Notice how solutions are closer to the top when using Brave, while general results are at the top for Google.
Added DDG to the mix just so no one says, “Why not check DDG?”, even though they know it’s because DDG has some of the most useless results in a search engine. Well, at least from my experience, and that’s my opinion.
“But brave is shady.”
→ So is Google.
Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. Use it or don’t use it.
for me anyway DDG is good (not great) but it’s better than Google. Google searches are awful–I never get the info I need, ever. I find google extremely frustrating. it was a good search engine in the 2000’s so DDG is my ‘go to.’
But brave…that sucked when brave first came out with it. then the next year it got better. and the year after it got better…then I forgot about it. I actually liked it last time I used it but its NEVER in a browser search engine option list to I space it out.–Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I need to set that a default.
Would love to see how it does compared to DDG.
I didn’t look at your links. They were especially for you. I bet if I used “damaged tar archive” in my own browser our top twenty results would be totally different per engine.
It might be better to provide screenshots for comparing the results.
It would be fair judging Google for collecting data, but that same data can affect the results by A LOT and your search results are not necessarily equivalent to someone elses results for the same query!
Also 1 single example doesn’t really paint a representative picture.
You could/should have compared them for more and possibly better structured searches if you want to draw conclusions.
P.S:
That said, though I use Chromium and Google for searches I still would agree Google search has become pretty damn trash over the last 10 years, even if you use the full extent of Google Search tooling (like operators)
You are probably right about that as it is usually based on region and your individual settings for the search engine. Especially with Google, which tries to track which site you’re coming from, where your browser reports that you live, etc. etc.
However, using the Brave bangs !g and !d for Google and DDG respectively makes it so that it doesn’t have too much additional tracking information because it’s like manually typing the search engine query + search term.
as a ddg user looking for an excuse to change I will take the “brave challenge” and will make it a librewolf default engine and leave ddg as my regular FF engine.
that said google and brave took you right to Arch solutions while DDG perused the Superuser stuff…the superuser/stackexchage stuff saves my a** a lot so I can’t form an opinion on your results. —it’s all interesting,
As far as doing many searches are concerned, I’ve been using Brave search since inception, and before that I was using DDG, Google, and Startpage. While transitioning to Brave, I continued using DDG, and when Brave went independent, I stopped using everything else.
So, yes, showing multiple results from multiple search queries would be better for anyone who reads this, but writing this was a spur of the moment based on a recent thread by one of this forum’s recent users.
FWIW, I’ve found that the search engines cited above can often be all over the map - depending on what I’m looking for and where it’s lurking out there.
I always use DDG these days as my “go to” based on presumed privacy. But since all ad prefs and history features are turned off within my google preferences, I’m not likely getting the full corporate google experience anyhow.
Yeah, after seeing the edit with your results as pictures, I would bet good money your brave search is doing some kind of personalization to the results.
Arch Linux top results without inclusion in the query…?
Dead giveaway!!!
Mine are way more comparable between the 2 search engines, with both being more “general” (note I always limit my Google account settings (and any other browser/search for what its worth) to using as little data as humanly possible through the settings that said platform exposes to me).
Well, Brave search doesn’t have many settings to edit, really. Because I’m using a VPN, it will switch the location-based results and units of measure automatically, but that’s the only thing that actually changes the results I get.
Good guess. You are correct. I used another profile with the same search query and got different results. The same link as yours was at the top, but then it went all random after.
So, now I know they all suck if you don’t have the browser save cookies for your search engine. I mean, that is assuming they all learn from your search queries, but still…
No don’t. That wasn’t my intention at all!
The hunt for a better search engine is still an interesting topic regardless.
If anything, the only reason I happened to guess that from your results was because I’ve been a “Yes, but…” guy on the “Privacy vs Convenience” debates(/flamewars )
Like, sure, all those companies collecting your data is predatory and generally bad, but they do offer “something” in return. And people should just take that detail into consideration when adjusting their settings or selecting their browser/search of choice. If that detail is important enough for X or Y person to not care sharing their data, then why not use it?
I usually apply separation of concerns. For example:
Chromium + Google Search
I have a profile specifically for dev work with some data/cookies collection not as strict which allows me to get more efficient when searching for solutions more relative to what I’m actually doing.
