# Fed Up With Commercial Nonsense That Google Returns?



## mosaix

I think I have said here before on Chrons that I am fed up with some of the commercial nonsense that Google returns in response to a query. 

Google's security policy changes in the future will mean your searches responses be will become even more commercialised. 

I've been looking round for an alternative for a while and have stumbled on:

http://duckduckgo.com/

There's no tracking and no advertising! 

Also, reading what they don't do in their 'privacy policy' gives you an indication of what the other search engines do do!


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## Dozmonic

Looks to be a good no-nonsense search engine, I may start using it


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## The Judge

Wow!  That is great, mosaix.  I've just tried ducking** the title of my book, as it's plastered all over my website.  When I've googled it in the past, I've always been at least 3 pages back, usually in the mid-teens, and the last time I wasn't in the first 30 pages -- but there were bucket loads of things in those pages which didn't have any relation to the words I actually typed.  Using this, I'm the third one down!

Now all we've got to do is make people see the sense of ducking.**


** that's like googling, only with ducks.


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## mosaix

Just changed my region to 'UK' and results are even better.


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## Vertigo

Isn't it funny how things go full circle? I remember when Google first came along everyone switched to it because it got better results and was perceived as being unbiased by commercial interests. Now Google has come to dominate the search engines and its "good boy" image is becoming tarnished giving new engines an opportunity.


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## Perpetual Man

I've had a look and swapped over. It was quite impressive to start with and I'll give it a try for a few days.


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## Dave

I also want to give it a try, but on my first attempt the first result was a "sponsored link" which had nothing to do with the query so I can't say that it is free of commercial nonsense.


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## mosaix

Dave said:


> I also want to give it a try, but on my first attempt the first result was a "sponsored link" which had nothing to do with the query so I can't say that it is free of commercial nonsense.



Yes, unfortunately, a couple of mine seem to have returned a sponsored link. But never more than one. Let's hope it stays that way.


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## alchemist

I'll give it a go too.

The first thing I looked at was my own name and it brought up an author!! Not me though   Time to make up a middle name.


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## mosaix

The good news is if you search for (nearly said google!) 'science fiction forum', Chronicles is first in the list! And no sponsored link!


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## Metryq

Commercial listings don't bother me so much as biased searches. It's bad enough getting incomplete or distorted reporting from "professional" news sites. It is unforgivable to get such bias in a search engine. Google: do know evil.™

(Let's hope we never have to cry "fowl" over this new engine.)


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## Ursa major

Shouldn't that Gogol () motto be "Do No Evil With No Monetary Value"?


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## Interference

It sounds like an excellent alternative.

I shall google it at once......


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## Warren_Paul

I like how it auto-loads results when you scroll, hated having to go next page on google.

You can look on Google's "new" privacy terms, its quite amusing because they talk about how they do EVERYTHING DuckDuckGo was talking about. Pretty much Google is the complete opposite to DuckDuckGo


Did my own look around and so far nothing appears to beat DuckDuckGo on privacy. Its a good search engine, that occasional 1 sponsored link the only form of advertising.


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## Perpetual Man

Well I've had a little play and am quite impressed. 

Typed in my own name and discovered just how common it is!

That being said I changed the region to UK, typed in Perpetual Man and my underused website was the first one up! Now that was impressive!


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## HoopyFrood

My job is based pretty much entirely on working around the google machine and its algorithms. The changes it's making to its search functions are pretty crazy mad. Their latest is the Search Plus Your World which will utilise this whole 'bringing together all the google products'. When logged into your google account, you'll get results in your serps that include those from your friends in your 'circles'. So say you're searching for bananas and your friend has a pet dog called Banana that they've uploads photos of...Your results will soon be swayed by the people you interact with. And considering the results are already shifted depending on what you search previously and the areas you frequent (which means it starts taking you back to the same areas)...

And yeah, the google machine can also see into your emails and give you ads depending on what you've been emailing about. 

Even I'm getting somewhat lary about it all. I'm trying not to sign up to Google+ because then it really will have consumed my entire internet soul.


Judge, I'm curious about the results you get for your site. You say the title is 'plastered'? Do you mean literally (as it were) because you might have been caught by Google's keyword stuffing policy. If the words you're searching for appear too much, then it doesn't make Google a happy search machine. 

Also, unfortunately, pages don't reach the top spots just for being the right set of words. There are a number of things that can get a page up the lists (this is what I do everyday, it's an on-going, relentless task) including keeping your pages fresh to make the web crawling bots return your site often, making sure there's a nice amount of content on there, and getting as many reputable backlinks to your site. Considering how many pages the Googlator indexes, it can be a hard slog getting up through the ranks!


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## Dave

I've been using DuckDuckGo for a week now and it is okay. It doesn't give you the "repeats" that Google does. I'd still use Google for more serious researching. It also cannot be beaten on image searching; Google maps has a monopoly, and streetview is unique.


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## The Judge

"Plastered" was a bit of an exaggeration, Hoopy, but it's on a good few pages in one form or another and in the keyword thingummies. Whether I've got too many, I don't know.

