this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
401 points (98.1% liked)

Today I Learned

17858 readers
71 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 120 points 8 months ago (11 children)

You can improve your google search results by using DuckDuckGo instead.

[–] [email protected] 104 points 8 months ago

To be honest it's still a crapshoot of SEO bs.

[–] [email protected] 77 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I really wanted to like DDG, but its results returned are so horribly unusable, I had to give up.

I'm usually searching for something obscure, but add in general terms for general refinement. DDG will ignore my obscure term (the thing I'm actually looking for) and give me pages of results of the general terms. Using special operators doesn't help. Whereas Google will give me at least a few relevant results using the same search terms.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago

Yeah I gave duck duck go another shot the other day and it was FAR and away worse than google. Considering how bad Google has been lately I was impressed (and disappointed) by how much worse DDG was.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

I get the same pattern of ignoring obscure terms in both Bing and Google. Bings results include some that seem to assume I made a typo and Google includes a some sites that are just alternates that are the equivalent of ads.

I remember five or so years ago when both could at least return some relevant results anytime I used more than a few words.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

I've been digging Kagi. It does cost money, but it's a small price to pay for the return of my sanity. I was constantly frustrated by Google results a hundred times per day before I switched to Kagi.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah I don't know why DuckDuckGo keeps getting recommended as much as it does.

I couldn't find on Google, the answer to a simple question the other day. All I wanted to know was the precooked weight of a particular fast food restaurant's patty.

I made it to page 3 of the Google results, wading through page after page of promotional content, news releases, and sponsored "news-style" articles that were thinly veiled ads.

Decided to visit duck duck go, and was greeted with search results that were even worse than Google.

I realize it's only one example, but to me it was an example of a search so specific, its egregious that the search engines simply refuse to return a page with the answer.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 8 months ago (3 children)

It go so much worse lately it’s on par with Google. I’m out of search engines tbf

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I just tested it out by typing in "Sonic the hedgehog fanart". For once, I was able to get some decent images without being bombarded by uncanny valley ai-generated images of Sonic wearing Rouge's outfit or poorly-drawn inflation art. So it seems to be off to a good start.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Didn't Searx lose support and maintenance?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Do tell.

I am currently testing the fork SearxNG, which still has development this week.

Let me know any concerns about SearxNG. Seems to be solid so far.

Here is the about page.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

OK wasn’t my imagination then.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Nah, DDG is arguably worse than Google now with their search results - I just ended up going back to Google after a couple of years of using DDG.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Didnt go to google but I hate ddg now

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I thought ddg used bing.

Gopher it is then!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

It isnt the bing part of ddg it is themselves.

They have started tailoring results locally no matter your settings.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

DDG for me was always a matter of exchanging a bit of convenience for a bit of freedom. The results are usually a bit poorer (or extremely poorer if websearching in Italian or Portuguese), but at least it isn't vulturing my data.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago

Its really not much better

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago

Which is basically Bing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Fuck ddg, turning into wht they sought to destroy

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Tried, kept returning to Google for "real" searches

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

s/DuckDuckGo/Kagi/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

No.

Especially with non-English stuff. Let's be realistic here