5 ms·

This has not been my experience. Comparing results with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled reveals that the results are almost alw

by Seirdy 5y ago

This has not been my experience. Comparing results with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled reveals that the results are almost always from Google. Sometimes they merge multiple results that share a domain. I decided to add them to the "Semi-Independent" category of my collection of indexing search engines: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...

jonathansampson 5y ago
Brave Search doesn't fall-back to Google; not unless you have enabled Fallback Mixing in https://search.brave.com/settings/ https://search.brave.com/settings/. Brave Search has its own index; the results may resemble those of other engines at times, but they aren't pulled from those engines (again, noting the exception of Fallback Mixing, an optional feature offered to the user via Settings).
- Seirdy 5y ago
  I'm testing on Firefox and the Tor browser right now, JS disabled. I also disabled cookies in Firefox. Searches for "Seirdy", "Neovim", "gccgo", and others return results identical to Google, Startpage, and Searx instances with only Google enabled. No other independent engine of all the 25 other English independently-indexing engines I compared in the article has had this happen; identical pages on all the other engines are nearly impossible to find for advanced/uncommon queries. 90% of queries being identical to Google but different from the 25 other independent engines is one hell of a coincidence. Archived example: Brave results for "gccgo": https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172743/https://search.brave.com/search?q=gccgo https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172743/https://search.br... Google results for "gccgo" (proxied through Startpage): https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172939/https://startpage.com/do/metasearch.pl?query=gccgo https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172939/https://startpage... If this is a bug, it's very serious and needs to be publicly disclosed. Edit: more examples: Brave results for "oppenheimer": https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173647/https://search.brave.com/search?q=oppenheimer https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173647/https://search.br... Google results for "Oppenheimer" (proxied through Startpage): https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173658/https://startpage.com/do/metasearch.pl?query=oppenheimer https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173658/https://startpage...
  - iudqnolq 5y ago
    As a counterexample, I searched for something very obscure (only three pages on startpage) expecting to see them pulling in results from startpage to cover the long tail. I was surprised to see different results, suggesting their index is much larger than I assumed. The query was "retail snap incentive program" Edit: All your queries are for relatively popular terms. I wouldn't be surprised if there's just a clearly right top set of pages.
    - mkl 5y ago
      > I wouldn't be surprised if there's just a clearly right top set of pages. I would be astounded! Why would DDG, Bing, etc. not use it? Different search indices and engines should practically always have differences in results, as ranking results is very fuzzy and dependent on the available data.
smoldesu 5y ago
Even semi-independant seems generous. I probably would have just lumped them in with Google or Bing.
- Seirdy 5y ago
  Some queries do actually return independent results, but the vast majority (in my experience) do not.
solso 5y ago
Mixing with Google results only can happen after opt-in and only in Brave browser. You can see if a single query has been mixed clicking on the `Info`, or check the independence metrics on the `Settings` tab. The fact that you see results similar to Google for popular queries is a by-product of the fact that our ranking is trained using anonymous query-log. There is plenty of references to the methodology (https://0x65.dev/ https://0x65.dev/). The fact that we are similar to Google on certain types of queries, is good (at from the perspective of human assessment). It's easy to find other types of queries for which we are not similar to Google. It would be rather stupid if we were to "use google" on easy to solve queries but not on the complicated ones, don’t you think? In any case, very nice article besides a couple of miss-conceptions (like this one), will bookmark. Disclaimer: work at Brave search, used to work at Cliqz
- Seirdy 5y ago
  That makes a bit more sense; I just read the blog posts. I'm concerned about the effects of optimizing against Google (namely, the extremely similar results); I don't think I understand the point of an alternative if it tries to replicate a competitor to this degree. The whole idea I was going for in that article was a diversity of information sources: if one engine isn't giving the results you want, try another. Right now, users who want Google results and privacy can use a Searx instance or Startpage. I updated the article to fix the inaccuracy. Diff: https://git.sr.ht/~seirdy/seirdy.one/commit/ddeeb36248ce53183b9839c81a3e0ac64024d517 https://git.sr.ht/~seirdy/seirdy.one/commit/ddeeb36248ce5318... Any other fact-checks are welcome.
  - solso 5y ago
    You bring a very good point on the diversity of information sources, which is something we plan to attack in the near future with open ranking [0] In my opinion having similar results to Google will facilitate adoption. After all, Google is pretty good for many types of queries (not all), and people in general have strong habits. The fact that we are similar with our own index is great. It means that we have the power of deviating from it when needed, as we mature/evolve. Allow me to repurposed your statement on why not use startpage if you want Google-like results: if tomorrow Google disappears (or for some reason becomes unusable), brave search will continue to operate as normal (similar to old Google). What will happen to searx or startpage? What till happen to ddg or swisscows if the provider turning bad is Microsoft. IMHO, no matter how much reranking or nice features they you put on top, unless you do not control the search results themselves, diversity can only be superficial. Sorry for the "rant". Thanks a lot for the inputs and for updating the doc, appreciate it. [0] https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Interesting. I couldn't reproduce those results. Certain queries did produce _very_ identical results, but others did not. In some of those cases Google and Startpage did better.

by Seirdy 5y ago

jonathansampson 5y ago

Brave Search doesn't fall-back to Google; not unless you have enabled Fallback Mixing in https://search.brave.com/settings/ https://search.brave.com/settings/. Brave Search has its own index; the results may resemble those of other engines at times, but they aren't pulled from those engines (again, noting the exception of Fallback Mixing, an optional feature offered to the user via Settings).

