On Thursday, June 22, we took a look at different Internet Search Engines. These have evolved a long way from early keyword matching, when you had to be very specific about the topic you were looking for and any spelling mistake made a mess of things!
https://elgoog.im/google1998/
Search apps (engines) have gradually been incorporating AI better to understand questions. This has resulted in the creation of Intelligent Assistants which guess the context of words and ignore trivial spelling mistakes. Now Large Language models like GPT are attempting to formulate responses intelligently.
The Top eleven search engines as ranked by popularity include Yandex (Russian), Baidu (Chinese) and Naver (South Korean) and the Internet Archive. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/top-search-engines
It used to be possible to change the search engine in the search bar of a browser. Now, in most browsers it only seems possible to change the default (the one it uses all the time). e.g Chrome allows you to change the default search engine from Google to :
Bing, (Microsoft)
Yahoo, (This uses Google)
Duck Duck Go ( Prides itself on privacy – no tracking: https://duckduckgo.com/ Remote company from 15 countries.)
Ecosia – This uses elements of MS Bing’s search index, but keeps searches private. It’s a “Green” search engine which uses its profits from advertising to plant trees.
Qwant – hosted in France – Also prides itself on privacy. Uses its own algorithms.
StartPage – Based in the Netherlands – also keeps searches private.
You.com – Based in the US. An independent Chatbot search.
Trying to use a search engine other than the default is a bit of faff with most browsers. The most flexibility in choosing a one on the fly seems to be provided by the Vivaldi Browser: https://vivaldi.com/ This provides a drop-down menu of 8 different search engines to choose from when searching for an item.
We found that there were considerable differences in the search results provided by different engines as well as the chatbot searches of Bing and You. There were also differences in the layout of the results. Some being minimalist with sponsored links at the top, while others had summaries on side panels. DuckDuckGo allowed you to specify what region you were in. (but when I typed Weather in Jávea, it gave me the weather in Bejar). When we asked for “Cheap flights” – some gave a list of sites where you can find cheap flights yourself, while others dug out specific offers.
When challenged with “Best value smartphones“, one gave an array of re-conditioned iPhones. In contrast Bing (Microsoft) gave a selection of everything but iPhones, and most search engines pointed to US magazine review articles about the best cheap smartphones for 2023.
When asked “Who is the new mayor of Xàbia?”, most picked up the news of a few days ago – It’s Rosa Cardona of the PP, while others still referred to José Chulvi (specifically his Facebook page) and one, interestingly said that the PPs Enrique Escrivá was Mayor. This was because the search engine had looked at Javea.Com, a site which has autotranslation into various languages. It contained a photo of Escrivá with the heading “ Enrique Escrivá, edil del PP” (PP councillor) – which had been mis-translated into ” Enrique Escrivá, mayor of the PP”
It really pays to compare the search results !
In asking about the Javea Computer Club – some searches were fooled by our old website on Wikidot, which is still there after all these years – It isn’t date stamped and puts our location as in Avenida Tamarits.. wrong! (We got flooded out in 2019). So, beware of interpreting search results – Dig deeper into the links to determine the truth for yourself!.
Christine Betterton-Jones, Knowledge junkie