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Comment by arketyp | Hacker News Reader

I find that Google is actually losing ground as the all-seeing-eye-reference-objective-truth due to the increasingly tailored searches. I can no longer refer to a search query and expect a peer to see the same results as I do. This social bubble phenomenon, while no doubt convenient, is sometimes a burden, and with their stricter privacy policy DDG actually has some ground to gain here. Using DDG is more like tuning in to good old ether radio instead of browsing through podcasts. I find that comforting, that break from a claustrophobic solipsist trend.

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I will say that Google is better when searching for code help (probably because it feels that I'm a programmer) so if my query is likely to have an answer on SO or one of my coding forums, a !g gets appended almost reflexively now.

That's curious. I've always found that code searches are where DDG shines.

> I can no longer refer to a search query and expect a peer to see the same results as I do.

It's been decades since you could do that for yourself. It must be something like 20 years ago on Alta Vista that I got burned using search queries as bookmarks and (surprise, surprise) suddenly not being able to find "that page" any more.

Those are two separate issues. Altavista's index certainly got updated over time, so changes in the search results aren't that surprising.

I believe the issue OP is addressing is that even given an identical index, two different users might see to entirely different search results, as their individual search history is factored into the query.

A really simple way to see how google is easily gamed, these days: Just try searching for <some less known book title> + "pdf download"

You will see this giant network of the same site that tries to sell you on e-pdfs

> I can no longer refer to a search query and expect a peer to see the same results as I do.

You could try opening an incognito window, although it could still give different results based on geo location.

> based on geo location.

Or user agent, or screen resolution, or Accept-Encoding / Accept-Language headers, or installed fonts, or installed browser plugins detected, or Do Not Track settings.

Didn't adding &pws=0 to the end of the url avoid personalized results? Not sure if location is still kept into consideration then.

Yeah I have noticed same problem. Try search something like Trump Twitter page, if you are very liberal bubble Twitter page comes like 4th or 5th result.

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