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I'm very glad for this! I've been using Brave search almost since it launched, and the standard results have gotten great, but it's always been a bummer to have

by cheald 3y ago

I'm very glad for this! I've been using Brave search almost since it launched, and the standard results have gotten great, but it's always been a bummer to have to go out to Bing/Google for images/video. It's really nice having an alternative that isn't just wrapper around someone else's search index.

ignitionmonkey 3y ago
Same here. Much like Firefox, I think it's important to use a search index that isn't tied to the larger players (Bing and Google in this case). I tried Brave a couple of months ago[1], I found the results better than Bing, but without image search it wasn't usable. Now I can give it another go. [1]: https://jahed.dev/2023/07/01/trying-brave-search/ https://jahed.dev/2023/07/01/trying-brave-search/
- waithuh 3y ago
  Out of curiosity, if you dont want to be 'tied to the larger players', why not use metasearch engines like SearX? If Google does not have a great answer, Bing does, or Mojeek.
  - ignitionmonkey 3y ago
    I'm referring to a default search engine. Something I can use by default everywhere and I can recommend to others. So it has to provide results based on typical use cases. First I've heard of a "metasearch" engine. I just tried SearX and it gave me no results for my projects and only a couple for "Mastodon", but the animal not the software.
em-bee 3y ago
i have been using brave search for a while now and i was surprised and am very satisfied with the search results. missing image and video search was a bit annoying mostly in that it linked to google and bing but not any other search engines. but i just remembered to switch to where i wanted to do image search instead. it sometimes meant that i had to go back to retype my search query, but i'd rather have a good text search than be bothered by that. in most cases i'd know ahead of time if i wanted images so it was easy to pick the right search engine.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
  I'm a little surprised to hear other people having such good results. Brave search was my default for quite a while, until a few weeks after they got rid of bing results. As soon as that happened, stuff just wasn't showing up that I'd expect to be there, and 90% of the time I'd follow up searches with !g or !ddg just to get something decent to show up. The index just felt severely lacking, or the relevancy was pretty far off base. Would you say search has greatly improved over the past month or two?
  - computronus 3y ago
    Possibly, at least for my own experience. It's much less often that I rerun a search with !g. Brave Search's results are becoming more relevant to my own queries, and Google's becoming less so. Not to mention how ads like to masquerade as ordinary Google results; using Google is starting to feel less comfortable.
    - mrweasel 3y ago
      That seems to be the general case, other search engines. Especially Bing and those based on Bing are yield increasingly good results, while Google is just ads and spam.
  - cheald 3y ago
    I feel like it's improved steadily over time. I used to find it severely lacking for anything code-related, but that's improved, too. It's not as good as Google was at its peak (and Google itself has degraded severely in quality, IMO), but it's good enough that I can generally find what I'm looking for with a minimum of effort. I run maybe 1 in 40-50 searches with "!g" because Brave is insufficient, for context.
  - sundarurfriend 3y ago
    > stuff just wasn't showing up that I'd expect to be there Exactly my experience. I hadn't connected it to them getting rid of Bing results, but it makes sense. I've had to use the bang redirects to other search engines a lot more too, to a level I haven't had to in more than a year.

by cheald 3y ago

ignitionmonkey 3y ago

Same here. Much like Firefox, I think it's important to use a search index that isn't tied to the larger players (Bing and Google in this case). I tried Brave a couple of months ago[1], I found the results better than Bing, but without image search it wasn't usable. Now I can give it another go. [1]: https://jahed.dev/2023/07/01/trying-brave-search/ https://jahed.dev/2023/07/01/trying-brave-search/

waithuh 3y ago
Out of curiosity, if you dont want to be 'tied to the larger players', why not use metasearch engines like SearX? If Google does not have a great answer, Bing does, or Mojeek.
- ignitionmonkey 3y ago
  I'm referring to a default search engine. Something I can use by default everywhere and I can recommend to others. So it has to provide results based on typical use cases. First I've heard of a "metasearch" engine. I just tried SearX and it gave me no results for my projects and only a couple for "Mastodon", but the animal not the software.

em-bee 3y ago

i have been using brave search for a while now and i was surprised and am very satisfied with the search results. missing image and video search was a bit annoying mostly in that it linked to google and bing but not any other search engines. but i just remembered to switch to where i wanted to do image search instead. it sometimes meant that i had to go back to retype my search query, but i'd rather have a good text search than be bothered by that. in most cases i'd know ahead of time if i wanted images so it was easy to pick the right search engine.

SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
I'm a little surprised to hear other people having such good results. Brave search was my default for quite a while, until a few weeks after they got rid of bing results. As soon as that happened, stuff just wasn't showing up that I'd expect to be there, and 90% of the time I'd follow up searches with !g or !ddg just to get something decent to show up. The index just felt severely lacking, or the relevancy was pretty far off base. Would you say search has greatly improved over the past month or two?
- computronus 3y ago
  Possibly, at least for my own experience. It's much less often that I rerun a search with !g. Brave Search's results are becoming more relevant to my own queries, and Google's becoming less so. Not to mention how ads like to masquerade as ordinary Google results; using Google is starting to feel less comfortable.
  - mrweasel 3y ago
    That seems to be the general case, other search engines. Especially Bing and those based on Bing are yield increasingly good results, while Google is just ads and spam.
- cheald 3y ago
  I feel like it's improved steadily over time. I used to find it severely lacking for anything code-related, but that's improved, too. It's not as good as Google was at its peak (and Google itself has degraded severely in quality, IMO), but it's good enough that I can generally find what I'm looking for with a minimum of effort. I run maybe 1 in 40-50 searches with "!g" because Brave is insufficient, for context.
- sundarurfriend 3y ago
  > stuff just wasn't showing up that I'd expect to be there Exactly my experience. I hadn't connected it to them getting rid of Bing results, but it makes sense. I've had to use the bang redirects to other search engines a lot more too, to a level I haven't had to in more than a year.