March 30, 2021

CTV News: Turning to ‘Dr. Google’ may not be as anxiety-inducing or misleading as believed, study finds

CTV News: Turning to ‘Dr. Google’ may not be as anxiety-inducing or misleading as believed, study finds. “Have you found yourself Googling your symptoms in an attempt to soothe health-related anxieties, and then worried that you were going to accidentally misdiagnose yourself and make those anxieties worse? Well, according to a new study from the U.S., turning to ‘Dr. Google’ does not make a person’s assessment of their symptoms less accurate, or worsen their anxiety regarding their health.”

Research & Opinion 0
March 30, 2021

Spotted and backed on Kickstarter: Scout

Spotted (and backed) on Kickstarter: Scout. From the project page: “What is Scout? Scout is the world’s next great search engine. It provides organic results, has no ads, and gets smarter over time. Why should you join Scout? To join a new frontier in Search. Most search engines today make money off ads and this creates a privacy disaster. At Scout, your data will never be our business.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
March 27, 2021

Medium: Building a Better Search Engine

Medium: Building a Better Search Engine. “To take it back a step, when was the last time you ever looked past the first page of Google? If I’m doing that, I almost instantly know I’ve used the wrong search terms…. In the end, we decided that the most interesting search engine is one that gives you more control, not less. One that lets you decide if you want to see ads, if you want to see 1.6 billion results or 5.”

Research & Opinion 0
March 10, 2021

WSMV: New search engine featuring black authors

WSMV: New search engine featuring black authors. “‘I started having a lot of conversations, especially during the lockdown, with some of my friends just trying to understand, “where were melinnial BIPOC youth and young adults getting their news from,”‘ said Dr. Paul McNeil of MB Usable Security LLC. McNeil found many were missing the black perspective. So he created ‘BLAAGLE,’ a search engine he designed where he’s indexing articles specifically written by black journalists and bloggers.” It appears that the site is currently in closed beta, but you can apply for access.

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
March 10, 2021

The Conversation: It’s not just a social media problem – how search engines spread misinformation

The Conversation: It’s not just a social media problem – how search engines spread misinformation. “Ad-driven search engines, like social media platforms, are designed to reward clicking on enticing links because it helps the search companies boost their business metrics. As a researcher who studies the search and recommendation systems, I and my colleagues show that this dangerous combination of corporate profit motive and individual susceptibility makes the problem difficult to fix.”

Research & Opinion 0
March 5, 2021

Futurism: Why Was Google Telling People To Throw Car Batteries Into The Ocean?

Futurism: Why Was Google Telling People To Throw Car Batteries Into The Ocean?. “On Saturday night, reporter and author Violet Blue googled ‘why do people throw car batteries in the ocean.’ The algorithm’s top response, which was formatted in a blurb at the top of the results, was strange. ‘Throwing car batteries into the ocean is good for the environment, as they charge electric eels and power the Gulf stream,’ it read.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
March 4, 2021

Bing Blogs: Microsoft Bing delivers more visually immersive experiences that save you time

Bing Blogs: Microsoft Bing delivers more visually immersive experiences that save you time. “At Microsoft Bing we’re looking for ways to give you back time so you can focus on the things that really matter. We’re also looking for ways to move thoughtfully beyond a list of links, to a world of search results that seamlessly combine information with visually rich imagery in a single beautiful view. With that in mind, we’re excited to announce several new search experiences that quickly deliver information in a way that’s intuitive and engaging. The result is a visually rich format that allows you to quickly find what you are looking for without having to sift through large blocks of text.”

Tweaks & Updates 0
March 3, 2021

Gizmodo: Brave Is Launching a Privacy-First Search Engine to Take On Google

Gizmodo: Brave Is Launching a Privacy-First Search Engine to Take On Google. “Brave Search, which the company announced on Wednesday, is poised to become the ‘privacy-preserving alternative’ to, say, Google search, whose massive market cache is built — in part — off of hoovering data from every search that its users make, even when those searches are happening in incognito mode. And as others have pointed out in the past, if you try to use Google search within Brave’s browser, there’s still all sorts of data being collected on Google’s end about the number of search ads you’re seeing or clicking on.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
March 1, 2021

Make Tech Easier: 4 of the Best Search Engines For Privacy

Make Tech Easier: 4 of the Best Search Engines For Privacy. “For the past several years, online privacy has been a prominent theme. Google, in particular, dominates almost all aspects of the Internet, which considering its business model, isn’t compatible with user privacy. As such, many are looking for Google alternatives, especially when it comes to search engines. In this post, we look at some of the best search engines that focus on privacy first and foremost. Before this, we also discuss why you’d want to choose a more private search engine in the first place.”

Useful Stuff 0
February 21, 2021

The McGill Tribune: McGill partners with Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees

The McGill Tribune: McGill partners with Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees. “Recently, McGill’s Office of Sustainability and IT Services have collaborated to introduce Ecosia to the McGill community as part of the university’s sustainability strategy. Suppose you perform only one search per day: Combined with the 40,000 students at McGill, nearly 900 trees would be planted every day.”

Tweaks & Updates 0
February 18, 2021

The Next Web: Google Search’s new feature makes it easier to weed out unreliable results

The Next Web: Google Search’s new feature makes it easier to weed out unreliable results. “Google Search is adding a feature to help you verify your search results are showing reliable information. Search will now show a menu icon ‘next to most results on Google’ that you can tap on to access more information about a particular site without having to actually click through. This makes it a little easier to verify if the search result comes from a source that’s likely to be trustworthy.”

Tweaks & Updates 0
February 18, 2021

ABC News (Australia): Building a search engine to rival Google could cost billions — and that’s not the only problem

ABC News (Australia): Building a search engine to rival Google could cost billions — and that’s not the only problem. “The servers for the Gigablast website occupy a windowless brick building on Bogan Avenue in Albuquerque, New Mexico, just off the interstate and near pawn shops and discount tyre dealers. ‘It’s Bogan Avenue. You’re Australian, you’ll get the joke,’ said Matt Wells, founder and sole employee of the search engine. Gigablast is now mostly forgotten, but there was once a time, around the turn of the millennium, when it could be mentioned in the same breath as another option: Google.”

Research & Opinion 0

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