duckduckgo.com
COMPARING SEARCH ENGINES
So Here is kind of an interesting subject I have seen virtually no discussion of:
No one in the genealogical world - should under estimate the power and usefulness of "Internet Search Engines" in their research.
To a very large percentage of the world's population that means "GOOGLE".
I have used it extensively - virtually every day in my research.
see also:
BUT Google is not the only search engine out there.
How many of you have tried to compare the results of genealogical related searches among various diverse search tools??
Here are just a few:
DUCK DUCK GO - https://duckduckgo.com/
SWISS COWS - https://swisscows.com/
SEE ALSO:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/alternative-search-engines/271409/
So I wonder if any of you have done a comparison as to how a genealogical search query compares across multiple search engines. OR for example if for a specific country - a specific search engine might be better to use - and why?
There ae also some other systems - that maybe dont fall into the same category as SEARCH ENGINES - but none the less can be very powerful when used to search for genealogical related items:
The Internet Archive
Ancetsry.com com item search (which can be searched with limtiations without an accoutn)
https://www.ancestry.com/search/?keyword=family+bible&types=p
FamilySearch Memories search
@FamilySearch Tips and Tricks
@United States Genealogy Research
@British Isles Family History Research
@Australian Genealogy
@France Genealogy Research
@Germany Genealogy Research
@Community Group Leaders
Comments
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excellent info @Dennis J Yancey ! Ive never heard of the cow one! I use Google mostly, but dabble a bit with bing, dogpile and duckduckgo.... one that I find VERY useful is Yandex (i think its Russian) and I like Baidu also... I haven't used them for genealogy and I'm not sure why lol but now that you've reminded me there's more to the web than the almighty google, I think I'll try the foreign ones and see how it goes ?:)
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I used google for years but recently they have been politically mucking around big time with search results a lot. Politically "bad" search terms relative to the ideology of Google's management are being demoted to the bottom of search results (if you get to see them at all).
It has gotten me ticked off so much that I've pretty well dropped it and have been using DuckDuckGo. You can easily see the difference. Just try searching on some current political event here in the U.S. and then compare the results from the two search engines. They can be significantly different. With DuckDuckGo you tend to see the search results as you would expect to get. But the results from Google, although similar, are frequently filtered with certain "types" of results removed based on common types of content.
If you try and search on (say) certain products that you might like to purchase, I am not convince that the results I get haven't been tainted by some filtering criteria set forth by Google's marketing.
Google is not a straight search engine. It is being evolved to be a platform for Google to subtly "push" or sell what ever agenda they have, and it is just plain wrong IMHO.
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@Dennis J Yancey I'm curious and you can probably answer this.... anytime I search Google for anything family related, the first several results are always familysearch .... do you think it shows those first because I use the site so often? I would think that if someone was searching genealogy related stuff, they would want to see what other options are available besides the one they use all the time... so if that's the case, how can I make it not show FS as the first several results?
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@JeffWiseman JeffWiseman i couldn’t agree with you more ... I’m in the same boat as you... the ridiculous censoring of sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and google has gotten me super hotheaded on several occasions .... I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even trust what my local news channel has to say anymore ... all of these recent events and the censoring that has gone on leaves me questioning many of the articles and things I find in historical records ... makes me wonder how much of our history is real and how much of it is based on someone’s agenda
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Its probably showing FamilySearch because it is known to be one of the most used and best FamilySearch sites around . . . so it weights its heavily toward the top.
Google tries to use various both complex and simple rules to determine what are the most likely sites to answer your questions - and if your search query is about Family Related information - statistically speaking FamilySearch is probably the most likely site to have the answer to your question.
Does Google know where you (as a single specific person) have been on the Internet and use that in its search results - thats an interesting question . . . It very well might.
But it most defintitley does keep track of where people on average most often go to get their answers - when similar queries were made - where did people appear to get their answers from most often.
I do not think Google would try to send you to a place you dont normally go . . .
if it did find highly rated results from the places you do normally go - On the contrary - it detects the results that are most commonly chosen .
If people in general get their their answers from site A - that is where they are going to point you at most often.
They are not going to send you to a site that seems least likely to be the one chosen - ie. least likely to have your answer.
Now in all that was said above - the over-riding question is - "Is Google customizng its searches specifically to YOU as an individual person - and your unique history using the Internet" OR is it not really recognizing who you are specifically but just coming up with a weighted listing based on how MILLIONS of people across the planet use the search engine and its results.
Surely their is the capapbility that google tweaks its results to an individual users - how big of a factor that is - I really dont have a clue. Companies like Amazon - who are seling products use that same sort of methodology to guide you to products it thinks you are going to buy. So surely Google could be doing the same.
One way you could test this - is using the "anonymous/incognito mode" of various Internet Browsers. In Chrome - you can get to this by doing CTRL-SHIFT-N. Most browsers and web sites used by the browser can/will track your habits and moves - by tracking your IP address of your computer - along with the use of what are called "cookies"/session data - which normally are used by browsers to make your experience on the INternet more clean and seemless - but which can be used forf "tracking" and even somewhat nefarous purposes.
The Incognito feature - make the browser blind to your IP address and to your "cookies" - thus giving you a supposedly totally generic experience in your browsing.
SO you could spend the day working on Internet in Incognito - and see how it might / will act differently.
