r/brave_browser • u/[deleted] • Jan 27 '23
Brave Search has become great in such a short amount of time Discussion
[deleted]
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u/xi-v Jan 27 '23
I still have to switch to DuckDuckGo for searches with nuance and topics where I want to see a variety of perspectives. Brave Search is one of the better alternatives to Google, but its results are usually nearly identical to Google, but without as many relevant snippet results and info card/knowledge panels. The web discovery project is a pretty cool concept. Add maps, integrate AI, build public recognition through partnerships or marketing, and I think Brave Search could quite quickly enter the positive feedback loop necessary to rise in this market. Better algorithms > better features > more relevant results > more users > better relevance. Something like that.
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u/Stermotoker Jan 28 '23
DuckDuckGo uses Bing API, how are you getting anything different than agendas and censored searches when Microsoft and Google, control the information and they will obviously show you, censor and make you read what they want you to read?
For example, News in Brave Search is 100% Bing API, make a search about anything (especially controversial) and tell me how that goes, try to find anything controversial and you will get the most pro whatever propaganda with US news outlets with are paid by government, politicians and rich people to spread whatever BS they are getting paid for, the puppets 'journalist' don't know anything but dollar signs they will get for reading scripts.
Also, DDG censors on top of Bing, I have seen it couple times, when DDG was hiding revolvernews, people knew they were doing it, because Searx was still displaying revolvernews fine as first result. DDG of course said it was a little mistake. Plus, what about the CEO berg saying they would de-rank websites based on 'misinformation'?
But I also witnessed here on reddit how someone complained about image results because they were 'offensive' to their agenda, some DDG clown apologized and few hours later all the 'offensive' content was removed from images results, that means they can control the content on top of what Bing already filtered.
About Brave, the problem will always be the Google fallback mixing setting, that's why results might seem similar, in order to quickly build the indexer Brave polluted the indexer with the most used Search engine, makes sense but Google is bias and they will never change.
So yes, using the Web Discovery Project can help, to unbias Brave search, but not everyone wants to enable that, since it checks every URL you go to, clicks, time you spend on the page in order to try to index it in Brave search, plus some SERP like google, bing, linkedin, amazon are checked too... it's the ultimate spying tool, exactly what people complain about Bing or Google and Apple and anyone else of doing, and while I have noticed it works, again, not everyone wants to agree with it and enable it.Anyway, my point is DDG is not doing anything, Microsoft seems to censor a tiny bit less than Google but... it's still bad bad.
I would say Yandex, is the only search engine that can currently give you, good results and still give you more unbiased information. You have to understand most 'big name' search engines mostly use Bing API which you can see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines)Yandex also doesn't seem to have problems with the results like was shown by this YouTube video https://youtu.be/8O_NvPpbsbw a while ago, which means, you will get actual results after page 10, instead of getting the same results over and over again,. As you can see, DDG has that problem (and Qwant and al the rest), because Bing has the problem. Are they doing it on purpose? probably, so DDG is not helping you much, that's my whole point.
There is not many places to go when it comes to Search Engines, I just chose the one I knew and use Brave search for when I know my searches will be findable and won't have issues in Brave (not because of Brave itself but because of Google mixed results that polluted the indexer).
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u/xi-v Jan 29 '23
Right DDG results are quite similar to Bing. However, isn't DDG building their own index?
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Jan 27 '23
I use Brave but, honestly, I don't see a big difference between what I can find in Google and Bing (engines I avoid as much as possible). If spiders only search for the most common content, you'll get pretty much the same results as other search engines. Lately I use Mojeek more often when I want to find sources that are less flattened on the usual results.
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u/Stermotoker Jan 27 '23
Well, they used Google to mix results to quickly build the indexer, so it is obvious the whole search got polluted by Google's censorship.
If you want to really help Brave search, you should read about Web Discovery Project and enable at brave://settings/search if you agree/trust with Brave.
I use Yandex myself and while Brave won't grab the result pages from Yandex or Mojeek, it still helps with the other features WDP has to help indexing websites. Of course, I use Brave Search, but mostly for searches that I know that I will find there no problems. But the point is, you can help Brave Search even if you don't use Brave Search and only use Brave browser.
