ZackJun 20
God, this bubble burst is going to be so brutal
Show threadAndrew ZonenbergJun 20

@zenhob adblock the ai overviews. No mercy.

Every couple months they change the css class and i need a new ublock rule but that's at least somewhat tolerable compared to the alternative.

Show threadAndrew ZonenbergJun 20

@zenhob Open question: if you adblock the overview, does it prevent the request from being made to the server?

Or is it still burning energy and just not being rendered? I'm not sure of the specific point in the search process that it happens and when ublock steps in.

Show threadravelinJun 20
@azonenberg @zenhob just stop using engines that force AI
Show threadAndrew ZonenbergJun 20

@ravelin @zenhob Do any exist?

I'm pretty sure everyone either does it themselves, or is a thin wrapper around the index of someone who does on the back end.

There's no user-respecting search engines that focus on delivering quality results rather than selling ads anymore.

And you can't create one, because everyone is so busy blocking AI crawlers with cloudflare and anubis and what have you that it's virtually impossible to build a "good" web crawler in 2025.

Without the index, your search engine is toast.

Show threadravelin

@azonenberg @zenhob there are better sources than me for this, I lose track of who uses their own indexes, but Ecosia and StartPage at least both have the option to exclude AI summaries.

I believe Ecosia is developing its own index, but also has the option to include results from Google's.

I'm not sure if using Google's index means it also generates the summary on the back end?

Jun 20 at 10:54pmWeb
Show threadAndrew ZonenbergJun 20

@ravelin @zenhob I mean, IMO google's index is tainted by virtue of being optimized for selling ads etc rather than finding the results people want most.

Whether they are generating ai overviews or not is almost immaterial at that point.

Show threadravelinJun 21
@azonenberg @zenhob well, it is not environmentally immaterial. But yeah, still flawed.
Show threadJack Yan (甄爵恩)Jun 21
@ravelin @azonenberg @zenhob I donʼt believe either has its own index, but it will be interesting to see how Ecosia fares if it does its own. Startpage was Google and is now Bing, and Ecosia lets you choose from either in its settings. The main indices I can think of (not complete) are Google, Bing, Mojeek, Yandex, Baidu and Sogou; I believe Brave and Yep do their own, too. @Seirdy is the authority on this—let me see if I can find his page about it.
Show threadJack Yan (甄爵恩)Jun 21

@ravelin @azonenberg @zenhob @Seirdy Here it is (regularly updated):

https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/

A look at search engines with their own indexes

A cursory review of all the non-metasearch, indexing search engines I have been able to find.

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