MEPIS Community Forum

A friend told me about a search engine called Duck Duck Go. I checked it out and it has a lot of nice customizable features and privacy settings, and it doesn't come with a slew of ads like some "other" search engines. I've been using Duck Duck Go for a couple of days and plan on using it from now on instead of Google. It is aimed at those who truly value their privacy, as explained here: http://donttrack.us/ and here: http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html#s1

I've been using it, too.

The price to pay for privacy is very few search results. Even if you click on more links you only get a very small fraction of existing pages. Why should I search for information and let others decide what is relevant?
Blocking Google cookies from communicating (with the Disconnect extension) is another way to have some privacy. And you get the full search results, not censored ones.
Henry

I tried it, but found I missed some valuable results.

I now use Google with Ghostery, Adblock Plus, and Better Privacy installed, and I'm happy with that.

Chris

I don't think "others" are deciding what is relevant. It's just that Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ixquick, Scroogle, and Duck Duck Go use different scoring algorithms and might deploy their spiders differently. Just because various search rankings turn out to be different than Google's doesn't mean that someone is censoring the results. How can you be sure that Google isn't manipulating their results?

I admit that Google searches do provide a lot of hits, perhaps many more than any other search engine. When I do a search on "John Wayne" I get about 161,000,000 hits, which is very impressive. Unfortunately, I just don't have the time to go to all those sites.

It is like going to a library with 100 books rather than 100,000. Sure you are not going to read 100,000 books, but chances are better that the book you want is among the 100,000 rather than the 100.

On the other hand if you have a list of top 100 books that people liked, you are more likely to find books you'll like from those 100 than from the 100,000. Heck you might have to read 10,000 till you find a good one...

The better the search algorithm, the better the results on a larger database. Half a dozen results (out of 100,000) that are pertinent are way better than one (out of a hundred).

Maybe Duck Duck Go have unusual methods to collect their links. Have never seen their bots on this forum. Or are they doing it the Bing way, reusing some of Google's results?
Not having advanced search is a bad sign. They know they're only showing part of the search results.
When will someone compete with Google with something else than presenting fewer links?
An advanced "advanced search" and indexing a few layers deeper in databases and archives where Google doesn't go?
Henry

How to write a search algorithm that knows what you want? It's more likely to find the most popular facts, those you knew before the search started.
Presenting all possible results, even billions of them and letting the user filter them after his own needs, must lead to better search.
But I'm the kind of person who as a kid tried to read all the books in the library.
Henry