Need a new search engine

[Redbomb]

So, puduhead and I were talking the other day, and we both agree that the new Google sucks. Too many ads, and you almost have to go to the next page to get the real results of your search. I suppose it's an inevitable side effect of its new mega corporate status, but I hate it now.

Does anyone know of a good search engine I can start using as a replacement? Is anyone else bothered by google now? Let me know what you think.

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[Slicer S. V.]

google's changed? i haven't noticed anything that really makes me dislike using it...

the text ads on the side sit there completely unnoticed by me...

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[Wren]

> Is anyone else bothered by google now?

No.

-Wren

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[SpaceTiger]

> Too many ads, and you
> almost have to go to the next page to get the real results
> of your search.

Wait, are we talking about http://www.google.comwww.google.com</a>? <img src=smilies/eek13.gif>

All I see is a bunch of text ads on the side.

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Though all just plastic too..." </P>

[GhettoFabulous]

> Does anyone know of a good search engine I can start using
> as a replacement?

I'm not bothered by Google, but if you want a meta search-engine without the ads try either www.webcrawler.com or www.dogpile.com

[Lobster Cowboy]

give this (http://dmoz.org/) a try

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[puduhead]

> All I see is a bunch of text ads on the side.

well i'm a huge web-search addict and i have seen recently that my google results pull a less relevant return than previously. for me it is to the point where i have to go to the 2nd page just to see anything useful.

however one thing i won't give up on is google images - i love it too much. <img src=smilies/liefde.gif>

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[SirDaShadow]

> So, puduhead and I were talking the other day, and we both
> agree that the new Google sucks. Too many ads, and you
> almost have to go to the next page to get the real results

Ok folks, don't get confused just because it's not doing it now. I have had that happen to me before when using google from the office a couple of times a month. I think they are experimenting to see people's reactions. If you use google, and the first 10 results are really ads, please close your browser and try again later...that way they will know we loathe that kind of intrusion....

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[Isildur]

> well i'm a huge web-search addict and i have seen recently
> that my google results pull a less relevant return than
> previously. for me it is to the point where i have to go to
> the 2nd page just to see anything useful.

Part of the problem is that lately Google result lists are often clogged up by what I think of as "search spam": useless automatically generated ad-profiting meta-search sites that have absolutely no content of their own-- they just cough up pages based on scripts that query real search engines. They often have long hyphenated addresses (like www.something-similar-to-the-search-string-you-typed-into-google.com). They can generally be avoided by making your query more specific, but even so, it's irritating to ever have to get a Google search results page full of links to meta-search sites that just have the same links you already got from the original search.

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[SpaceTiger]

This is all news to me. I use google pretty much daily and almost always get what I want on the first page. When I don't, it's usually because my search was too general. I'd be curious to see some examples of the problems you're talking about.

<P ID="signature">----
"And dreams may come
That are everlasting
Though all just plastic too..." </P>

[WhyteKnight]

> give this a try
>

Dmoz is only useful for some things, I've found. And its not exactly a search engine.

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[Lobster Cowboy]

> Dmoz is only useful for some things, I've found. And its not
> exactly a search engine.

yeah, it's more like a directory, but at least the results are hand picked

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[WhyteKnight]

> yeah, it's more like a directory, but at least the results
> are hand picked
>

True. The difficulty is that there are things that have few or no entries simply because they're outside the scope of what the editor's are doing. I haven't found anything better than google really for finding lots of good results quickly. Compared to say, Yahoo or Alta Vista or MSN anyhow.

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[Isildur]

> This is all news to me. I use google pretty much daily and
> almost always get what I want on the first page. When I
> don't, it's usually because my search was too general. I'd
> be curious to see some examples of the problems you're
> talking about.
>

Weird. A month or two ago when I was searching for info on things like palm pilot accessories, ethernet cables, and miscelaneous other stuff, pages like that kept coming up. Now they hardly do. I guess Google readjusted the weight they give to URLs, and lowered the rankings of sites that have too many URL aliases, or something.

Anyway, what I mean is sites like this (http://home-9.shopping11.com/Home-Audio-Wireless-Receivers.asp) that are dynamically generated but have key words in the url (not as arguments, but as parts of static addresses) in order to get higher search rankings. Note the header "meta name="robots" content="all">". That's done in order to be sure the search engines index every single page there, regardless of the fact that many of the pages there have nearly identical content. Note also that some of the links there are not actually relevant to the categories under which they ar listed. They're trying to make it look seem an organized directory, which it isn't.

Anyway, I guess the problem is moot for now (i.e. until such sites succeed again at inflating their rankings).

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1k1IN:</a><font color=#903030> A Dark Comedy About 2 Roomates</font></center></P>

[Redbomb]

> google's changed? i haven't noticed anything that really
> makes me dislike using it...
>
> the text ads on the side sit there completely unnoticed by
> me...
>
It seems like the first 3-4 (at least) of the pages returned are pretty much ads for other sites, like redzip or some such thing. And the words I put into google don't even show highlighted up in the brief little snippet from the site. But, I just tried google again today, and it didn't do it. Hopefully, it really was just a test by the google folks, and they decide to stop doing it.

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