Best search engine??

[1 2 free]

Spin off from the 'best browser' thread....what's the best search engine? Google is great at finding stuff but is obviouly intel surveilence gatherer number one. I need to get away from it.

[mightiswrong]

As a webmaster I am perplexed by how muh stuff is missing from the google index and how often I find really good pages that are not ranking anywhere in google. I prefer yahoo for most searches but am also looking for a better engine that is not involved with the CIA etc.

In recent years google have altered their algorithm to give bigger sites a major advantage and this is harming niche sites considerably.

[h1s_l0rdsh1p]

Try jux2

EDIT:
Oh! And altavista

[pumma]

http://www.dogpile.com/

http://www.ask.com/

http://search.yahoo.com/

http://www.alltheweb.com/

http://www.lycos.com/

http://search.netscape.com/search/webhome

[jaanus]

Here we go again :)

GOOOOO...OOOOOGLE

When it comes to search results then it has been one of the best search engines until recently when lots of corruption has been discovered: some top google videos have been reset (one video even several time), many websites have not been blacklisted by google anymore. These websites are obviously not following the google's guidelines. One of such guidelines is not use plain listed search terms in the content of the webpage as this would give a big advantage in terms of page ranking over those who don't use this technique. By the way, this sort of scam can be very easily detected by google bots (little programs which go from page to page and update the search terms for that page). Most of these lists are "invisible" (they are either the same color as the background, very small font or both), however I have seen pages found by google, which don't even hide it and still continue their existance in google's database.

The previous comment is rather pale next to the fact that google stores your IP and search terms each time you use google. This information is openly said to be available to the governments if they should request it.

Another googles innovative ideas was to bring along these annoying adds, which basically made them a fortune. Lots of web pages have been made since then concentrating on how to make visitors click on these adds more often. Now why would google blacklist a web page with their adds even though these pages don't use honest methods of getting into the top search rankings (read the first paragraph) ? Who benefits? I can give you a hint - Not those who are using that search engine. They keep us in the dark and feed us shit, people.

I think you have all heard the Gmail. They promote it saying: "you will never have to delete another e-mail". This is because of the amount of space they are offering for your mailbox, which is in gigabytes. "Fantastic!" you say. But...there is a catch. Again Google can't resist from not spying on you. Not only are your e-mails being checked, they are available to "google's friends" on request.

YAHOOOOO...OOOOO

Things with Yahoo are pretty much the same as with the Google. When google first implemented the adds and got rich, yahoo started doing the very same thing. I must admit I have never used it and can't therefore give you any insights of how the yahoo does what it does.

There is one important thing you should know about yahoo though. It is SPYING on you, just like google is. Recently a chinese journalist (free thinker) was sent to a prison in China (was it 10 years he got in prison?), because China found out from yahoo what this poor man was searching for.

OOOOO...OOOOOTHERS:

I don't blame you if you are still in need of using either google or yahoo. Googles picture search is very cool, so is the video search and nothing can beat the Google Earth (most of their maps should be right) for obvious reasons.

However, if you want to search web pages then there are search engines out there which do the same job, often even better.

One solution is to use a buffer server between your computer and either yahoo or google. http://www.scroogle.org (http://www.scroogle.org/)
Their user interface is not as powerful as google's or yahoo's, but they do their job if you want to search something from either google or yahoo. They do this without tracking your ip and without storing your search terms. Google and yahoo will get a random ip from these buffer servers each time you search something and you are safe as they are matching the wrong ip with the search terms.

If you are willing to completely abandon google and yahoo then this one is for you:
http://www.clusty.com (http://www.clusty.com/)
this search engine is very innovative and powerful to say the least. You can search about anything and everything is divided into categories (clusters - hence the name). Be sure to check it out before you make up your mind about anything I just said.

PS For those who bothered to read through the whole post - guess what, it took even more time for me to write it all down :)

Happy Searching.

J.

[jaanus]

Uh oh, http://www.scroogle.org (http://www.scroogle.org/) scrapes now only google. Last time I checked, they scraped yahoo also.

For the lazy people who don't bother to go to their page - scroogle search can me used by webmasters and can be used as embedded into the browsers as well.

I brought http://www.clusty.com (http://www.clusty.com/) as an other alternative, which is not spying on you. I'm sure there are plenty of others which don't spy on you either and I'm just as sure there are plenty of others who try to imitate google and yahoo.

[1 2 free]

Thanks for all the tips and info. :) I didn't realise there was so many. :eek:

[jaanus]

This is a ripoff from http://www.scroogle.org (http://www.scroogle.org/)
This should further explain why you should avoid google and its all truth what is being claimed here.