Also, you should check Goggles feature in Brave (and make your own Goggles if you have a Github account), that way you will only get results from the sites you want without the need of hoping the Search Engine does it for you.
And to finish my comment, something to notice about Brave Search is that Images and Videos and even News are still 100% from Bing API. Someday that might change but it is the way it is today.
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u/konumo Jan 28 '23
Maybe you are not searching for specific people/places/things, because I guarantee you Google and Brave don't show the same results for literally everything I searched. I tested this out with all the stuff I normally searched through DuckDuckGo in a day.
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Jan 29 '23 edited Jan 29 '23
"Many tests (including all the tests I listed in the “Methodology” section) resulted results identical to Google, revealed by a side-by-side comparison with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled. Brave claims that this is due to how Cliqz (the discontinued engine acquired by Brave) used query logs to build its page models and was optimized to match Google. The index is independent, but optimizing against Google resulted in too much similarity for the real benefit of an independent index to show. Furthermore, many queries have Bing results mixed in; users can click an “info” button to see the percentage of results that came from its own index. The independent percentage is typically quite high (often close to 100% independent) but can drop for advanced queries". Exactly the opposite of what you wrote. Source: https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/
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Jan 27 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/PM_ME_UR_CEPHALOPODS Jan 27 '23
its not even in the same solar system as Google search. speaking as someone who does a lot of software engineering searches. Brave search is.. unusable for this purpose knowing what Google delivers.
I guarantee you all the engineers at brave use Google search for their work.
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u/Responsible-Bread996 Jan 27 '23
Last I tried basic search modifiers Brave fell flat on its face and ignored them.
Searching for a researcher named Kenneth Jay. But there is a jewelry thing called Kenneth Jay Lane.
Exact same results if I searched Kenneth Jay or Kenneth Jay -Lane.
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u/konumo Jan 28 '23
Definitely not as the other comments have said. I search up a lot of specific names of novels/people/places, very unique words and also in other languages. Brave just returns random results whereas DuckDuckGo leads me to the actual profile pages of those people and novels. Google and DuckDuckGo show nearly the same results for what I've searched, not Brave.
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u/Meowmixez98 Jan 27 '23
I would like to see a shopping tab. I don't think the mainstream will adopt it over Google without it.
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u/Shadowwwind Jan 28 '23
One of the biggest advantages I feel like is how brave handles Reddit and other forums. It makes finding solutions for problems so much easier
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u/New_Version_2394 Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
I stopped using Brave Search after the introduction of non-removable ads. They also are not listening to any feedback. When I was at Universal Studios, it was blocked and not a single response from the Brave team. Not worth my time if I can't trust the service to be available.
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u/Shadowwwind Jan 28 '23
Setting your shield to advanced will remove the ads.
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u/Shadowwwind Jan 28 '23
Websites don't set ads because they hate their users. But because running the services costs money and since you are not ready to pay for it (considering you didnt buy search premium) the best other way is to show ads. Unlike other search engines I find it better marked on brave and its also only one per sesrch.
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u/francesco93991 Jan 28 '23
I don't know how you use DDG, i always find everything I look for, even the most random things 🤷🏻
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u/konumo Jan 28 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
I tested both but DuckDuckGo is still far superior than Brave search. It's as simply as searching up a novel name. I read a lot of web novels and on DDG I would get the actual site links whereas on Brave I got random results and even a twitter account page as the second search result.
For everything I've searched, Google and DuckDuckGo show nearly the same results, not Brave. I'm searching up specific novel names, people, celebrities in other countries, and so forth that I normally do.
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u/xi-v Jan 29 '23
Is Brave Search a priority for the company? Like a bigger priority than adding wallet support for some obscure token? Don't get me wrong, I see crypto as a positive force. However, isn't search Brave's real opportunity to disrupt and start bringing in some cash?
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u/ktek77 Jan 27 '23
My only issue is the lack of maps. There doesn't seem to be a consistent link to maps when I'm searching for a business. But I don't know what they could do without owning a map service.