Google search is losing the fight with SEO spam, study says - eviltoast

I guess we all kinda knew that, but it’s always nice to have a study backing your opinions.

  • Static_Rocket@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I need a better programming specific search engine. DuckDuckGo seems like it’s gotten worse at code/project searches and will now just assume you misspelled some common word.

    • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I tried Kagi last fall because everyone was raving about it.

      Now I’m paying $5/month for search and couldn’t be happier 😅

      • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        What is Kati and is it actually good?

        Edit:

        Is it kagi?

        https://kagi.com/

        Seems like something I’d be into but I’m also not a fan of my search results being logged against me.

        • NanoooK@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          First time I’ve heard of them. I like the concept but 5$ a month for only 300 search makes me think that you’d still need another search engine on the side, or pay for the more expensive plan.

          • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            The 300 searches goes pretty far because you usually get the correct result the first time.

            Also you can just use hashbangs to search directly from a site like imdb, letterboxd, goodreads etc so those don’t count against the 300 either.

        • Bongles@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          also not a fan of my search results being logged against me

          What do you mean? That you have an account so your searches are “linked” to you?

            • shastaxc@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              Well luckily for you, they don’t do that. It doesn’t maintain a search history at all which has its pros and cons. The only reason you have to login to use it is to check your payment level to determine your feature access. It is nice that login also allows you to use the same settings for multiple devices. One of those settings I really like is hiding results from certain websites (e.g. pinterest).

              • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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                11 months ago

                Sounds ideal, but there’s no way we can ever truly know, is there?

                • Redeven@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  You can never truly know about almost any online service, you kinda just have to take their word for it, do some research, and pick the option that best matches both the performance and philosophy you’re looking for.

          • dco@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I think they mean the fact they count each search you do, and depending on your pricing plan, can run out of searches in a month…

        • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I’m not worried about Kagi’s privacy, the only thing you need to give them is an email address (which is kind of a no-brainer if they need to contact you).

          You can pay with Bitcoin if you want more privacy.

          And they don’t even allow you to store your own search history, because they don’t want to save it anywhere.

          “Save My Search History Currently this option can not be turned on. Kagi does not save any searches by default. In the future we may add features that will utilize your search history and then we will allow you to enable this.”

      • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Do you find the limited number of searches enough? I’d do it if it were unlimited for $5, but not going to pay $10 for a search engine.

        • Scolding7300@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I do 20-30 searches a day at work, so I definitely need to upgrade (annually it’s around 100$ so not bad at all).

          Their Universal Summarizer is awesome too

        • uranibaba@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          It’s either money or your data. I prefer to pay with money. If enough people do, the price might lower (hopeium) or the competition might increase for the same service, creating better or cheaper services in the same space.

          • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Exactly. If you’re not paying, you’re most likely the product being sold.

            People always keep forgetting that Google (or Alphabet) is an ad company, that does tech stuff with its 20% time. Everything they do is geared towards delivering more ads more efficiently.

            This is why I’ve paid for email for years to Fastmail referral link

            Similarly I started paying Kagi for searches, mostly because their results are better than DDG, which I used for years.

            And, like the people I know from infosec, my phone is from Apple. They’re the only company who makes you pay through the nose for the hardware and because of that specifically do everything they can not to know anything about you. (One of the reasons why Siri sucks so bad btw)

        • MoonRaven@feddit.nl
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          11 months ago

          Depends. I use search engines a lot as a programmer. I have over 600 so far. But the results have been good. I’m willing to pay for that.

        • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I thought I’d burn through them but I haven’t had an issue. I use DDG for low hanging fruit but I’m going to stop bothering.

        • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I’m at 243 searches now and it resets in 8 days. Seems to be enough for me.

          I do use bangs quite a bit, so if I need to find a movie I go !imdb the matrix and if I’m looking for a book I can go !gr rando splicer which saves on search credits.

      • Schrodinger's Dinger @lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        You may have changed my life with kagi. It is amazing so far at giving the results I want, and categorizing stuff like discussions so you don’t have to add “Reddit” at the end of every search to get decent results.

        • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          And you can easily block or boost sites in the search results: I’ve got all pinterest domains blocked, along with a bunch of “news” outlets that don’t actually produce anything good in the world.

          Similarly I have stuff like reddit, hackernews etc boosted in the results if they match.

          I did the free trial for a while and only used Kagi for a while, still going strong with the $5 300 searches per month tier. I don’t really need to search that much because the results are usually correct the first time :)

          • Schrodinger's Dinger @lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Yep. I’m 100% sold on it. Thank you very much kind human. It’s crazy how used to Google I had become. Not thinking about features which would be helpful like simply raising/lowering a sites visibility. It even has done well for me when it comes to local searches! Truly a game changer.

    • Landless2029@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I’ve been using bing chat as my search engine for work stuff. Usually gives me the vendor kb or blog I need.