Perhaps you could explain to me about search engines. Why is it that when I want to search with Dr. Google, Prof. Yahoo search engines come up to my unwanted rescue? I have no issues with Yahoo, but I get confused when these go-to things appear. I think I should read what's before being on the screen-- allowing me the choice with my easy-click key-taps every time I search. Can I search on both, Yahoo and Google? Is there permanence in which search engine I choose to ask first? Can I opt-out of the search engine whenever I want to?
If Yahoo results appear when you search on Google, you might have an unwanted extension installed on your browser. As for search engines, there are many, many others. First of all, you have the top ones: Google, Bing (Microsoft) and Yahoo! Then, you have other obscure ones, such as Yandex and the such, which don't really get much use. And there is one that values privacy, which means that it won't send your personal data to companies for ad revenue: DuckDuckGo.
I'm not much of searching before but when we started to travel regularly, I learned how to search for bargains particularly for accommodations abroad. Google is the standard search engine that I use. But sometimes when I am in Yahoo, of course, I also use Yahoo search. When I installed the Chrome browser in my laptop, I tested the Bing. It is a search engine with a translator. There are some other search engines in the internet but they are not as popular as Google and Yahoo. There was a time when Ask.com was the number one search engine. I'm not really sure if that is still in existence.
Yes, there are many types of search engines. I think the ones that are of course most commonly known are Google of course Bing and Yahoo. These seem to be the top three when it comes to search engine usage. I admit that for the most part I will choose Google to search on certain subjects.
There are only a few real search engines. Many of the other ones have become meta search engines, which use results from two or more search engines. Yahoo is a search engine in its own right, but it also combines its results with those of Bing, so it is both a search engine and a meta search engine. A search engine sends crawlers (spiders, bots) which follow links on the Internet, indexing web sites and web pages. In this forum, if you click into the "Members" tab, then click into the tab for "Current Visitors," you will see that they are broken down by Members, Guest, and Robots. If you click into the Robots tab, you can see which search engine robots are currently in the forum. The most commons ones you'll see in this forum are Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and Baidu. Yandex is a Russian search engine, and Baidu is a Chinese search engine. However, hackers are frequently identified as Baidu, probably because, being government sponsored hackers, they are allowed to use the search engine's resources. In the United States, the two main search engines are Google, Bing and Yahoo. Google has has the largest market share by far, followed by Bing. Yahoo used to be a contender but when they began mixing their results with, first Google, and now Bing, they lost a lot of the market share. In my web directory job, I spend all day on search engines, and I find Bing to be the more reliable by far. I earn a lot of gift cards using Bing but I still wouldn't use it if it wasn't an effective search engine, since I have to get results. Bing used to be known as Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search, so its a Microsoft utility. Web browsers come with a default search engine, which may change from time to time, depending on deals that are made between two companies, but most (if not all) of they will allow you to change the default search engine.
Great and useful information here, particularly when Google is actually falling into huge flaws getting listed on top of listing a ton of irrelevant content reworked if not via SEO, using AdWords or some kind of tricks to get there. I remember my own experience with search engines being Altavista the most accurate when I first came online back in 1999, and then I found Lycos to be great source for FTP search, mainly, but sadly these and other major search engines where disappearing on turned into meta search engines beubg powered by either Bing or Google. As for the unwanted pseudo-search engine in your browser @Avigail David, it may come either from an extensions or plugins added by yourself to your browser or inadvertently by any other type of software that you have installed. There is also a chance that no extension at all is present, but a change in your browser's default search engine settings that can be set back to your favorite from the settings menu. Those kind of changes come from malicious software installed or sometimes visiting websites infected by malware.
Years ago, when I used a Windows machine, there was malware that would sometimes install another default search engine, usually not an actual search engine but one that would display ads along with the results.
Yes, it sounds like you have an unwanted extension that is forcing you to use a browser that you don't necessarily want to. I personally use www.bing.com because they pay me to do searches. Yes, they do. It's not much. I have to earn 475 points to get a $5 amazon card, but hey, every little bit helps so I'll take it. Plus, I like the awesome photos they have on their main page. They are usually quite breathtaking.
I'm so glad you posted that, John @John Donovan. I used to use DuckDuckGo, but had completely forgotten about it. I should set that to my default.
Yeah, it's a really good search engine. It also has a pretty nice allure to it, it's almost as if you feel that it protects you and that it's something that's underground, not discovered by many. I don't know, maybe others don't feel that, but that's how I feel. It also works better than many search engines around nowadays!
That's exactly how I feel. I remember using it and not seeing the creepy ads on other sites I'd visit for items I'd searched the web for earlier. I have a stalker already, and don't need Google or another search engine to function in the same way...I find it extremely disturbing.
In fact, I think that that very stalker of yours is Google. I think it's Google Ads that show you ads related to your recent search history. Overall, I'm just glad that someone else feels safe using DuckDuckGo and that I'm not the only weirdo feeling.
I'm always cautious giving information about to people, but Google's ability to track our every move is definitely scary. I swear, the other day I made soup here at home and never mentioned it online. The next thing I know, it appeared as an ad on one of my feeds...that was a little spooky .
And Google isn't the only offender, either. Do you know why there are "tweet" and "like" buttons on every page, even on pages nobody would ever tweet about or share? Because the buttons are used as a tracking mechanism. The sites track your every move through the buttons, and they sell that information to ad companies.
Of course there are more search engines than only Google, you can also use Bing, Ask.com, Yahoo!, those are the most popular --> you can search for other ones, that generally aren't that much popular and maybe only known in the country you are located in?