Comment by someperson
1 day ago
Feels weird to say but I have found using Yandex of all places an excellent search engine for content that get taken down by DMCA requests.
Eg if you want to watch a movie that's not on Netflix using a web stream the search results are far better.
Feels like Google circa 2005.
I started using yandex when searching for bittorrent infohashes (to find other trackers it might be indexed on) after google, bing, and duckduckgo all stopped returning good results a few years ago.
I know there's multiple full string matches out there, but all I can see on the first few pages are very short partial matches from various blockchain explorers like etherscan. I don't know if this was an intentional decision, or a result of them trying to find fuzzy matches, but they fail at this usecase regardless.
That is brilliant, to search for the hash values. Thanks
I've been playing around with a variety of search engines such as Kagi, Startpage, Ecosia, DDG.
All of them are better than google in finding relevant results. Lol
Google is way too "personalized".
Brave search is also quite nice: https://search.brave.com/
I find Google to generally have some of the worst search results of modern engines with one exception - Google tends to be good at digging up results from things like forums/message boards that don't end up getting listed on other search engines.
I don't entirely understand why this is because other engines also have them indexed and work fine with something like: 'site:news.ycombinator.com anna's archive' [1][2] but yet those posts will basically never show up on the main results, regardless of how far down them you go.
[1] - https://search.brave.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.co...
[2] - https://yandex.com/search/?text=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...
I switched to Kagi a while back and ended up buying their annual subscription for unlimited searches. It's such a breath of fresh air, like a search engine from an alternate universe where Google just focused on search instead of adtech.
Google hides the most relevant results on the 3rd page. It was confirmed in trial disclosures a few months ago. Their concern isn’t public search.
Edit: after the 3rd page
Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18552824/1436/united-st...
For fun what Gemini says: “The notion that Google explicitly admitted to "deprioritizing good results to sell more ads" is a common interpretation of these documents and expert testimony.”
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Google only ever returns a maximum of <400 results. If you actually click through at 100/page, you'll only get 3.something pages of results. Despite what is says at the top re: results. Those results are not accessible.
Bing only returns 900. Kagi only 200. Deep search and surfing is pretty much gone on all major search "engines".
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Doesn't https://www.google.com/search?q=your+search+query&ei=...&sta... give you page 3? Or at least, try jittering it a bit and compare to frontpage results.
> &start= parameter. This parameter controls which result number the page starts with. Google displays 10 results per page by default. For page 1, start=0 For page 2, start=10 For page 3, start=20
Seems to not be empirically true.
The fact that Google seemingly returns results worse than Kagi, Startpage and Ecosia is just strange, given that Google provides search results for all three of them. Both Kagi and Ecosia uses other sources as well, I don't know about Startpage, so that's certainly part of it, but it still feels a little strange.
From using Ecosia, DuckDuckGo and Bing, I'd also argue that Bing is simply a better search engine at this point.
Don’t Ecosia/Qwant have their own index now?
Do you find Bing better through Bing proper, or just as good through DDG (which uses the Bing index)?
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DDG is okay. Startpage is quite good. I make a virtue of regularly shifting between search engines (not Google). Sometimes they are not so good, some times very good. On average Im sure my search experience is better than using Google.
I believe Kagi uses the Yandex index as their base as well.
Based on what? Have you read that somewhere?
You can turn off personalization. (Operating under the assumption that most people search for facts, I personally don't see why one would ever want personalized results.)
Location based personalization is pretty useful - if I search for 'Bob's Discount Linguine' I want the one in my neighborhood.
Lots of niche things (like programming) also reuse common english words to mean specific things - if I search e.g. 'locking' it's nice to get results related to asynchronous programming instead of locksmiths because google knows I regularly search for programming related terminology.
Of course it's questionable whether google does a good job at any of this, but I absolutely see the value.
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I won't bother defending Google-style personalization as it exists for their search results, but since collisions in terminology across fields are common, it's not that hard to see how actual, thoughtful personalization could be useful. Someone searching for "Kafka" is going to want very different results based on whether they're thinking of software or literature. Opinions may also differ over the usefulness of sources, even for people ultimately interested primarily in facts; I find Kagi-style personalization (make your own domain list) very useful, but across Kagi's userbase Reddit is simultaneously one of the most lowered, most raised, and most pinned domains: https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard
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> I personally don't see why one would ever want personalized results.
The same short combination of words can mean very different things to different people. My favorite example of this is "C string" because when I was a kid learning C I was introduced to a whole new class of lingerie because Google didn't really personalize results back then. Now when I search "C string" Google knows exactly what I mean.
Some people search for shopping, or business details, in which case personalization can improve (or disimprove) result relevance based on knowing where you currently are, what day and time it is, what you tend to order etc. etc.
And some people search for songs/images/videos/books/articles.
As a Ukrainian I cannot feel anything but hatred towards the propaganda machine Yandex has become.
As an engineer I cannot feel anything but respect to the multi-decade research legacy of the company and their incredible search engine.
This has been my search engine quality test for quite some time.
A good search engine will show you pirate websites because they have a comprehensive index. A great search engine will put them at the top of the list ahead of the fake results.
A great search engine that endures long enough attracts the type of attention that forces them to delist those results. Once you can no longer find that type of results you know it's time to look somewhere else.
yep Yandex all days when I wanna wear an eye patch and pirate the seas.
Hmm, Yandex Ad Network is allowed monetize western e-commerce sites, they divested their Russian assets by 2024.
Funny you say this. Just two days ago, my wife was telling me a little history about her country, and suggested a movie based on those events. I couldn't find it on Google, DDG, Bing, Brave, etc. So I tried it on Yandex and it appeared as a top 3 result.
Btw, DDG basically looked exactly like Google. And now they have "sponsored" items...
I just tested, indeed very good results!
[flagged]
For what it's worth, this is my first pro-Yandex comment after 17 years on Hacker News.
It's a major tech company service based in Russia, so presumably controlled by the government of Russia.
But the results produces for a query like "watch (obscure movie) online stream" are far better than what Google or Bing produces. If you need to check a scene of a specific episode of an obscure TV show, it's the fastest method (but happy to hear alternatives).
Also, the websites it links to aren't operated by the government of Russia.
Where I am, both yandex and Google are services from a foreign land.
I can't say about Yandex because I haven't used it much, but I have used Google and its services enough to know that it may appear neutral but its services do reflect politics of its origin country. For an outsider, I doubt Yandex is going to be any different than Google in those matters.
Genuine question: what can go wrong?
The damn commies will destroy our film industry and blackmail pirates into revealing classified information! Or maybe nothing.
Oooh scary, watch out for the Russian Boogeyman!
This but unironically
> Ah yes, using a Russian service, what could go wrong.
Nothing if you know what you're doing.
> Weekly Yandex astroturfers strike again.
People doing things you don't like doesn't mean they don't exist.