Another profile for daily browsing/socials. This is generally a bit more strictly configured because I don’t care about “efficiencies”.
DuckDuckGo / SomeMorePrivateSearch configured with strict data collection and cookie policies:
Brave / Librewolf / SomeMorePrivateBrowser for anything I want to search without altering my day-to-day search results by simple association.
Tor for anything health related (meds/conditions) because I consider that data more sensitive and prefer to de-anonymize as much as possible (while still somewhat convinient (not going the whole whonix path)).
The way you go about it is kind of what I’ve been considering a lot recently.
Though there are bad actors in the AI space, especially when it comes to the creative industry, the results Brave searches give are usually quicker as far as finding a solution is concerned. This is because rather than trying to decipher which link to click on, the AI kind of gives you several seemingly objective solutions.
And you can get really specific with it by including the platform you are working on (or seeking a solution for), which is why, like you said, if gave me an Arch-based result at the top because I often add “arch linux” to the search query.
And of course, it gives you the links it’s citing at the end. Didn’t include it in the screenshots, because it’s not what the thread is about.
Compartmentalising different aspects of online life is essential, and the method you’re using seems like something I could certainly add to mine.
At the moment, for me, it’s VPN + Firefox + VPN in browser + Privacy-based search engine + Firefox containers + Browser profiles
They use AI Summarizer (based on either BART or DeBERTa +retraining) , I’m not sure if they’re trustworthy due to AI hallucinations. I heard nowadays it often does better than Google.
“As the model is still in its early phase of development, there is the possibility of producing “hallucinations,” which mix unrelated snippets into a single result. There is also the possibility of some false or offensive text…” (Article from Mar 2, 2023)
I’ve used Brave Search, Google, DDG, SearXNG instances and Startpage as search engines. Google is still the search engine I use if I want to reliably find something that is specific to Romania. For example, I often look at the train schedules between a major city and my hometown to see if something changed. On Brave, the results are completely incorrect, showing trains from the capital to my hometown, while Google and DDG return results that actually help me out. I don’t know if my search query is just not asked at all and I’m literally the only person that searched for this, but it is incorrect nonetheless.
If I can’t find what I want on Brave Search or DDG or whatever alternative search engine I’m using at the time, I just go on Google and I find it, usually. Sometimes I don’t find it on Google either.
I’d use https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search (Instances) if I really need Google as sometimes SearXNG search results doesn’t match even if you enable Google as your only engine. I guess instance owner misconfiguration them incorrectly or using older SearXNG version.
Though most of the time SearXNG works for me.
As for location specific bus/train queries, there is no alternative to GoogleMaps. OpenStreetMap is not complete in most areas.
i have actually been hopping a bit between search engines recently as well. What i’ve found is…
It used to be google was the most reliable search engine, and sometimes if i was having problems finding results on one engine i’d try google and get better results.
Now though, if I go to google i just get the same shitty results as everywhere else.
It’s a strange phenomenon, recently search engines have just been going down the toilet with result quality, a lot of it is probably due to ‘search engine optimization’ but i believe that for search engines like google that used to be actually good, it’s more about politics (i.e. censorship and propaganda feeding) that are disrupting even the most basic searches. Also all of the ones that have AI shit, have shit AI
There kinda just isn’t a good search engine available right now, and if you want to find a search engine that isn’t in some way censored or feeding you specific results over other results for political reasons, it’s not gonna be easy. DDG is most certainly one of them, and it’s long since lost it’s way.
I honestly don’t feel like the queries I have and the results are miss-matched. If I search for something, I either find it or I don’t and I try to be more specific to narrow the results down. I don’t know what you guys search that you feel a noticeable drop in quality.
Though I ended up saying that they all give the same results, I must say that the way Brave is now tailored to me has noticeable benefits.
Case in point:
Going to the fish website to learn how and where to add aliases, they give you the run-around and tell you some crap about using abbr or abbreviations instead of aliases. And if you take them by their word and click the link for abbr, you won’t scroll down and see that they actually have an example showing how easy aliases are to create.
So, after realising this, I decided to test how Brave would do for a user who doesn’t want to go to the official documentation. And 1…2…3, it pops out the same info from the site, and from Stack Overflow.
The reason the answer was easier to find is because of Brave’s “Discussions” feature.