Why donate to Scroogle?

There are two reasons why an ad-free scraper of Google's main search results is important. One reason is personal, and the other is political.

On a personal level, your support for Scroogle says that search engines should not be tracking you and retaining this information indefinitely. Not only does Google scrape much of the web, but they keep records of who searches for what. If information about your searching is accessible by cookie ID or by your IP address, it is subject to subpoena. This is a violation of your privacy. Someday Google's data retention practices will be regulated, because Google is too arrogant to do the right thing voluntarily. In the meantime, you should not be leaving your fingerprints in Google's databases.

There are other proxies that can protect your privacy on the web. Almost all are general-purpose proxies that cloak all of your web activity behind an IP address that is not easily traced to your service provider. One is Anonymizer.com. A possible problem with this one is that the founder, Lance Cottrell, has connections with the FBI and the Voice of America. It also costs money for a reasonable level of service. Another is Tor, which is much more secure. But it is also slow, because Tor is a complicated system that needs networks of volunteers to run server software. Juvenile surfers from video pirates to rogue Wikipedia editors tend to clog free services such as Tor, which slows them down even more.

Since Scroogle does just one thing, it is fairly fast and simple. But because it does only one thing, it is vulnerable to action by Google. They could block our IP address, which would require that we relay requests to other servers that are more difficult for them to locate. They could also centralize their system more in order to better detect and throttle any outside address that does too many searches per minute. Finally, they could make minor changes in their output format on a regular basis, which would break our scraper and require frequent reprogramming. Any of the above might quickly get too complex and expensive for us, and that would be the end of Scroogle.

One action that Google is less likely to take is to serve Scroogle with a cease and desist letter. This introduces the second reason why Scroogle deserves support. As a nonprofit with a history of activism on privacy issues, it would be difficult for Google to sue us on the grounds that their search results and rankings are copyrighted. The main reason for this is that we are noncommercial. None of our sites has ever carried ads, we have zero employees, and our gross annual income is about $10,000. Our lack of commercial intent strengthens our claim that we have the right to scrape Google. It's obvious that we are doing it in the public interest.

http://www.scroogle.org/gifs/blog6.gif (http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nb18/0101) Showing Google's results without their ads is another political statement. About 99 percent of Google's total revenue comes from ads, and these are ruining the web. Thousands of "Made for AdSense" domains are spewing garbage. Since these sites need content to trigger Google's ads, they steal it by scraping legitimate sites, or generate their own by purchasing junk from bulk writers. Meanwhile, click fraud is rampant. Zombie botnets are used to click on ads. If you cannot afford to buy a botnet from some shady character, then you can contract with someone in a country where labor is cheap. They will hire people to click on ads all day at below-minimum wage.

It's time to stop pretending that Google's revenue model is anything more than a temporary bubble, and it's time for Google to start developing more socially-responsible sources of income. Showing Google's results without the ads amounts to more public-interest advocacy. It says that the web spam situation is intolerable.

We remain vulnerable to blocking, throttling, or breaking by Google, which unfortunately is legal if they decide to stop us. But the longer Scroogle exists and the more our traffic grows, the stronger our statements become. We cannot survive many more months without at least one more server, even if Google leaves us alone. While we could apply for foundation grants, our experience tells us that foundations are about ten years behind on Internet and other high-tech issues. Any funding proposals we send out would strike them as bizarre and incomprehensible. It's not worth our time to send out proposals to foundations.

That leaves us asking lots of Scroogle users for small contributions. Searchers who prefer Scroogle are making a unique statement about important issues. Nothing else we know of is making the same points as effectively.

[jaanus]

More spam:

http://www.scroogle.org/gifs/war8.gif



http://www.scroogle.org/gifs/slide9.gif



http://www.scroogle.org/gifs/clippy.gif



http://www.scroogle.org/gifs/yahdarth.gif




http://www.scroogle.org/gifs/gscrew.gif



Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google since January 2000, used to work for the National Security Agency.
Keyhole, the satellite imaging company that Google acquired in October 2004, was funded by the CIA.
"We are moving to a Google that knows more about you." — Google CEO Eric Schmidt, February 9, 2005 http://www.scroogle.org/gifs/spookip.gif Since 2000, Google has recorded your search terms, the date-time of each search, the globally-unique ID in your cookie (it expires in 2038), and your IP address. This information is available to governments on request. If your favorite site features a Google search box, ask them to install their own local site search. They could also use our site search for webmasters (http://www.scroogle.org/masters.html), which shows the same results without the tracking.


http://www.scroogle.org/gifs/goognyt.gif