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[Mister Rog]

Way back in time Google became popular because it provided a nice simple alternative to Yahoo and some other search engines.

Now however, no matter what you are looking for, there is just a huge amount of crap in the results. Not so long ago all the "Ads" were at the top of the results. This wasn't too bad as you could quickly scroll down past them. Now however the "Ads" are all mixed in. Searching for anything with Google is a nightmare. There are some other search sites such as Dogpile, that simply search the main search engines, so although they can be a bit better, you still end up with huge amounts of crap. I reluctantly accept that some advertising is necessary in order to pay for the service, but it's all getting a bit silly.

After doing some comparative searches, and clearing my cookies etc between them, I've now switched to Ask. Not so bad. But I'm wondering if there are any pearls of wisdom out there about other good search alternatives ?

[Kevin Wood]

A decent Ad Blocker is now required to make any use of the internet, IMHO.

[Mister Rog]

A decent Ad Blocker is now required to make any use of the internet, IMHO.

Absolutely. But I'm talking about add links in search results which are not affected by add blockers, well not the one that I use.

[Kevin Wood]

A decent Ad Blocker is now required to make any use of the internet, IMHO.

Absolutely. But I'm talking about add links in search results which are not affected by add blockers, well not the one that I use.

I must admit, I don't find that too much of a problem. I get a couple of sponsored ads at the top of each google search result then sensible links below. Less commercial search engines are better in respect of not having as many ads but they are also not as good as google at finding what you do want, IME, so I tend to stomach google.

[aaronjb]

https://duckduckgo.com/ was meant to be the Google-killer (on the basis of privacy, lack of ads etc). Never really took off but I know some very paranoid people who use it. YMMV etc.

[Kevin Wood]

https://duckduckgo.com/ was meant to be the Google-killer (on the basis of privacy, lack of ads etc). Never really took off but I know some very paranoid people who use it. YMMV etc.

Yes, it's not too bad, but you always wonder if google would have come up with something it missed.. And, when you check, the answer is normally "yes, it would".

[Mister Rog]

https://duckduckgo.com/ was meant to be the Google-killer (on the basis of privacy, lack of ads etc). Never really took off but I know some very paranoid people who use it. YMMV etc.

Yes, it's not too bad, but you always wonder if google would have come up with something it missed.. And, when you check, the answer is normally "yes, it would".

Just did a little test. Dogpile, Ask Jeeves, Google, Duckduckgo, Yahoo

Put in main word of my company name

Dogpile: First 6 pages were all for pills for ED,  NOT the blue ones a different one for the same purpose. The name is a bit similar. Crap

Ask Jeeves: Came up with some really obscure but spot on results that even I did not know about, but company website was lower down, but overall not bad

Google
First page company website, twitter page, and others. I don't pay anything for SEO or to Google

Duckduckgo: Kind of a mix of Ask Jeeves and Google. I like the scrolling pages instead of having to click next.

Yahoo: Came up with company website near the top, but a lot of the stuff that was picked up by Google and Ask Jeeves was many pages down. Plus you get all the irrelevant news even before you search.

I'm going to try Ask Jeeves as my standard search for a while and see how it goes. But I hate to say, Google probably best overall dammit 

[Diamond Black Geezer]

Bing's come up as preferred by most people in blind tests (same font used on both, and the name of the search engine blanked out at the top)

[Mister Rog]

Bing's come up as preferred by most people in blind tests (same font used on both, and the name of the search engine blanked out at the top)

I forgot about that one.

[Diamond Black Geezer]

 

[Shackeng]

Way back in time Google became popular because it provided a nice simple alternative to Yahoo and some other search engines.

Now however, no matter what you are looking for, there is just a huge amount of crap in the results. Not so long ago all the "Ads" were at the top of the results. This wasn't too bad as you could quickly scroll down past them. Now however the "Ads" are all mixed in. Searching for anything with Google is a nightmare. There are some other search sites such as Dogpile, that simply search the main search engines, so although they can be a bit better, you still end up with huge amounts of crap. I reluctantly accept that some advertising is necessary in order to pay for the service, but it's all getting a bit silly.

After doing some comparative searches, and clearing my cookies etc between them, I've now switched to Ask. Not so bad. But I'm wondering if there are any pearls of wisdom out there about other good search alternatives ?

Agree in spades. Even when you use advanced search to try to filter stuff it still gives you a load of crap. I must try Ask.

[Ever Ready]

https://duckduckgo.com/ was meant to be the Google-killer (on the basis of privacy, lack of ads etc). Never really took off but I know some very paranoid people who use it. YMMV etc.

Yes, it's not too bad, but you always wonder if google would have come up with something it missed.. And, when you check, the answer is normally "yes, it would".

Just did a little test. Dogpile, Ask Jeeves, Google, Duckduckgo, Yahoo

Put in main word of my company name

Dogpile: First 6 pages were all for pills for ED,  NOT the blue ones a different one for the same purpose. The name is a bit similar. Crap

Ask Jeeves: Came up with some really obscure but spot on results that even I did not know about, but company website was lower down, but overall not bad

Google
First page company website, twitter page, and others. I don't pay anything for SEO or to Google

Duckduckgo: Kind of a mix of Ask Jeeves and Google. I like the scrolling pages instead of having to click next.

Yahoo: Came up with company website near the top, but a lot of the stuff that was picked up by Google and Ask Jeeves was many pages down. Plus you get all the irrelevant news even before you search.

I'm going to try Ask Jeeves as my standard search for a while and see how it goes. But I hate to say, Google probably best overall dammit 

AltaVista ftw

[TheBoy]

Sadly, it costs bucketloads of money to run Internet services.  So a free (to use for the end user) search engine has to make its money somehow...   ...and that is by firing in ads.

If you think that's an unfair principle, you are free to set up your own search engine


Virtually all web pages on "free" sites are getting bogged down with slow to load ads now, vBulletin powered forums being particularly bad now

[Shackeng]

I have no problem with the ads coming up, its all the other rubbish which bears little, if any, resemblance to what you search for.