Oddly enough, I've just this second googled it to check something and it's come up as third and fourth in the Google placings now! I suspect, though, that it's because of the change in policy thing -- although I don't have a Google account I did sign up to Google Analytics to get info on the couple of people who actually look at the site.  So it still won't help if total strangers are searching for it.

Er... Hoopy, I know this would be a busman's holiday for you, but how about creating a thread on this whole area, giving advice on what aspiring writers can do etc.  I've got lots of pages, my blog, the home page and an archive page are updated every week, another page is updated every 2 or 3 weeks, but clearly I'm still not doing enough so I'd welcome some tips.


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## HoopyFrood

Eek! Well, my SEO powers are only a few months old, but there might be some things I could mention that might help. I'll give it a think and see what I can do. 

My job is just linkbuilding. That's all I do, every day (as does a whole department) in order to maintain page rankings. So I don't think people can ever do enough to appease the Google God!


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## mosaix

I've been using duckduckgo as my default search engine since I started this thread in February and got entirely used to getting _information_ returned as a response to my queries. 

Yesterday I actually wanted to find a source for some building products and so I switched to google for a couple of searches. I was surprised how google returned _just_ advertising and practically no information at all. Google seems to have become an advertising hording in our homes rather than a source of information. 

Maybe it was as bad as that back in January and I'd just become so used to it that I didn't notice any more.

Back to duckduckgo for me.


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## mosaix

Interesting article in last week's New Scientist. It's an interview with the inventor of DuckDuckGo. He says that since Snowden's revelations regarding internet data collection by the NSA the number of daily searches using DDG has increased from 2 to 3 million.


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## Pyan

Off topic slightly, but I was fed up of being tracked, so I installed Ghostery. 
It blocks tracking software (including Google Analytics) and flashes a small window in the corner of the screen to show you the blocked trackers - it's scary just how many there are on some sites...


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## mosaix

pyan said:


> Off topic slightly, but I was fed up of being tracked, so I installed Ghostery.
> It blocks tracking software (including Google Analytics) and flashes a small window in the corner of the screen to show you the blocked trackers - it's scary just how many there are on some sites...



Thanks, Py. Excellent stuff.


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## Nightspore

If you run Firefox you can change the default search engine from Google to DDG by just typing *about:config* into the runbar & then clicking past the caveat about dragons. Then type *browser.search.defaultenginename* into the binary filter. Firefox is bundled with the DDG plug-in anyway these days so after clicking on the binary string you just need to replace Google with DuckDuckGo in the dialogue box. 

I often prefer Start Page (aka Ixquick) as my runbar default in Firefox with DDG as the search box default.  

Start Page

It's a tad more difficult to make Start Page the runbar default in Firefox:

Type 'about:config' in the browser location bar and hit 'enter'.

Accept the warning message to be careful.

Enter 'keyword.URL' in the filter on top of the page.

Double-click on the 'keyword.URL'- line that shows up.

In the pop-up window replace the Google string with: 

https://startpage.com/do/search?language=english_uk&cat=web&query=

Click on 'OK'.

Close the window or tab.

If you fancy a different engine you can just use any of these below:

Bing (does not support https)
Bing

DuckDuckGo
https://duckduckgo.com/?&q=

Google
https://www.google.com/search?q=

Ixquick
https://ixquick.com/do/metasearch.pl?q=

Privatelee
https://privatelee.qrobe.it/search?q=

Startpage
https://startpage.com/do/metasearch.pl?q=

Qrobe
https://qrobe.it/search?q=


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## Nightspore

pyan said:


> Off topic slightly, but I was fed up of being tracked, so I installed Ghostery.
> It blocks tracking software (including Google Analytics) and flashes a small window in the corner of the screen to show you the blocked trackers - it's scary just how many there are on some sites...



I used Ghostery a few years ago, but IMO it got a bit bloaty. There has been some controversy about it being owned by an advertising agency as well.


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## Glitch

I stopped using google a long time ago. Besides their questionable privacy practices. I found the results less and less relevant.


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## Nightspore

pyan said:


> Off topic slightly, but I was fed up of being tracked, so I installed Ghostery.
> It blocks tracking software (including Google Analytics) and flashes a small window in the corner of the screen to show you the blocked trackers - it's scary just how many there are on some sites...



I have discovered that Dr Web (linkscanner) operates similar to Ghostery on Chrome as well. Although I must admit I rarely use the the Chrome browser. No doubt Dr Web would work on SRWare Iron as well.


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## mosaix

Glitch said:


> I stopped using google a long time ago. Besides their questionable privacy practices. I found the results less and less relevant.



My sentiments exactly.


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## merritt

I got no problem with the Duck!

I came up #3 behind Amazon and the manufacturer on my product...


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## Nightspore

DrWeb now actually works in the Opera (15) browser now.

DrWeb for Opera 15


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## mosaix

pyan said:


> Off topic slightly, but I was fed up of being tracked, so I installed Ghostery.



Thanks for this, Py. Been using this for a few days now and it's an absolute eye-opener. 

I was discussing tracking with few friends in the pub the other night and one guy said "Suppose you were walking down the street and some stranger with a clip board followed you into every shop and made a note of what you looked at or bought - how long would it take before you asked them to mind their own business?"


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