Anyone fed up of google rewriting search terms?

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sodepressed
Blue Jay
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07 Oct 2023, 1:10 am

How the hell did this insidious site ever become so monopolistic? Often I'm already looking through the results, and end up confused because they don't match what I searched for... before, as usual, realizing they've rewritten them, because hey, there's absolutely no reason anyone should search for anything different apart from what everyone already searches for! Ugh...



traven
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07 Oct 2023, 2:03 am

that, and now they want to translate every fff-ing page
walls of language, by internet 8)



Sweetleaf
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07 Oct 2023, 2:10 am

I mean google search is a hell of a lot better than bing, which for some reason bing is the default seach engine for windows. Not sure if there really is a better search engine than google, but if anyone has suggestions I'd try them out.


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blitzkrieg
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07 Oct 2023, 5:23 am

Yahoo is a good alternative to Google.



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07 Oct 2023, 6:17 am

sodepressed wrote:
How the hell did this insidious site ever become so monopolistic? Often I'm already looking through the results, and end up confused because they don't match what I searched for... before, as usual, realizing they've rewritten them, because hey, there's absolutely no reason anyone should search for anything different apart from what everyone already searches for! Ugh...


Are you saying that what you typed is changed when you hit return?

Do a google search (lol) on how to turn off search suggestions.


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07 Oct 2023, 6:23 am

Sweetleaf wrote:
I mean google search is a hell of a lot better than bing, which for some reason bing is the default seach engine for windows. Not sure if there really is a better search engine than google, but if anyone has suggestions I'd try them out.


Plenty of search engines better than google but it's all about what you need and preferences , if privacy is your thing browsers like DuckDuckGo or Brave have good reviews. Brave has a tor connectivity option for surfing the dark web (I wouldn't suggest this unless you know what you are doing).


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07 Oct 2023, 6:47 am

This is bad for autistic people, who are sick of hearing "that may have been what you said but this is what you meant".


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07 Oct 2023, 6:54 am

MaxE wrote:
This is bad for autistic people, who are sick of hearing "that may have been what you said but this is what you meant".


Image


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MaxE
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07 Oct 2023, 7:10 am

:lmao:


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03 Nov 2023, 1:45 pm

Recidivist wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
I mean google search is a hell of a lot better than bing, which for some reason bing is the default seach engine for windows. Not sure if there really is a better search engine than google, but if anyone has suggestions I'd try them out.


Plenty of search engines better than google but it's all about what you need and preferences , if privacy is your thing browsers like DuckDuckGo or Brave have good reviews. Brave has a tor connectivity option for surfing the dark web (I wouldn't suggest this unless you know what you are doing).

I was a DuckDuckGo man till I started to feel it was giving me too many hits that assumed I wanted to buy something, so in disgust I switched to Brave. I was kind of happy for a while but recently a lot of my searches were returning very few hits at all, so I tried Duck again, and it gave me what I was looking for while Brave didn't, as judged by one search. Haven't tried Google but I gather it's run by complete bastards so that's out. I don't suppose the others are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts either, but nothing's perfect.



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03 Nov 2023, 3:43 pm

I use "Duck Duck Go".


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DanielW
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03 Nov 2023, 3:57 pm

I've never had google search for something other than what I've actually typed in. Are you sure its Google and not your phone or computer's autocorrect feature?

You can enable and disable that as well as personalized results, trending searches, related searches, and search prediction (if those are causing you issues)

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/106230



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11 Nov 2023, 3:18 am

blitzkrieg wrote:
Yahoo is a good alternative to Google.

I think they use Bing's Index last I heard.



zacb
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11 Nov 2023, 3:19 am

Yandex, a MillionShort, or Wibly for me.



ToughDiamond
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11 Nov 2023, 10:14 am

Another thing I don't like about Duck Duck Go is that (in my computer's hands) in some circumstances it does the wrong thing when I use the Down arrow key to scroll down the list of hits by just a line or two. Sometimes it goes up instead of down.

I also get annoyed when Brave tells me "Not many great matches came back for your search" when there are actually no matches at all, great or otherwise. And why does it only have Bing, Google and Mojeek in its "find elsewhere" feature?

Incidentally, Mojeek sounds like it might be quite good, in spite of its stupid name. I suppose it's a better name than Google though.



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11 Nov 2023, 10:52 am

I also use DuckDuckGo for everything. No real issues with it, though I wish they had an "advanced search" system. Those seem to have died out everywhere. My problem with current search engines in general is that they don't understand the word "not." Often I'm trying to find something which is a bit of niche interest but has some keywords in common with something much more popular, and there is no reliable way to screen out the hundreds of wrong results.


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