it and you get a million
> things that are not that exact string and somewhere buried in with all of
> those spurious results you will find the exact match. When in fact by using
> quotes you specified an exact match.

I just tried this search with w3m (on Google) and got exactly 2 results :
books.google.co.uk/books?id=0YDal4Lj59kC
[ Much longer link than this but the above takes you to the correct book. ]
https://vdoc.pub/documents/the-ultimate-book-of-saturday-science-the-very-best-backyard-science-experiments-you-can-do-yourself-3tpvpkl76mhg

both referring to "The Ultimate Book Of Saturday Science The Very Best
Backyard Science Experiments You Can Do Yourself" .

Trying going to the link
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22the+great+grey+plains+of+ooze%22
and see what happens.

--
vlaho.ninja/prog

On Tue, 21 Jun 2022 15:52:00 +0200
Marco Moock <mo01@posteo.de> wrote:
> Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2022, um 06:52:40 Uhr schrieb Retrograde:
>
> > They're each limited in their own way, but:
> > * Google search is getting subjectively worse at doing the basics
>
> What do you exactly mean? Censorship, removed results, tracking?
>
> > * The DDG agreement with Microsoft really irks me
>
> DDG also implements censorship, at least in the EU, for me it is over
> with them.

Can you give move information on this ?

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 21 Jun 2022 14:37:01 -0000
>kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>> In article <20220621155200.67f31855@ryz>, Marco Moock <mo01@posteo.de> wrote:
>> >Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2022, um 06:52:40 Uhr schrieb Retrograde:
>> >
>> >> They're each limited in their own way, but:
>> >> * Google search is getting subjectively worse at doing the basics
>> >
>> >What do you exactly mean? Censorship, removed results, tracking?
>>
>> You're looking for a poem that has the exact phrase "the great grey plains
>> of ooze" and you search for that with quotes around it and you get a million
>> things that are not that exact string and somewhere buried in with all of
>> those spurious results you will find the exact match. When in fact by using
>> quotes you specified an exact match.
>
>I just tried this search with w3m (on Google) and got exactly 2 results :
> books.google.co.uk/books?id=0YDal4Lj59kC
> [ Much longer link than this but the above takes you to the correct book. ]
> https://vdoc.pub/documents/the-ultimate-book-of-saturday-science-the-very-best-backyard-science-experiments-you-can-do-yourself-3tpvpkl76mhg
>
>both referring to "The Ultimate Book Of Saturday Science The Very Best
>Backyard Science Experiments You Can Do Yourself" .
>
>Trying going to the link
> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22the+great+grey+plains+of+ooze%22
>and see what happens.

Odd, isn't it, since there are a number of different pages with Kipling's
_The Deep Sea Cables_ on them?
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On Tue, 21 Jun 2022 06:52:40 -0400
Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> wrote:
> The GOOG is now so bad at the basics I'm starting to wonder if they've
> adjusted their algorithm intentionally to feed me a steady diet of
> tripe. Youtube is similar. "People who searched for [performance
> comparison UFS ZFS] also searched for [best Kardashian wardobe fails]
> etc." Yeah, well who the F asked you to discuss what other people search
> for? Give me what I asked for, ya obnoxious, arrogant tw*t, and try to
> stay on topic.

Since a long time , I have been using Google to search youtube rather than
youtube's search facility.
http://www.google.com/search?q=performance+comparison+UFS+ZFS+site:youtube.com
gives me around 10 results. Some of them are not on youtube but all of them
seem relevant to the search string.

I note that on several occasions I have got better results using Google to
search any of the amazon websites rather than use the amazon website search
facility.

Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2022, um 17:55:35 Uhr schrieb Retrograde:

> Well said. I was going to respond simply, "worse at showing me
> results for the thing I'm searching for." You might not even get that
> one hit buried in the rest of the shit; it might just all be shit.

I know, but certain results aren't there that are there with Google.
But it seems to be better that some months ago for certain search terms
(containing really old information).

Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2022, um 18:21:33 Uhr schrieb Spiros Bousbouras:

> > DDG also implements censorship, at least in the EU, for me it is
> > over with them.
>
> Can you give move information on this ?

The european union ordered that search engines must censor results from
certain Russian media, like Russia Today.
The operate de.rt.com (a German webpage of them).

DuckDuckGo implemented that they don't show results from their service
anymore in the EU. They also announced that they want to ban them from
their results.

Searx didn't implement that, but at this time it also shows no results
for that. I need to figure out what the exact reason for that is (maybe
their index source does not provide it anymore.

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> Trying going to the link
> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22the+great+grey+plains+of+ooze%22
> and see what happens.

