After hearing the unfortunate news that DuckDuckGo had deranked The Gateway Pundit from its search results, and announcing that it was going to start censoring “Russian disinformation”, I decided to test some alternative search engines to see how they compared against Google and Bing results.
VERY USEFUL AND IMPORTANT. Thank you! I've always felt that censorship is far worse than disinformation. If there was no censorship but lots of disinformation (ie... not eg... the government and mainstream media), there are enough great people like you and other writers on Substack and alternate media who manage to dig out the real information, and the rest of us readers can make our own assessments. I've been amazed and disappointed that this point hasn't been a visible topic of discussion, even by anti-narrative folks, along with analysis of search engines, such as what you've done, though preferably in greater depth. Thank you!
Is there a way to make Yandex usable, I am just getting 90% Russian language results. Which not only are useless to me, but makes me wonder how English language words results in .ru sites being most relevant without them soft censoring pretty much everything outside of Russia.
Its a bit different and still an alpha version but it is the best search engine I have tried so far.
I tried your test searches and got 8 out of 10, sort of. Some of the results were from Yandex and Brave, so it must include them. It doesn't include as many results but the matches are good. They say they are against filter bubbles.
Also did you enable/disable personalized results and/or start with a fresh browser session or private / ingocnito browsing window? That can make a difference in rankings. Some search engines like Bing will always personalize, even without an account or done anonymously. So with Bing, you either have to start with a private browser (no previous search cookies) or you have to go to settings > search history and clear all
Mar 13, 2022·edited Mar 13, 2022Liked by Michael Suede
This is very useful, thank you. You should consider do a more indepth test if possible in the future to verify these preliminary results. In particular, running some search queries we know would be embarrassing to the Russian authorities or their allies. For example, do they censor T. square stuff to appease china.
Also, I would of preferred if you listed your biases. Did you use Yandex prior to these tests and want it to win, or did this test convince you to switch over to it?
have you used https://presearch.org/ ?
VERY USEFUL AND IMPORTANT. Thank you! I've always felt that censorship is far worse than disinformation. If there was no censorship but lots of disinformation (ie... not eg... the government and mainstream media), there are enough great people like you and other writers on Substack and alternate media who manage to dig out the real information, and the rest of us readers can make our own assessments. I've been amazed and disappointed that this point hasn't been a visible topic of discussion, even by anti-narrative folks, along with analysis of search engines, such as what you've done, though preferably in greater depth. Thank you!
I am working on building a search engine. Searche.org.
Great job!
Another search engine: yessle.com is fine! But actually I have indexed more than him at Searche.org. I asked him.
Is there a way to make Yandex usable, I am just getting 90% Russian language results. Which not only are useless to me, but makes me wonder how English language words results in .ru sites being most relevant without them soft censoring pretty much everything outside of Russia.
This is the first review that I seen of which search engines include alternative or censored results. Saw on saidit. Thanks to you friend!
Try out this new one as well > https://andisearch.com
Its a bit different and still an alpha version but it is the best search engine I have tried so far.
I tried your test searches and got 8 out of 10, sort of. Some of the results were from Yandex and Brave, so it must include them. It doesn't include as many results but the matches are good. They say they are against filter bubbles.
Agreed about Yandex. Try also swisscows.com - private, but rearranges bing mostly. Definitely better than Startpage or Brave.
Thanks so much for doing this! I'll check out what else you're posting. And bye bye Duck, hello Yandex.
"Open source" is the real antidote for info-control.The internet should be FREE and provide unlimited access to research, data, and the real news.
I know results will vary but man so far going thru it Brave for me is doing massively better
Very similar to the test done by Allan Stevo. Thanks
Man, you did some real work here.. really appreciate it.
U didn't try JoshWho Search. It puts the others all to shame
Also did you enable/disable personalized results and/or start with a fresh browser session or private / ingocnito browsing window? That can make a difference in rankings. Some search engines like Bing will always personalize, even without an account or done anonymously. So with Bing, you either have to start with a private browser (no previous search cookies) or you have to go to settings > search history and clear all
This is very useful, thank you. You should consider do a more indepth test if possible in the future to verify these preliminary results. In particular, running some search queries we know would be embarrassing to the Russian authorities or their allies. For example, do they censor T. square stuff to appease china.
Also, I would of preferred if you listed your biases. Did you use Yandex prior to these tests and want it to win, or did this test convince you to switch over to it?