Keep in mind though various sites - require you to allow for cookies (and may not work in Incognito mode) - not because they have some nefarious want to track you - but simply because it so much easier for them to create a good user experience for you on what heppens when you go from page to page in a system. Most sites that require a user id and password - would be using cookies or session files to allow for them to legitimately keep track of whether or not you are a valid user, whether your session has timed out, what records in the sytem you looked at last, what items you have in your shopping chart - and a million and one other things (most of them totally harmless and most very useful) - but it opens the door to such things being used for trakcing purposes as well as nefarious purposes.
So give InCognito a test drive and see how search queries against Google act differently or not.
I tend to think it wont be a drastic difference - but who knows. I could be wrong.
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log out of Google. Then try searching again. It shouldn't 'know' your search history then.
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with IP and session files - it can surely track you without you being logged on . . .
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your idea though (X24MOM)- that it would be nice (under certain special situations) - if there was a flag that said - dont go to my most visited sites or dont go to the most common sites - if you can find what I want on a more "original" "new " site - please show me that first - that would be an interesting option.
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You do not have to be logged into Google to use several of their tools including Google Search. They can collect all that information on you just as easily. It is the same search engine regardless of what browser (or other application) that is using it.
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For example Im always looking for new Family Bible sites and new Family bible records
it would be nice if I could somehow say "Please point me at sites I have never visited before" that have what I am looking for.
I know there are some clues to that - such as the color of the link - and the history log
but still it would be nice to limit the query results themselves to ones Ive never visited before.
anyone know if that is possible?
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Unfortunately, I doubt that such a capability would be added to the Google tools because it would allow everyone to circumvent everything that Google is trying to achieve. When services are provided on the internet for "Free", then YOU are the product that is being sold. How does a company like Google even exist? They have to have income of some type. They are in the business of collecting as much information as possible on INDIVIDUALS and using that to make money with. If a company that wants to sell a product and comes to Google to "assist" them in doing so, Google has the expertise in using Big Data which they can sell to those customers.
But again, it all comes down to YOU being the product by freely offering information about yourself to Google. You think that when you do a Google search that the order in which all your hits come back in is purely from popularity of sites? Maybe partly. But by manipulating the priorities in those returns, they can benefit all of their customers (which, by the way, does NOT include you).
Add significant political biasing as has been occurring in the Alphabet (GOOGL) family of companies (e.g., Google, Youtube, Facebook, Nest, Waze, etc.), you wind up with a search engine that will NOT always give you what you think you are getting. If you are trying to do a comparison of things to determine what to purchase but the manufacturer of only one of those products is paying Google to help them sell more products, do you think that you will get unbiased results for a comparison search showing up at the top of your hits list? It's a rather slimy marketing technique IMHO. It is not illegal because nobody is a actually paying money for the search service. You get the tool for "Free" and in an "as is" condition--complete with all the embedded priorities that Google has built into it.
And when you actually investigate the very significant political biases that are being push through all of the "Free" company tools, it starts to become very obvious at just how far they are willing to go to push their own agendas. It's scary.
So yea. I doubt very much that Google would add features that allowed all users to disrupt the prioritizing of search returns that they have specifically designed into their products.
'nuff said.
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Yea. Youtube and Facebook are owned by Google.
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Another thought
After having time to ponder our conversation - some things donned on me that I hadn't thought of before - not so much a deifinite answer to X24Moms point - - but none the less - things I hadn't considered before.
The "site:" option in Google can be used with a negative prefix. . .
If you don't want sites from familysearch.org to show up in your query you can add the option -site:familysearch.org
(note the negative sign - followed by no space and the word "site" in lower case)
the above will allow you to get results from anything but the site in question. If you do the exact same thing but leave off just the negative sign - you will get query results from ONLY that site.
now an additional point.
you can skim down the site parameter - all the way down to the last three letters
SO
if you wanted returns from only educational sites / universities etc - - you can add site:.edu
or if
you want everything BUT ".com" sites you can add -site:.com
so in my Family Bible searching I can avoid many of the "for profit" entities by adding a -site.com option.
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Neither Alphabet nor Google own Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg owns 29.3% of Facebook, and Microsoft owns 1.3% of Facebook.
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Neither Alphabet nor Google own Facebook.
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I actually use Duck Duck Go for my default when searching and find it is excellent. Gives good results.
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Thank you for correcting me on that! Yes, Google was right on the verge of purchasing Facebook in 2007 when Microsoft came in and pulled the deal right out from under them. There was some really big money that happened that week 😀
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I've only been using it for a couple of weeks, but so far I am happy. Google has some seriously good searching options (e.g., limited searches, multiple wildcard usages, and others like Dennis has mentioned, etc.). I haven't tried any of those with DDG yet. Have you tried much of this type of thing with DDG?
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I recently switched to Duck Duck Go for searches. I have an occasional issue on a website so I will switch back to Edge and then Google. Duck Duck Go doesn't track you (at least not as much as Google).
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Virtually any search engine or similar tool - has the technological know how to track you - how much it really actually does - is another question.
Personally I dont think any of us are in a position to really know for sure - which search engine really is doing the most "tracking" and which is doing the least.
but many search engines have a incognito version that disables the tracking any way - which Google Chrome does provide.
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Thank You very much!
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