As I have mentioned in this forum, I spend at least thirty hours a week searching for information and sites to add to the directory that I work for. For the past few years, I have been using Bing, which regularly yielded results that were more useful than those that I was getting from Google. Plus, the Amazon gift cards that I get from using Bing were nice too. However, over the past week, Bing has made a change to their search algorithm apparently, because the results that I get from Bing now are not very good. Like Google, they are using the searcher's physical location and returning search results that are local to the searcher. That might be fine if I were looking for a local liquor store, church or school, but if I am searching for sites to add to a category representing a town in Minnesota, search results from Millinocket and Maine aren't doing me any good. Yet, when I do a "City, State" search on a city in Minnesota, many of my results are from Millinocket or elsewhere in Maine, and thus wholly irrelevant. The same is true when I am looking for a topic. For example, the category I am working on right now is the Knights of Columbus. Rather than giving me national or topical results, my search pages are referring me to the Millinocket chapter, the East Millinocket chapter, and every other local chapter of the Knights of Columbus, which is unhelpful. If I wanted to find the local Knights of Columbus chapter, I would specify the area in my search terms. When the search engines first began localizing search results, they gave us a choice to turn that off. I haven't used Google lately but I think they still have that option, but it gives me local results anyhow. Interestingly, I have found that Yandex, a Russian search engine, now gives me the best results. It's clean and yields mostly relevant search results. I knew they were indexing US sites because I see their spiders in the forum all the time.
We have three icons on the tools bar (maybe wrong, some other bar, can't keep track): Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer. Amongst those, if issues arise with one, we go to another. All have their faults. IE seems to have the most, but maybe because it's the original browse on our laptop. Frank
If you log into SAFARI, then go to the tool bar at the very top of your screen you can... 1. Click on FILE 2. In the drop down menu, click on NEW PRIVATE WINDOW The Private Window doesn't save or send any of your Activity info aka History. What you do online is completely private. When you log out, Safari remembers nothing. I don't know if other Browsers offer this privacy feature.
@Lara Moss I have heard that the only certain way to use a computer and remain anonymous is to use a Proxy browser. I tried that. Know what? My ISP was identified anyway. Even tried one that claimed IT used an additional Proxy ID, also ID'd my computer. If Safari claims these things, there is no legal commitment for them to back that up. Doubting Thomas! Having a non-fixed ISP ID is one means of not being scrutinized, but that's not always easy. Another good way is to use a public computer. Frank
The feature for not saving your browser history to your computer is a separate issue. Normally, someone looking at your computer would be able to tell which web sites you have visited and a bunch of other stuff if they know where to look, but they'd have to have access to your computer or have a tracking cookie on your computer. The Safari setting doesn't save your browsing history on your computer, but it doesn't prevent to owners of web sites that you visit from receiving your ISP number and whatever identifying information they are set up to receive. For example, a woman in town asked us to help her clear her computer of viruses and malware. Not only did we do that, but we could see where she had picked all that stuff up. Since she didn't seem the type, we asked whether anyone else had been using her computer, and she said her grandson had. He had been visiting porn sites, which are notorious for attaching nasty stuff to your computer. We could see every site and every page of every site that the computer had connected to. It is common for commercial sites to attach a cookie to your computer. The benefit to you is that, if it's a passworded site, you won't have to log in every time you navigate to another page of the site, and it may remember you the next time you visit. The downside is one of privacy, in that some of these cookies follow you as you visit other web sites and report back. That lets large companies see what you're interested in, which allows them to more effectively target advertising to you. I don't think the Safari setting would prevent cookies from being saved to your computer, but it might. I don't know for sure, because I haven't been using that setting because I often search my browsing history for sites that I want to find again. You wouldn't enjoy browsing the Internet without cookies because every time you clicked on a new page, it would be like you visiting the site for the first time. You would have to keep logging in to everything. Most cookies are harmless and helpful, but some can be invasive. It all depends on what they are designed to do. A proxy setting is one that disguises the ISP number that you are using. Most proxy addresses are in Russia, so web site owners would think that you were logging onto their site from Russia. That's why Russia gets blamed for so much of the hacking that is going on. Although I am sure that there are plenty of hackers in Russia, hackers right here in the United States would probably be using a Russian proxy number so it would appear that they were from Russia. Yes, that is the evidence they have against Russia - ISP numbers, which prove nothing. Sometimes, proxy servers will work fine, and probably if you were to pay for a professional proxy service, you might get one that works well. But the free proxy servers that are available are usually very slow and problematic. That is because you first have to connect to the proxy server, then the proxy server receives the information from the site that you want to visit, and sends it to you, repeatedly, so there are a lot of extra steps that are being taken and, since the proxy server is likely in Russia, there's a lot that can go wrong en route. Plus there is the fact that the free proxy servers are probably overloaded.
