Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and credible sources.
So, I disabled everything AI the I can think of, use DDG as a search engine, ad block wherever, blah blah blah, my search results SUCK. Is there a better way to fix it?
Suck in what way? And what kind of stuff do you usually search?
I used to think search was kind of an universal thing but after looking at some people’s examples of what is a good or bad result I noticed that is definitely not the case.
For me a good search result is a list of sites that contain the words I typed on the search bar, sorted by how closely the words match and then perhaps subsorted by some website ranking system. For that, DDG has been quite decent.
So, I can’t really mention actual results after actual queries, a lot of it would be doxxing myself. Maybe that’s what it is, I’m trying to get way into my personal life instead of a general search. What I usually look for is not like “this specific thing happened to me” type things, but more like a general consensus. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes I’m wondering what the heck happened.
Not OP, but I find the DDG results are SEO sites at the top for pages.
My search: how to fit a dog collar
Top 50 results from DDG:
fitting a dog collar is difficult and many people wonder how to fit a dog collar. This article will show you how to fit a dog collar.
A dog collar is difficult to fit. Perhaps you’ve wondered how to fit a dog collar.
To be fair, SEO ruined the internet and Internet searches well before AI and it’s not DDG’s fault. But I would love it if blatant SEO was filtered out of my results.
True, I think I probably just skip over those results and don’t even register them anymore. They definitely happen a lot but it’s not something I even remembered when I thought about search results.
So, I disabled everything AI the I can think of, use DDG as a search engine, ad block wherever, blah blah blah, my search results SUCK. Is there a better way to fix it?
And I use Linux at home…no blows crap
I use SearXNG it works pretty well for me.
Kagi is pretty decent but the sad truth is that something like duck.ai works better as a search engine than normal search engines
Suck in what way? And what kind of stuff do you usually search?
I used to think search was kind of an universal thing but after looking at some people’s examples of what is a good or bad result I noticed that is definitely not the case.
For me a good search result is a list of sites that contain the words I typed on the search bar, sorted by how closely the words match and then perhaps subsorted by some website ranking system. For that, DDG has been quite decent.
So, I can’t really mention actual results after actual queries, a lot of it would be doxxing myself. Maybe that’s what it is, I’m trying to get way into my personal life instead of a general search. What I usually look for is not like “this specific thing happened to me” type things, but more like a general consensus. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes I’m wondering what the heck happened.
Not OP, but I find the DDG results are SEO sites at the top for pages.
My search: how to fit a dog collar
Top 50 results from DDG:
fitting a dog collar is difficult and many people wonder how to fit a dog collar. This article will show you how to fit a dog collar.
A dog collar is difficult to fit. Perhaps you’ve wondered how to fit a dog collar.
To be fair, SEO ruined the internet and Internet searches well before AI and it’s not DDG’s fault. But I would love it if blatant SEO was filtered out of my results.
True, I think I probably just skip over those results and don’t even register them anymore. They definitely happen a lot but it’s not something I even remembered when I thought about search results.
Part of it might be how Google trained everyone to use natural language queries in their searches.
Instead of “how to fit a dog collar” does
“pet advice” +”dog collar” “guidance for new dog owners”
give you better results?
The idea is to search for a cluster of terms that are likely to be on the page you want to find, but aren’t hyper-focused like SEO pages.
Very curious whether you’re old enough to remember how google used to be in say, 2007.
I am and I do, but I didn’t mean to say DDG is just as good. It’s just been good enough for me.