Tech: Search Engine of the month

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: Newport Boy
Date: 15 Mar 12 - 01:44 PM

I've found ixquick to produce fewer spurious marketing hits on the first page than Google, but it often fails to find very relevant pages that Google lists in the first page or so. I tend to use ixquick for straightforward searches and switch to Google if I want anything obscure.

I'm no great fan of the way Google uses information from my searches, but I recognise that the income from marketing is what pays for the service.

I do notice on another forum I use that the only 2 search bots that show up as being on the forum are Google (very frequently) and Yahoo (occasionally).

Phil

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: Ole Juul
Date: 15 Mar 12 - 04:57 AM

I read that entry by Whittaker earlier today and wondered why he would find Microsoft, "the graveyard of creativity" to be better, or even acceptable. I realize that one has to have a job, but still, he's silent on what would be the elephant in the room to many people since those thoughts would be very relevant to this story.

As for searching, I actually find duckduckgo.com to be quit good.

Now facebook. I should probably not get started here. :) I recently wrote a long dissertation on some of the problems with that which I published here: http://notandor.wordpress.com/ The big problem to me is not so much the privacy issues, but the long term effect on the net and who controls it. Like many analysts, I see a possible death of the net as we know it. This fellow is certainly on board with that:
http://www.tnl.net/blog/2012/03/03/i-killed-the-internet/

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: treewind
Date: 15 Mar 12 - 04:20 AM

ixquick is a UK base metasearch site which collates the results from other search engines (including Google). It's related to the American startpage.com, which used to be simply another name for ixquick but is now just a front end for Google.

I'm no apologist for Google (especially after reading about Why James Whittaker left Google) but parasiting off other search engines cannot be a good long term arrangement for the internet as a whole. If everybody did it then the real search engines would run out of revenue.

Just before Google started up (yes I do remember back that far) there were Yahoo!, altavista and about a dozen others, and then I started using meta-crawler, which was possibly the original meta-search site, but though it looked like a good idea at the time, its results were poor and when Google came along it was far better.

Google's nemesis, which really destroyed its culture, was Facebook. In case you thought facebook was a social networking site, it's really an advertising medium that known FAR TOO MUCH about the people it's targeting with adverts, far more than Google will ever know about its users.

I'm not sure that using https with Google will help with those sites containing your search terms, unless all your traffic is really being intercepted by a third party, in which case you've got a different problem.

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 15 Mar 12 - 03:34 AM

I am finding ixquick.com fine.

Good points Ole Juul

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: Ole Juul
Date: 15 Mar 12 - 01:06 AM

I just wanted to identify myself as the writer of the above comment since I don't like to post anonymously when not needed - especially when the post is of a somewhat negative nature. Sorry, I had forgotten how to log in.

I guess now would also be an opportunity to post my link to the Priceton Traditional Music Festival which will be Friday 17 to Sunday 19 of August this year. http://princetontraditional.org/festival/ :)

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Mar 12 - 12:45 AM

If this is legit I'm all for it, but this search engine may not be what they say it is. I note that there are some odd claims such as using Alpha SSL. Does anybody know what that is? I would expect an entity that operates a search engine to be both clear and knowledgeable about the technology and not bluff. It may be worth looking into what they're up to.

Some internet searching will show that the owner is apparently in deep financial trouble, but seemingly supported by a rich dad. He's only registered the domain name for 1 year and has 6 months left. He is using shared hosting and shares the same IP with 10 other web sites. All this is information can be found by doing a whois and following up on the addresses given there. Of course this is not exactly incriminating information, but it does make this look less than legitimate and perhaps not be a stellar choice for searches. If I was using a possibly insecure computer, I'd be careful.

As for secure browsing, I can't vouch for duckduckgo.com nor ixquick.com, but I use them both extensively and they have at least been around for long enough to be vetted by public use. My personal opinion is also to keep Google use to a minimum so as not to encourage their dominance even more, but for those that want to keep them from passing your information on to the next site, it is possible to use SSH which Google now supports. Simply add the "s" like this: https://www.google.com/ That will prevent getting those crazy and useless pages with your search term plugged in.

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Mar 12 - 12:26 PM

'Another mudcatter - can't recall who or which thread - '

It may have been Bill D. I picked it up from him and re-posted the address two days back. FYI

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 12 - 11:25 AM

Ixquick is fine... and also is the same engine as https://startpage.com/

The blurb says StartPage uses Google and several other engines and strips out IP addresses.

The question will be whether Google can stop them like they did Scroogle.

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Mar 12 - 08:56 AM

usestealth.com

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 01 Mar 12 - 08:34 AM

Geoff
That one looks better. I will give that a try.
Les

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 01 Mar 12 - 07:28 AM

Another mudcatter - can't recall who or which thread -
mentioned this one https://ixquick.com/eng/.
As well as keeping privacy it also offers advanced searching where you can search an exact phrase, only sites containing ALL words in the search, and other options.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: terrier
Date: 01 Mar 12 - 07:24 AM

I tried a few usual searches here in the UK but it seems to favour US sites. Specifying UK in the search box got me much better results.

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: theleveller
Date: 01 Mar 12 - 06:26 AM

Given it a try and it seems fine.

Subject: RE: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: Will Fly
Date: 01 Mar 12 - 06:12 AM

Looks good - I shall do some search comparisons.

Subject: Tech: Search Engine of the month
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 01 Mar 12 - 06:05 AM

Search engine of the month

Stealth is a search engine that does not store cookies, track IP addresses or save search terms. Jon Cook, the founder of the new startup, says it was Google's intermingling of social media data with its search results and the company's updated privacy terms that motivated him to roll out a service that allows users to avoid being tracked online. Unlike the major search engines, Stealth doesn't store cookies, track IP addresses or save browsing history. To secure personal information, Cook said, Stealth re-routes clicks to Web sites so that private data - such as a user's IP address - are not passed to the site and the engine uses secure encryption to prevent sharing search terms with visited sites.

http://usestealth.com/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Zen+Internet&utm_campaign=1210954_Copy+of+120301+-+NG+-+Zen+Monthly+(3)&utm_c