@Ken Anderson Appreciate that, Ken! Clarifies lots of questions I have harbored. One more: How helpful is it to be certain Temporary Internet Files, which I assume means the RAM, are cleared after each use? Frank
Search engines are in fierce competition, and some play dirty, especially the top three (Google, Yahoo, & Bing). One will often pirate the other, so that if you mistype Google you will end up with Bing or Yahoo, and vice versa. You can use any search engine you like, in fact, if you use 'askbooth.com' or 'dogpile.com' you will be getting the combined results of Google, Yahoo, & Bing all together. There is no permanence so long as you do not make Google (or whatever) your preferred search engine, and even then, you are not locked into using it. If you type 'startpage.com' into your address bar, that is where you go. Same for duckduckgo.com, gibiru.com, yippy.com, swisscows.com, etc. So long as you do not have any browser-hijacker malware on your PC, you will have no problem getting to any search engine you pick.
Not all proxies are created equal. Here's a amusing lil experiment for you. First go to this site: https://whatsmyip.com and write down your IP address. Next go to this site: http://www.sslunblocker.com/ and in its address bar type in the first address (whatsmyip.com). Now check your IP address again. If it works, it should be different. Now try again using whatever proxy you used before that did not work. Like I said, not all are created equal. Socks proxies are far better than the regular sort, and paid ones outperform the freebies. Also, if you want to conceal your IP address, a proxy is not the best choice, even though some will work, but a VPN will work better. Your best all around option (unless you're doing something naughty that the TLAs are hot for), is to use the Tor browser tied to a VPN. More info can be had here: https://restoreprivacy.com/browser-fingerprinting/
I've had Google for several years, then lost it and picked up AOL SEARCH. I'll never go with any other search motor. Hal
Well, there is startpage.com, duckduckgo, gibiru, plus various others that respect privacy and do not seem to filter/slant search results. Unfortunately, Google has such a huge headstart it's unlikely any will ever catch up enough to actually be able to compete. Maybe Bing, if M$ can evoke dirtier tactics than Google....it's a toss-up who has the biggest black bag of dirty tricks. I do now prefer Bing to Google for finding/printing celeb photos, as the latter has gone full-blown DRM fanatic.
If you want to get the official party-line stance, the place to ask is the 'horse's mouth' (Government, TLAs, politicians, etc.). They will all say pretty much the same thing, and regurgitate the same 'facts', so if you want to search for how many children are harmed by vaccinations, the CDC is the last source to trust, as they will tell you exactly what they have been told to tell you. https://www.politifact.com/punditfa...dc-statistics-say-about-vaccine-illnesses-in/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4599698/ https://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/May-2011/In-Memoriam--Infant-Deaths---Vaccination.aspx https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/61/6/980/451431 https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/data/index.html https://www.drugwatch.com/news/2018/02/05/vaccine-injury-claims-reached-decade-high-2017/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4599698/ Do your Google search again 'how many children die from vaccination' without the 'CDC', and you will have less propagandized results. I followed that search with one on 'vaccine injuries statistics'. There is plenty of data to mine if your search terms are creative enough....Google is too vast for even Google to lockdown all the backdoors!
I couldn't care less who has the biggest market share or how much money they earn. I am looking for useful websites, not buying stock in a search engine company, and I find that Bing does the better job.
It has less to do with market share and profit, than who can actually compete. Do the same exact search on Google, Startpage, DuckDuckGo, or any of the new boys on the block, and you will see their search results suck compared to Google. Only Bing seems comparable (sometimes). All the rest have come to the party too late, and cannot compete, and are unlikely ever to catch up to Google. In this race I would call it Google, Bing, and Yahoo....all the rest lag far behind.
That's what I do for a living and have for a long time now. DuckDuckGo is a meta-search engine, not a search engine. It uses the results from other search engines and does not employ its own bots. StartPage uses Google results without the personalization so, for my purposes, its results are superior to Google because I am not searching for things in my area. There aren't very many options in search engines anymore. Google, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu are about it. Of those four, Bing does the better job. Google used to do a much better job of it than it does now, and I can't wade through twenty pages of crap in order to find a few good results. If Google works for you, have at it. As I've said, I'm not buying stock in a search engine.