[kwlug-disc] Search engine that actually searches for strings

[CrankyOldBugger]

Not that you probably want to hear this, but I'm still having fun with the
Qwant search engine, but for privacy reasons more than anything else.

https://www.qwant.com



On Thu, 21 Sept 2023 at 07:49, Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc <
kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:

>
> Now it seems to highlight bible unless I quote it (on DuckDuckGo).
>
> If I quote multiple things it feels free to ignore the terms I care
> about most.
>
> wordpress.org "verbum" "comment form" -"bible"
>
> gives me
> https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/comment_form/
> https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/comments-in-wordpress/
>
> as the top two results. (Note that I am trying wordpress.org and not
> wordpress.com here). Neither of these top two results appears to
> contain the string "verbum".
>
> This string must exist someplace, although maybe only as a substring.
> (I am pretty sure I have seen this phenomenon even when searching for
> standalone phrases.) It is being generated in the wordpress.com source
> code somehow. So I guess I have to find the source code. Why isn't any
> search engine willing to show me the source code repo?
>
> I guess I am just too dumb to know how to use a search engine in 2023.
> It is natural to blame the victim here, but I don't think my
> expectation that "If I quote something then make sure it is in the
> search results" is all that unreasonable.
>
> I do not have documented evidence of this, but I feel that sometimes
> if I appease the search engine gods somehow I will get subsequent
> search results that DO contain the string, which means the string
> exists in the search engine indices, but won't give me pages with
> those strings when I ask for them directly.
>
>
>
> - Paul
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 05:11:21AM -0400, John Steel wrote:
> > I searched duck duck go with that query and initially it was including
> bible (and highlighting it like I wanted to see it) but when I replaced the
> minus character it worked. Maybe somewhere along the line it was changed to
> a Unicode character? I also do see verbum in the results.
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 20, 2023, at 11:19 PM, Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc wrote:
> > > I don't know what happened to search engines, but they are getting
> > > worse and worse and I am getting more and more annoyed.
> > >
> > > wordpress.com recently changed its comment form. You used to be able
> > > to enter in an email and name without Javascript, and you could submit
> > > a comment. Now they have changed to something that uses the string
> > > "verbum" in its class names. I want to know what this is so I can turn
> > > it off. So I search for something like
> > >
> > > wordpress.com comment form "verbum" -bible
> > >
> > > (since there is some bible site that pollutes the results).
> > >
> > > When I search on DuckDuckGo or Google or Bing, none of the search
> > > results contain the string "verbum", even though in all three putting
> > > the terms in scare quotes is supposed to search for the exact phrase.
> > > This happens all the time. I try to search for exact strings and get
> > > nonsense. I am so tired of it. Is there a search engine I can use that
> > > will actually find pages containing the strings I am searching for? If
> > > so what is it?
> > >
> > > - Paul
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Events: https://feeds.off-topic.kwlug.org
> > > Housing: https://unionsd.coop
> > > Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > kwlug-disc mailing list
> > > To unsubscribe, send an email to kwlug-disc-leave at kwlug.org
> > > with the subject "unsubscribe", or email
> > > kwlug-disc-owner at kwlug.org to contact a human being.
> > >
>
> --
> Events: https://feeds.off-topic.kwlug.org
> Housing: https://unionsd.coop
> Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> kwlug-disc mailing list
> To unsubscribe, send an email to kwlug-disc-leave at kwlug.org
> with the subject "unsubscribe", or email
> kwlug-disc-owner at kwlug.org to contact a human being.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/attachments/20230921/20521153/attachment.htm>