Through that HN thread I also learnt that on Google you can go:
Tools -> All results
and change that dropdown to 'Verbatim'

and it seems to do the right thing. For example, I searched for:
MTA9ASF2G72PZ-3G2E1
and with that dropdown set to 'All results' hit #5 contains the string
MTA9ASF2G72PZ
but not the suffix, while if I change it to 'Verbatim' all the hits do
contain the exact string.

(but not one of the ads, which is close but with suffix -2G9E1)

Theo

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> I note that on several occasions I have got better results using Google to
> search any of the amazon websites rather than use the amazon website search
> facility.

Amazon's search is not designed to help you find things, it's designed to
railroad you into buying things that make them the most profit.

For example, sort by price simply doesn't work: there is a completely
different number of search hits when doing sort by price than the default
sort order, and many of them not what you searched for. Plus about half the
listings are for promoted items which don't obey the sort order.

The solution for that is to stick with the default sort order but instead
use the 'From: $... To $...' box, starting with say 'To: $5' and gradually
increasing until you find something suitable.

Theo

Marco Moock <mo01@posteo.de> wrote:
> Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2022, um 18:21:33 Uhr schrieb Spiros Bousbouras:
>
>> > DDG also implements censorship, at least in the EU, for me it is
>> > over with them.
>>
>> Can you give move information on this ?
>
> The european union ordered that search engines must censor results from
> certain Russian media, like Russia Today.
> The operate de.rt.com (a German webpage of them).
>
> DuckDuckGo implemented that they don't show results from their service
> anymore in the EU. They also announced that they want to ban them from
> their results.

There's also the fact that they're forced to pass on any censorship
applied to Bing's results because they're mainly (perhaps entirely)
using their data. Hence they recently blocked "piracy" sites for a
while:
https://www.techspot.com/news/94234-duckduckgo-blocks-piracy-websites-search-results.html

I mentioned that here a month ago while talking to myself after
posting the same link as the OP.

> Searx didn't implement that, but at this time it also shows no results
> for that. I need to figure out what the exact reason for that is (maybe
> their index source does not provide it anymore.

Searx instances (there's not really one Searx because different
instances have different lists of source search engines enabled)
are a similar case. If one instance sources mainly from Yandex,
then you'd get the results, but if it's mainly looking at sites
that do have those results censored, obviously the censored version
would look the most correct to Searx.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Jun 2022 06:52:40 -0400
> Since a long time , I have been using Google to search youtube rather than
> youtube's search facility.
> http://www.google.com/search?q=performance+comparison+UFS+ZFS+site:youtube.com
> gives me around 10 results. Some of them are not on youtube but all of them
> seem relevant to the search string.

The same thing works for DDG. Video searching is the one time that
I do sometimes still use Google though, because video.google.com
gathers up results from a lot of different video sites besides
YouTube.

Otherwise I like that DDG really only gives you sites at the domain
specified with the "site:" option.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

On Tue, 21 Jun 2022 22:11:14 +0200
Marco Moock <mo01@posteo.de> wrote:
> Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2022, um 18:21:33 Uhr schrieb Spiros Bousbouras:
>
> > > DDG also implements censorship, at least in the EU, for me it is
> > > over with them.
> >
> > Can you give move information on this ?
>
> The european union ordered that search engines must censor results from
> certain Russian media, like Russia Today.
> The operate de.rt.com (a German webpage of them).
>
> DuckDuckGo implemented that they don't show results from their service
> anymore in the EU. They also announced that they want to ban them from
> their results.

What happens if a search engine does not obey ? Will they get fined ? I tried
googling for the EU measures but I wasn't able to see specifics about search
engines. But if there are (large) fines involved then you can't blame a
search engine for obeying.

> Searx didn't implement that, but at this time it also shows no results
> for that. I need to figure out what the exact reason for that is (maybe
> their index source does not provide it anymore.

On 21 Jun 2022 22:56:59 +0100 (BST)
Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I note that on several occasions I have got better results using Google to
> > search any of the amazon websites rather than use the amazon website search
> > facility.
>
> Amazon's search is not designed to help you find things, it's designed to
> railroad you into buying things that make them the most profit.

I only started seeing unsatisfactory results in the last 2 years , perhaps 1.
I don't remember specific examples but often I'm looking for a specialised
book , possibly one out of print. amazon search does not even display results
about books whereas a Google search with site:www.amazon.... has it as the
first match. I don't get the sense that the primary reason is amazon trying
to manipulate me , I mean there's just no connection between what I was
looking for and what results I saw. Possibly the amazon algorithm takes
availability of products into account but gives it too much weight relative
to the degree of matching with the search string.

