Tag: Google

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Alternatives to Google alternative DuckDuckGo?

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo on Mac and iOS for years at this point (primarily just to NOT use Google and give them literally all my life’s data) and generally for 90% searches it’s been fine and it’s easy to hop to Google when it’s not.

But… I accidentally searched for “tv” just now and the first result was TV Guide. Compare DDG to the Google results in my screenshots:

Search results for "tv" on DuckDuckGo.
Search results for "tv" on Google.

In what decade does a person searching for TV mean they want TV listings from TV Guide?

Maybe it’s time to relent and go back to Google or find a alternative to my Google alternative.

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Google Chrome “privacy” enhancements

“We have enhanced your privacy by sharing your browsing history and behavior with random websites. You’re welcome.”

Dialog from Google Chrome: Enhanced ad privacy in Chrome We're launching new privacy features that give you more choice over the ads you see. Chrome notes topics of interest based on your recent browsing history. Also, sites you visit can determine what you like. Later, sites can ask for this information to show you personalized ads. You can choose which topics and sites are used to show you ads. X X X To measure the performance of an ad, limited types of data are shared between sites, such as the time of day an ad was shown to you. More about ads in Chrome You can make changes in Chrome settings

(via @rmondello@hachyderm.io)

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A better infinite scroll?

Google has a new blog post up with their recommendations for implementing infinite scrolling. Also be sure to check out the demo page.

Google’s tips and examples address SEO concerns with this feature, but don’t really address the possible user experience issues it introduces. As someone who is lucky enough to observe and work with actual users during usability testing, I’m not sure there is such a thing as a “good” infinite scrolling technique right now.

At least with this example the back button works as expected but I’m still not sure the positives outweigh the confusion infinite scrolling always seems to introduce. As with pretty much every UX issue, this of course depends depends on your audience and content. Like any other feature, get it in front of real users and test, test, test.

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Google SSL Search Will Block Search Referrers

Your website stats are getting a little less valuable thanks to new search feature Google is rolling out to its users. SSL encrypted search will now automatically be turned on for all logged in users, resulting in improved security and privacy for web searches.

This improved privacy will result in less available data for site owners in analytics tools, including Google Analytics. Specifically, for users with SSL search enabled it will no longer pass along the search keywords that brought them to your website. From Google’s blog post announcing the change:

What does this mean for sites that receive clicks from Google search results? When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information about each individual query. They can also receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools.

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