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!

 

[Dozmonic]

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

 

[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.

 

[mosaix]

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

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[mosaix]

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.

 

[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.

 

[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!

 

[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.)

 

[Ursa major]

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

 

[Interference]

It sounds like an excellent alternative.

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

 

[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.

 

[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!

 

[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!

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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!

 

[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.