University of Exeter: Reforms to Google’s web search dominance could address a “fundamental asymmetry”, researchers say. “Proposed Government reforms to tackle Google’s web search dominance could address a ‘fundamental asymmetry’ – but aspects need to be clarified and improved, experts have warned. The reforms are designed to tackle issues about fairness raised by news and web […]

Search Engine Land: AI assistants now equal 56% of global search engine volume: Study. “AI tools now generate 45 billion monthly sessions worldwide — about 56% of search engine volume, according to a study by Graphite.io CEO Ethan Smith.”

In case people are suffering from search engines giving them crap results, just thought I would remind/introduce you to Boolean searching. I have used it since the 90s (was taught at high school) and always use it.

Free lesson 1
+ and - symbols
Any word you type in a search bar is looked for. The fewer words you use, the better. Adding these symbols force the results to only show pages with/without those terms.

E.g. tutorial switch +2026
Should bring up any site with either first 2 words but they must include 2026

E.g. longlasting lipstick -revlon
Should bring up any site with the first 2 words but nothing featuring revlon

More help here https://aofirs.org/articles/guide-to-boolean-search

#boolean #BooleanSearching #ReduceSlop #WebSearch #FreeHelp #PSA

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Tests Bold Site Names In Search Results. “Google is testing bolding the site names in the search results. We’ve seen Google bold many other elements of the search result snippet, but I don’t think I’ve covered Google testing bolding the site name portion of the search snippet.”

Search Engine Land: Google’s AI Mode is citing Google more than any other site: Study. “Google’s AI Mode is increasingly citing Google itself — and often sending users back to another Google search, according to new SE Ranking research…. AI search is meant to surface the best sources on the web. If Google increasingly cites itself, you may see fewer direct links and less traffic as more […]

I don't find DDG nearly as good for web search as I used to. But one cool thing it enables is conveniently searching other services, using "bangs";

https://duckduckgo.com/bangs

For example, if I type "!w" in my search query, it redirects to Wikipedia and their internal search. "!fsd" similarly redirects to the Free Software Directory. They even allow us to search their competitors this way ("!b" for Bing or "!brave"), which is very cool of them.

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#search #WebSearch #DuckDuckGo #DDG

Nobu-Kobayashi : Generative AI Technology (@nyaa_toraneko)

LM Studio에 직접 웹 검색 기능을 붙이는 오픈소스 프로젝트(mrkrsl/web-search-mcp)를 소개합니다. 이를 통해 로컬 LLM의 지식 컷오프를 신경 쓰지 않고 최신 웹 정보를 검색해 활용할 수 있어, 로컬 LLM 개발·운용에서 매우 편리하고 실무적으로 유용합니다.

https://x.com/nyaa_toraneko/status/2030341297240961415

#lmstudio #websearch #localllm #opensource

#WebSearch is broken and this is proof. The behemoth that is #Google has altered the Internet by not showing you relevant information anymore. Their Ranking algorithm only serves you websites that gets them the most money, not you the best information. This pushes people to use AI chat tools for information and look who's there as well? Google's #Gemini.

Google has created the problem themselves and are selling you the #AI solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kWeAhMponc

Search Engine Land: Google patent hints it could replace your landing pages with AI versions. “A Google patent suggests Search may take you from the results page to a super-personalized AI-generated page that answers your query instead of sending you to a website.”

I've been using #duckduckgo as a search engine for years and really love it but I'm starting to notice it might be pretty bad at filtering AI written web pages.
Sometime searches only produce a list of Ai written articles and going through the load of them is a frustrating loss of time.
I just tried such research in Goggle and the results are much better (first results are human written...). Aow!

#aislop #enshitification #rant #websearch