4 ms·

ProCog – a new transparent search engine

32 points by boyter 14y ago

johnny22 14y ago
thanks for actually trying this! I'll be watching to see how it turns out.
7952 14y ago
The "sections" feature is interesting. You could grab a screen shot and colour the page based on its influence on search results.
tutysara 14y ago
It is making connections to connect.facebook.net in almost all the pages I have visited. The page load times are very slow for me, I am sitting behind a proxy where facebook is blocked and connections to facebook timesout. This can be made faster and office friendlier with some changes. I will certainly find and, like or +1 ProCog page even if those links are buried a layer down if I really like it.
haldean 14y ago
My experience with this: Think of a random word that comes to mind: let's try "animus". "No Matches Found. Please rephrase your query and try again.". Hm, okay. How about "theory"? "No Matches Found." What about "set"? Nope. "rank"? No. "war of 1812"? No. "barack obama": nope. The first term I got to return content was the biggest softball I could think of - "procog". I'm all for a new search engine (especially one that really lets content providers know what they need to do to rank highly for queries) but I'd say this isn't ready yet; most of those queries are the sorts of queries I search for every few minutes.
- moystard 14y ago
  Same here. After I got a successful search, results were of good quality but no better than DDG for example (lot of content farm, and Youtube/Wikipedia on top), I will stick to the later.
boyter 14y ago
For those that don't know this was jointly created by Matt Wells who also created Gigablast. It does not appear to be the same index although I suspect it shares much of Gigablasts code. The results impressed me though. Much better then Gigablast, however this may be due to not being targeted by spammers which Gigablast is.
bravoyankee 14y ago
ProCog is a transparent search engine focused on content and search optimization. Get all the data used by a search engine for ranking and indexing so you can trust the results. What does that mean? I can't make heads or tails of it.
- monk_e_boy 14y ago
  How other search engines rank your site is a (mostly) a secret. ProCog seems to show exactly how they (ProCog) ranked your site and why. I liked the 'spammy words' score on the webpage breakdown - that would be really useful for SEO. It also shows inbound links and how they effect your rank. Last time I worked in SEO (a couple of years ago) we either had to pay for that sort of report or build our own web spider to generate the report.
  - bravoyankee 14y ago
    Oh heck, say that then. I understand what you just said there, and I am interested. The existing wording just doesn't make sense (to me) though.
SeanDav 14y ago
I searched for "teaching chess children" and twitter came up as the 6th best match, which makes me wonder a bit at the search algorithm used.
gulbrandr 14y ago
This is disappointing: http://procog.com/?q=text-indent+mdn http://procog.com/?q=text-indent+mdn
pstadler 14y ago
Most of the search results are outdated, inaccurate or no longer existing. I'm always looking for alternatives, but this is not the one. Google is still so much better and/or faster than other search engines, including DuckDuckGo.
phpnode 14y ago
the reason that most search engines are opaque black boxes is that being transparent simply gives spammers the upper hand when they want to manipulate your index. it won't be a problem for this one yet, but if it gained significant market share they'd definitely have to change strategy.
Osmium 14y ago
Potentially interesting, but the interface is too busy for day-to-day use. There's no reason you need to know this information for your typical search.
dotborg2 14y ago
just like DDG, lack support for languages other than english, something you should start from when creating a search engine
- RevBooyah 14y ago
  It's got language support - big button near the top (says "English") :)

32 points by boyter 14y ago

thanks for actually trying this! I'll be watching to see how it turns out.

7952 14y ago

The "sections" feature is interesting. You could grab a screen shot and colour the page based on its influence on search results.

tutysara 14y ago

It is making connections to connect.facebook.net in almost all the pages I have visited. The page load times are very slow for me, I am sitting behind a proxy where facebook is blocked and connections to facebook timesout. This can be made faster and office friendlier with some changes. I will certainly find and, like or +1 ProCog page even if those links are buried a layer down if I really like it.

haldean 14y ago

My experience with this: Think of a random word that comes to mind: let's try "animus". "No Matches Found. Please rephrase your query and try again.". Hm, okay. How about "theory"? "No Matches Found." What about "set"? Nope. "rank"? No. "war of 1812"? No. "barack obama": nope. The first term I got to return content was the biggest softball I could think of - "procog". I'm all for a new search engine (especially one that really lets content providers know what they need to do to rank highly for queries) but I'd say this isn't ready yet; most of those queries are the sorts of queries I search for every few minutes.

moystard 14y ago
Same here. After I got a successful search, results were of good quality but no better than DDG for example (lot of content farm, and Youtube/Wikipedia on top), I will stick to the later.

boyter 14y ago

For those that don't know this was jointly created by Matt Wells who also created Gigablast. It does not appear to be the same index although I suspect it shares much of Gigablasts code. The results impressed me though. Much better then Gigablast, however this may be due to not being targeted by spammers which Gigablast is.

bravoyankee 14y ago

ProCog is a transparent search engine focused on content and search optimization. Get all the data used by a search engine for ranking and indexing so you can trust the results. What does that mean? I can't make heads or tails of it.

monk_e_boy 14y ago
How other search engines rank your site is a (mostly) a secret. ProCog seems to show exactly how they (ProCog) ranked your site and why. I liked the 'spammy words' score on the webpage breakdown - that would be really useful for SEO. It also shows inbound links and how they effect your rank. Last time I worked in SEO (a couple of years ago) we either had to pay for that sort of report or build our own web spider to generate the report.
- bravoyankee 14y ago
  Oh heck, say that then. I understand what you just said there, and I am interested. The existing wording just doesn't make sense (to me) though.

SeanDav 14y ago

I searched for "teaching chess children" and twitter came up as the 6th best match, which makes me wonder a bit at the search algorithm used.

gulbrandr 14y ago

This is disappointing: http://procog.com/?q=text-indent+mdn http://procog.com/?q=text-indent+mdn

pstadler 14y ago

Most of the search results are outdated, inaccurate or no longer existing. I'm always looking for alternatives, but this is not the one. Google is still so much better and/or faster than other search engines, including DuckDuckGo.

phpnode 14y ago

the reason that most search engines are opaque black boxes is that being transparent simply gives spammers the upper hand when they want to manipulate your index. it won't be a problem for this one yet, but if it gained significant market share they'd definitely have to change strategy.

Osmium 14y ago

Potentially interesting, but the interface is too busy for day-to-day use. There's no reason you need to know this information for your typical search.

dotborg2 14y ago

just like DDG, lack support for languages other than english, something you should start from when creating a search engine

RevBooyah 14y ago
It's got language support - big button near the top (says "English") :)