#India #SearchEngines #scams #fraud #OnlineSafety

'Hyderabad Commissioner of Police V. C. Sajjanar in an advisory said that cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting search engine rankings to deceive internet users.'

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/telangana/hyderabad-police-caution-people-over-fraudsters-manipulating-search-engine-results/article70652222.ece

The Hindu: Hyderabad police caution people over fraudsters manipulating search engine results. “The Hyderabad city police have cautioned citizens against being misled by fraudulent websites that appear at the top of online search results. Hyderabad Commissioner of Police V. C. Sajjanar in an advisory said that cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting search engine rankings to deceive internet […]

Lifehacker: How DuckDuckGo’s New Encrypted Voice AI Chat Compares With ChatGPT and Gemini. “Since its launch in 2024, the portal has only offered a chatbot interface, but now, DuckDuckGo has added a voice mode as well. With voice chat, instead of reading through long and meandering answers, the AI replies in short, to-the-point snippets that are relevant to your query.”

Maybe it's just a streak of bad luck, or maybe my queries are just leaning a certain direction lately, but has anyone else noticed that #Qwant's search results have changed noticeably in the last couple days or so?

I don't mean an bias or manipulation or anything like that. I'm just having trouble getting good results for certain queries, like if I use more than 2 or 3 words, it feels like parts of my queries just get ignored entirely. This is something I noticed about #DuckDuckGo almost immediately, and why I very quickly gave up on DDG, but it's not an issue I've really ever had with Qwant before now.

I know it's [in part, yes] a meta search engine, so there's a degree to which this may be out of their hands if the problem is another engine they source results from. I guess I just want to know if I'm crazy, or if others have noticed something similar?

#search #searchengines

Search Engine Land: Google launches more visible links in AI Overviews and AI Mode. “Google is rolling out new, more visible links within AI Overviews and AI Mode. These new link cards appear in a pop-up window when you hover over them on desktop. They also show more prominent details about the website.”

Search Engine Journal: Antitrust Filing Says Google Cannibalizes Publisher Traffic. “The PMC legal filing makes repeated references to the ‘fundamental fair exchange’ where Google sends traffic in exchange for allowing them to crawl and index websites, explicitly quoting Google’s expressions of support for ‘the health of the web ecosystem.'”

https://winbuzzer.com/2026/02/16/google-hides-health-warnings-ai-overviews-risk-xcxwbn/

Google Hides Health Warnings in AI Overviews, Putting Users at Risk

#AI #Google #GoogleAIOverviews #AISafety #MedicalAdvice #Health #SearchEngines #BigTech #AIMisinformation #OnlineSafety

Found via Reddit: Burrfect. From the Reddit announcement: “A major struggle we’ve had brewing at home is that espresso recipe info is incredibly thin and fragmented. Maybe 85% of the time, there’s nothing available. … So we’re opening up our database: 1,300+ roasters and 800+ dialed-in bean recipes across 40 countries — with dose, yield, brew time, and temperature data whenever we have it.”

Notorious 'Archive Today' website allegedly leads bizarre DDoS campaign against security blogger — Wikipedia considers removing all links to the Archive

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.tomshardware.com/software/search-engines/archive-today-allegedly-leads-bizarre-ddos-campaign-against-security-blogger-wikipedia-considers-removing-all-links-to-the-archive

Search Engine Land: Reddit says 80 million people now use its search weekly. “Eighty million people use Reddit search every week, Reddit said on its Q4 2025 earnings call last week. The increase followed a major change: Reddit merged its core search with its AI-powered Reddit Answers and began positioning the platform as a place where users can start — and finish — their searches.”