Auxin Posted October 31, 2014 Why is such an unsophisticated, almost infantile, search engine the dominant one? Search for a string of words and it'll return tons of results missing the most important search term. No way to say 'all terms, damnit' or specify priority. It ignores characters. When I say 90° I damn well mean 90°, if I say 90% no you can not remove the %! It also changes words. If I say 'machine' I usually dont mean machinery or machining or machinations or macadamias or mangosteens, I mean machine! Is there any search engine that will actually search for what you enter? Perhaps with function modifiers, like a + for 'you damn well better include this' or a # for 'ok, you can include purported synonyms on this word'. 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DiscoStu Posted October 31, 2014 include the search term in quotation ("") marks and it'll search exactly Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Auxin Posted October 31, 2014 ...well what the hell, I just tried quotations on individual words and special characters and that works properly now. Thanks for that. Is there at least a list of google search options and how they work (better than what google provides) and directory of special google things like google scholar (which is almost impossible to stumble into unless you know its name)? The default google gateways really dont give much in terms of options. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Alice Posted November 1, 2014 Is there at least a list of google search options and how they work (better than what google provides) Look up "Boolean search operators google". The wikipedia page "Google search" is a good starting place, explains the basics on how things are ranked. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ThunderIdeal Posted November 1, 2014 oh dear auxin its true what they say about really smart people. they can be really dumb at times! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Auxin Posted November 1, 2014 Good call alice, wiki now has options listed that arent on the search operators google help page. Including a few I forgot and some I never knew about. related:shaman-australis.com showed that ones usefulness. Sadly related:kissmegirl.com didnt do as well but that subject wasnt my goal anyway Putting single words and also numbers with special chars in quotes solved half my issues, really. Amusingly not mentioned by wiki or google, lol Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dreamwalker. Posted November 1, 2014 https://duckduckgo.com/ for private searching 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DiscoStu Posted November 1, 2014 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en&rd=1 i find duckduckgo's search results to be sorely lacking in comparison to googles, use https://startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html? it uses the same search technology as google but doesn't track you searches, Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Auxin Posted November 2, 2014 Yeah, duckduckgo is just barely not google, their stuff fails a lot and they refer you to google without hesitation, lol Startpage is actually the default search on TOR. Unlike google, startpage doesnt needlessly block your search if they cant track you. For people who want to feel like a radical, but just cant cut the google cord, Blackle is still up. Its google... but black. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