> For example, sort by price simply doesn't work: there is a completely
> different number of search hits when doing sort by price than the default
> sort order, and many of them not what you searched for. Plus about half the
> listings are for promoted items which don't obey the sort order.
>
> The solution for that is to stick with the default sort order but instead
> use the 'From: $... To $...' box, starting with say 'To: $5' and gradually
> increasing until you find something suitable.

I have used sort by price very little but I never noticed anything abnormal.

--
CALAMARI WRESTLER is basically a "boxing movie", and follows most of the
conventions of the genre... with the exception of species.
https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1419366/

Am Mittwoch, 22. Juni 2022, um 09:06:20 Uhr schrieb Spiros Bousbouras:

> What happens if a search engine does not obey ? Will they get fined ?
> I tried googling for the EU measures but I wasn't able to see
> specifics about search engines. But if there are (large) fines
> involved then you can't blame a search engine for obeying.

I know that, but at least they could inform their users that they are
forced to censor that and don't like censorship. But they don't even do
that, so I assume, they also like censorship and search result bias -
like Google.

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21 Jun 2022 22:56:59 +0100 (BST)
> Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> > Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I note that on several occasions I have got better results using Google to
> > > search any of the amazon websites rather than use the amazon website search
> > > facility.
> >
> > Amazon's search is not designed to help you find things, it's designed to
> > railroad you into buying things that make them the most profit.
>
> I only started seeing unsatisfactory results in the last 2 years , perhaps 1.
> I don't remember specific examples but often I'm looking for a specialised
> book , possibly one out of print. amazon search does not even display results
> about books whereas a Google search with site:www.amazon.... has it as the
> first match. I don't get the sense that the primary reason is amazon trying
> to manipulate me , I mean there's just no connection between what I was
> looking for and what results I saw. Possibly the amazon algorithm takes
> availability of products into account but gives it too much weight relative
> to the degree of matching with the search string.

I noticed it when searching for 'toilet plunger'. It was absolutely
desperate for me to buy something called 'the Luigi' - a piece of plastic
which is just one of the standard designs being produced by a factory
somewhere and numerous no-brand versions available. On the first page of
hits there are 7 listings for the Luigi (strictly the same item in two
different colours). It's 'Amazon's choice', it's 'Recommended' by a third
party, and there are several 'Sponsored' listings.

That's 1-48 of 234 results for "toilet plunger".
If I flip to 'sort by price' it's now
1-48 of over 3,000 results for "toilet plunger"

although, to be fair, on that instance all of those 48 have 'toilet' and
'plunger' in the title, which is not the case on many searches. And only 4
of those are sponsored items that don't obey the price sorting, usually
there's many more.

Some items come high up the sort order because they are £0.35 but with £4.99
delivery, which the sort doesn't account for. And many of the top hits are
ship-from-China with delivery in 2 months, which you can't exclude from
searches without filtering by Prime.

> I have used sort by price very little but I never noticed anything abnormal.

It is usually problematic when you're searching for a generic thing, rather
than a branded product like a book for which there's exactly one listing.

Theo

Theo wrote:

> I noticed it when searching for 'toilet plunger'. It was absolutely
> desperate for me to buy something called 'the Luigi' - a piece of plastic
> which is just one of the standard designs being produced by a factory
> somewhere and numerous no-brand versions available. On the first page of
> hits there are 7 listings for the Luigi (strictly the same item in two
> different colours). It's 'Amazon's choice', it's 'Recommended' by a third
> party, and there are several 'Sponsored' listings.

For me Amazon's Choice is a standard wooden handle with rubber disc "dalek
manipulator" design; the Best Seller is the colourful Luigi, following that
there are variations on those designs with different names/colours/prices, a
"snake" design, plus a "stirrup pump" design that appears to operate by
converting the bog into some sort of Stargate Portal.

There doesn't seem to be particular emphasis on the Luigi ...

> For me Amazon's Choice is a standard wooden handle with rubber disc "dalek
> manipulator" design; the Best Seller is the colourful Luigi, following that
> there are variations on those designs with different names/colours/prices, a
> "snake" design, plus a "stirrup pump" design that appears to operate by
> converting the bog into some sort of Stargate Portal.
>
> There doesn't seem to be particular emphasis on the Luigi ...

To me this is troublesome further. Amazon is sure Theo wants to buy a
Luigi. Based on something in their database: geography, implied
economic status, search history, some key word in gmail inbox, what?

Of course, no one know what "they" have on "us." And it's probably
bound to stay that way.

Theo wrote:
>
> I noticed it when searching for 'toilet plunger'. It was absolutely
> desperate for me to buy something called 'the Luigi' - a piece of plastic
> which is just one of the standard designs being produced by a factory
> somewhere and numerous no-brand versions available. On the first page of
> hits there are 7 listings for the Luigi (strictly the same item in two
> different colours). It's 'Amazon's choice', it's 'Recommended' by a third
> party, and there are several 'Sponsored' listings.

