Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by iamnothere on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @08:34PM (#18605075)

Double quotes keep getting less and less effective -- Google is progressively ignoring them more often when similar results are available. Worse, I've seen Google tell me that a term in double quotes simply doesn't exist on the web, when other engines will return many thousands of results. I seriously doubt that the competition has a bigger index!

This is what finally put me on using DDG.

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Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by mda on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @02:22AM (#18606302)

So DDG aka (bing / yandex) is better for double quotes.. maybe, but it could also be just an illusion, try same queries there and see.

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Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by iamnothere on Thursday December 06, 2018 @08:22AM (#18617757)

I have, that's actually why I switched. I was getting better results with DDG.

I think what I've noticed with technical searches is that Google tries too hard to "predict" what I am looking for. It always ends up showing me irrelevant (but surely highly ranked) fluff related to prior searches. The thing is, I don't need to see something related to my prior searches. I need to see what I am looking for TODAY. For me the "personalization" is often actively harmful.

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