
Million Short - fortran77
https://millionshort.com/about
======
kickscondor
People often cite DuckDuckGo or Reddit search as popular alternatives to
Google. A few other little known ones that go well alongside Million Short:

* [https://wiby.me](https://wiby.me)

* [https://www.mojeek.com](https://www.mojeek.com)

* Personal fave: [https://pinboard.in/search/](https://pinboard.in/search/)

* Also, google "<keywords> site:are.na"

Wouldn't use these necessarily for finding an answer to a programming
question. More: to find unusual blogs/wikis, to search topics that are full of
ad spam on Google or to just explore in the ancient practice of web surfing.

~~~
mmahemoff
Reddit search (or adding site:reddit.com to Google queries) is extremely
useful for product reviews, travel advice, etc. Google used to have a
Discussions tab, which served a similar purpose, but they dropped it and many
searches show the same information repeated N times.

~~~
maest
I feel like I'm losing more and more faith in Reddit reviews/conversations.

As the site has been growing, I feel like there are increasesd amounts of
astroturfing going on. Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, or maybe I've visited
r/hailcorporate too many times. However, consider this - reddit is a huge
website with a lot of reach, where it's free to post. Even better than that,
you can control discussions if you're a moderator. This means you can
advertise comparatively cheaply, in a way that looks genuine and reach a wide,
desirable audience with your message.

Would you be surprised if there are whole businesses that specialise in
creating positive content about brands on reddit? I would be shocked if there
weren't.

~~~
unforeseen9991
Yeah the thing with reddit is you always have to take everything there with a
huge grain of salt.

Especially because every non-expert thinks they are an expert, and if you
aren't familiar with the subject matter, it can be difficult to spot

~~~
maxk42
Can't even recall all the times I've posted on a topic I'm strongly well-
versed in on reddit and ended up downvoted. It's very frustrating when
something you know to be a fact is downvoted in favor of some popular
conception of truth.

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BlueGh0st
After setting three filters on my first query, I was already hit with a
captcha. That seems a bit aggressive and unfortunately ensured I didn't add
this one to my search engine bookmarks.

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JohnJamesRambo
Why can’t you do a captcha?

~~~
s5ma6n
Why would anyone be willing to do captchas? It is just a waste of time for
regular users. I also had a similar experience when I searched for many
different queries in such a short time, I got hit by captchas for a while.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
What other ways would you recommend them to use to distinguish your “many
different queries in a short time” from automated bot attacks, etc.?

~~~
s5ma6n
I am not a DoS/spam expert but first things come to mind are : \- Google
account credibility (I have a very old Google account and this should provide
me some trust from Google's perspective) \- Malicious word analysis in search
queries \- Browser/device information to determine authenticity of the search
(if I am at home or connecting over a Tor network) \- Gradually increase the
response time for the queries On top of those, Google is a machine learning
company and I am sure this process should be automated by now without
requiring filling of any active captchas.

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heyplanet
No word on where the search results come from?

Can't find anything about it on the about page.

Doing a few test searches, the results seem similar to those of Bing.

~~~
LeonM
It's usually Bing, AFAIK they are the only one that offer a whitelabel/API
solution.

There were a bunch of founders in the search category at startupschool 2018
and 2019, those that I spoke to all used Bing as that was their only viable
option according to them.

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johnday
Seems like an interesting idea.

There's a huge problem with this website, though. It's a search engine and the
most prominent thing on the page is a giant picture of some people.

Put the search box, writ large, right in the middle of the page! Not only is
it the "language" of search engines, but it's a simple and obvious
accessibility win. I'm sure the people all matter to each other, but not to
the end user.

Also, if the goal is to eliminate top search results, why not set "exclude top
million" as the default option? By default it's currently just a worse Bing.
If your mission statement is to get people outside of the Big Tech Bubble, it
seems silly in the extreme not to have that as a default.

~~~
phreack
Re: the first point, OP is actually a link to the /about page. The front page
works as you expect.

~~~
johnday
Ah, that's good then!

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mosselman
Filtering out e-commerce sites is a great idea. Is there a way I can do this
on DuckDuckGo ?

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netman21
My reaction is that this is not what the world needs. The world needs a
research tool, not a way to poor over thousands of low ranked sites. How about
sliders for date ranges? Yippy.com has some nice enrichment filters that I
find useful.

~~~
alltakendamned
I love the low ranked sites. I tend to use it regularly to search for more
obscure electronics topics that are otherwise contaminated by reviews,
unboxing videos and stackoverflow questions without answers. It's quite
helpful to lead me to personal pages of some internet rando who provides in
depth information for what I'm looking for.

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cs702
What I would love to see is an option for _reverse ranking with thresholds_ :
sites and pages listed in order reverse to their popularity, within custom
limits.

For example, I'd love to be able to search for "what to do in <city of my
choice>" among sites, say, in the middle 50% of popularity, sorted top-to-
bottom and bottom-to-top. My intention would be to find more personal pages
and websites with sincere, non-manufactured recommendations.

That would be _real_ search.

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green-eclipse
Would be great if it had video, image, and other search result types.

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john_d0e
[https://www.searx.me](https://www.searx.me)