Seirdy 5y ago
I'm testing on Firefox and the Tor browser right now, JS disabled. I also disabled cookies in Firefox. Searches for "Seirdy", "Neovim", "gccgo", and others return results identical to Google, Startpage, and Searx instances with only Google enabled. No other independent engine of all the 25 other English independently-indexing engines I compared in the article has had this happen; identical pages on all the other engines are nearly impossible to find for advanced/uncommon queries. 90% of queries being identical to Google but different from the 25 other independent engines is one hell of a coincidence. Archived example: Brave results for "gccgo": https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172743/https://search.brave.com/search?q=gccgo https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172743/https://search.br... Google results for "gccgo" (proxied through Startpage): https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172939/https://startpage.com/do/metasearch.pl?query=gccgo https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172939/https://startpage... If this is a bug, it's very serious and needs to be publicly disclosed. Edit: more examples: Brave results for "oppenheimer": https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173647/https://search.brave.com/search?q=oppenheimer https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173647/https://search.br... Google results for "Oppenheimer" (proxied through Startpage): https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173658/https://startpage.com/do/metasearch.pl?query=oppenheimer https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173658/https://startpage...
- iudqnolq 5y ago
  As a counterexample, I searched for something very obscure (only three pages on startpage) expecting to see them pulling in results from startpage to cover the long tail. I was surprised to see different results, suggesting their index is much larger than I assumed. The query was "retail snap incentive program" Edit: All your queries are for relatively popular terms. I wouldn't be surprised if there's just a clearly right top set of pages.
  - mkl 5y ago
    > I wouldn't be surprised if there's just a clearly right top set of pages. I would be astounded! Why would DDG, Bing, etc. not use it? Different search indices and engines should practically always have differences in results, as ranking results is very fuzzy and dependent on the available data.

smoldesu 5y ago

Even semi-independant seems generous. I probably would have just lumped them in with Google or Bing.

Seirdy 5y ago
Some queries do actually return independent results, but the vast majority (in my experience) do not.

solso 5y ago

Mixing with Google results only can happen after opt-in and only in Brave browser. You can see if a single query has been mixed clicking on the `Info`, or check the independence metrics on the `Settings` tab. The fact that you see results similar to Google for popular queries is a by-product of the fact that our ranking is trained using anonymous query-log. There is plenty of references to the methodology (https://0x65.dev/ https://0x65.dev/). The fact that we are similar to Google on certain types of queries, is good (at from the perspective of human assessment). It's easy to find other types of queries for which we are not similar to Google. It would be rather stupid if we were to "use google" on easy to solve queries but not on the complicated ones, don’t you think? In any case, very nice article besides a couple of miss-conceptions (like this one), will bookmark. Disclaimer: work at Brave search, used to work at Cliqz

Seirdy 5y ago
That makes a bit more sense; I just read the blog posts. I'm concerned about the effects of optimizing against Google (namely, the extremely similar results); I don't think I understand the point of an alternative if it tries to replicate a competitor to this degree. The whole idea I was going for in that article was a diversity of information sources: if one engine isn't giving the results you want, try another. Right now, users who want Google results and privacy can use a Searx instance or Startpage. I updated the article to fix the inaccuracy. Diff: https://git.sr.ht/~seirdy/seirdy.one/commit/ddeeb36248ce53183b9839c81a3e0ac64024d517 https://git.sr.ht/~seirdy/seirdy.one/commit/ddeeb36248ce5318... Any other fact-checks are welcome.
- solso 5y ago
  You bring a very good point on the diversity of information sources, which is something we plan to attack in the near future with open ranking [0] In my opinion having similar results to Google will facilitate adoption. After all, Google is pretty good for many types of queries (not all), and people in general have strong habits. The fact that we are similar with our own index is great. It means that we have the power of deviating from it when needed, as we mature/evolve. Allow me to repurposed your statement on why not use startpage if you want Google-like results: if tomorrow Google disappears (or for some reason becomes unusable), brave search will continue to operate as normal (similar to old Google). What will happen to searx or startpage? What till happen to ddg or swisscows if the provider turning bad is Microsoft. IMHO, no matter how much reranking or nice features they you put on top, unless you do not control the search results themselves, diversity can only be superficial. Sorry for the "rant". Thanks a lot for the inputs and for updating the doc, appreciate it. [0] https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

Interesting. I couldn't reproduce those results. Certain queries did produce _very_ identical results, but others did not. In some of those cases Google and Startpage did better.