• lemmeBe@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    I’ve no idea how I overlooked Mojeek. I’m always on the lookout for privacy oriented alternatives. Seems they exist since 2004 and don’t have any controversies surrounding them.

    • UK-based
    • no-tracking privacy policy
    • independent search index
    • first search engine to implement a no-tracking policy in 2006
    • operates its own web crawler
    • infrastructure in a green data center in the UK
    • business model based on advertising, API’s and partnerships
    • BertramDitore@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      I haven’t used Mojeek, so I can’t speak to that, but the UK has some of the worst privacy protections and mass-surveillance anywhere. They’re also part of the Five Eyes, so I wouldn’t count the fact that they’re UK-based as a point in their favor.

      • lemmeBe@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Agreed. These weren’t meant to be pros or cons, but facts that I dug up in a quick search. Let everyone interpret for themselves. 😉

    • kixik@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Is it something you have to trust they comply with what they say?

      Nice that it has its own indexes, but according to this comparison its proprietary SW, running on UK servers without tor interface, and being backed or debated at least by UK politicians. We’re not talking about a not for profit organization either, and they do have individualized answers as well, so they have the mechanisms to individualize results to queries, meaning they keep information about your queries. So in the end, it boils down to the user trusting its service it seems.

      Yes, meta search engines do not provide their own indexes, but searxNG is at least open source, you can select the search engines to use, included mojeek, and they serve as a front end preventing the underneath engine to track you (whether it’s against their public policy or not) as if you were to use such engine directly.

      • Mojeek Search Engine@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        this comparison

        the table you’ve cited is very out of date when it comes to us and other inclusions

        being backed or debated at least by UK politicians

        We came up in Hansard yonks ago 2011, mentioned by one MP

        they do have individualized answers as well

        I don’t quite follow but if you mean results are personalised can I ask where you got that information? One of our main things is that we don’t affect results based upon much more about you than country-level boosts

        • kixik@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          Perhaps a misinterpretation from mojeek’s wiki:

          Mojeek also displays significantly more individual entries in its search results than Google or Bing

          • Mojeek Search Engine@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            Mojeek also displays significantly more individual entries in its search results than Google or Bing

            Ah, yeah, that’s from a blogger called Jack Yan who writes a lot on how many results you can actually get out of results 1-10 from n. What he’s saying there, which is correct on checking, is that we will always display 1,000 results when we have them, whereas Google and Bing tend to either stop when you get somewhere in the 200/300s, or just repeat results.

  • RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    I had used it for some time, but the results were really bad. They have gotten much better, but be aware that you will need to use other search engines. Privacy wise they do collect some basic information such as what you search for and what browser you’re using, but they don’t collect your IP so that it shouldn’t be associatable to you and they never share this info. To my knowledge they have not been involved in any big controversy’s so far.

    • Mojeek Search Engine@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Got any examples of searches you could do with seeing improvement on? A big part of our process is collecting these (as well as identifying issues in crawling off the back of them)

      • RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        The searches I have trouble with are mainly support for software. For example, searching for “Kdenlive audio visualizer” results in a Kdenlive tutorial that has nothing to do with audio visualization, Kdenlive release notes and a link to a no longer available Kdenlive docs page. Searching for most stuff with “yt-dlp” will result in the top pages being the alternativeto.net page and some other pages like the GitHub topic that don’t help with the problem at all. While most of the time when trying to get software support you will find a solution, but you will have to search a lot harder. Still, I’m amazed at how much the results improved since my prior use of Mojeek. If it continues to improve like that I’ll definitely give it another go.

        • Mojeek Search Engine@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          Thanks a lot, I’ve raised the Kdenlive query. When it comes to searching for stuff with “yt-dlp” you mean there’s normally another phrase or words in the query? Do you have an example; understand the problem but just trying to raise it with as much of a solid example as possible 🙏

          • RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            For example “yt-dlp select resolution” or “yt-dlp audio only”. There are some more, it feels like the pages I mentioned are just generally ranked higher.

            Also really appreciate the dedication, I think Mojeek is probably the only search engine that listens this much to user feedback. Is there a Lemmy community or something similar where one kann submit queries like these?

            • Mojeek Search Engine@lemmy.ml
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              2 months ago

              Thanks a lot; these have been raised.

              I think Mojeek is probably the only search engine that listens this much to user feedback. Is there a Lemmy community or something similar where one kann submit queries like these?

              We have a Discourse: https://community.mojeek.com/ but also take these direct from search results pages (there’s a Submit feedback button) or via https://www.mojeek.com/about/contact. It’s all super useful for us so thanks in advance.

      • RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        I made this post a while ago, some parts aren’t correct anymore but it’s still pretty good. I use DuckDuckGo because I rely heavily on its image search filters, but I’m trying to move to a multi engine system. That will likely involve 4get because it’s FOSS and Brave because they have their own index that actually isn’t bad (Brave will be more of a backup solution).

  • ByroTriz@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    I use mojeek. It’s good enough for me, image search sucks though

    Edit: ups

  • blue lion@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    The few times I used it it fid a good job of stripping out SEO garbage, but I still prefer duckduckgo for its generally more relevant results.