I don't find the Luigi when I do that, but I do find a different Chinese
toilet plunger all over the pages. The reason why this happens is that a
dozen resellers are all selling the same item but they are all considered
different products by the Amazon software because they all come from
different sources. This is annoying but pretty much all of the affiliate-
driven operations are similar.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On Wed, 22 Jun 2022 09:23:10 -0000 (UTC)
Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21 Jun 2022 22:56:59 +0100 (BST)
> Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> > Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I note that on several occasions I have got better results using Google to
> > > search any of the amazon websites rather than use the amazon website search
> > > facility.
> >
> > Amazon's search is not designed to help you find things, it's designed to
> > railroad you into buying things that make them the most profit.
>
> I only started seeing unsatisfactory results in the last 2 years , perhaps 1.
> I don't remember specific examples but often I'm looking for a specialised
> book , possibly one out of print. amazon search does not even display results
> about books whereas a Google search with site:www.amazon.... has it as the
> first match. I don't get the sense that the primary reason is amazon trying
> to manipulate me , I mean there's just no connection between what I was
> looking for and what results I saw. Possibly the amazon algorithm takes
> availability of products into account but gives it too much weight relative
> to the degree of matching with the search string.

Ok , here's an example : if I search on amazon.com for
"continuous model theory" , the first results are

1. Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time (Oxford Finance Series)
2. Contract Theory in Continuous-Time Models (Springer Finance Book 0)
3. Continuous-Time Models in Corporate Finance, Banking, and Insurance:
A User's Guide
4. Continuous Multivariate Distributions, Volume 1: Models and Applications
5. Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer
Value and Business Value
6. An Introduction to Continuous-Time Stochastic Processes: Theory, Models,
and Applications to Finance, Biology, and Medicine (Modeling and Simulation
in Science, Engineering and Technology)
7. Merging the Instructional Design Process with Learner-Centered Theory

But if I search Google for
continuous model theory site:amazon.com

the first result is
Continuous Model Theory (Annals of Mathematics Studies, 58)
by Chen Chung Chang , H. Jerome Keisler

The whole first page of amazon results does not show the correct book. At
least it shows books , this hasn't been the case with other searches but I
don't remember examples of those. I have no idea if buying any of the amazon
"matches" would make them more profit than buying the correct book but
there's no way that one would be looking for the Chang/Keisler book and buy
any of the others instead. The Chang/Keisler is about a subject in
mathematical logic whereas the amazon results are (just judging from the
titles) financial mathematics or probability theory or statistics or not
mathematics at all. Results no 5 and 7 are actually amusing in their
irrelevance.

--
The peasants have no bread? Let them eat cake! Flyover people don't want Syrian
refugees? Let them dance salsa with them! The apocryphal French princess was
probably less out-of-touch.
http://anomalyuk.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/elite-cosmopolitanism.html

On 22 Jun 2022 09:25:36 +1000
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:

> I mentioned that here a month ago while talking to myself after
> posting the same link as the OP.

Indeed! Sorry bout that, mate! Just saw it for myself.

On Tue, 21 Jun 2022 06:52:40 -0400
Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> wrote:
> Me I'm having fun playing around with:
> * Kagi
> * Marginalia.nu
> * Wiby.me
> * Searchmysite.net

I like duckduckstart.com. If you prefix a ! operator to your search, it
makes use of DuckDuckGo. If you don't, it uses Startpage.com.

> The GOOG is now so bad at the basics I'm starting to wonder if they've
> adjusted their algorithm intentionally to feed me a steady diet of
> tripe.

If you prefix your search with allintext: it seems to work better. I
don't think you can leave a space between allintext: and the first
search term, so the search looks like this:

allintext:python tuples

On 2022-07-02, Visiblink <visiblink@mail.invalid> wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Jun 2022 06:52:40 -0400
> Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> wrote:
>> Me I'm having fun playing around with:
>> * Kagi
>> * Marginalia.nu
>> * Wiby.me
>> * Searchmysite.net
>
> I like duckduckstart.com. If you prefix a ! operator to your search, it
> makes use of DuckDuckGo. If you don't, it uses Startpage.com.
>
>> The GOOG is now so bad at the basics I'm starting to wonder if they've
>> adjusted their algorithm intentionally to feed me a steady diet of
>> tripe.
>
> If you prefix your search with allintext: it seems to work better. I
> don't think you can leave a space between allintext: and the first
> search term, so the search looks like this:
>
> allintext:python tuples
>
>
>

I prefer ddg.gg/lite, it works better under lynx/links.