Wouldn’t it cut down on search queries (and thus save resources) if I could search for “this is my phrase” rather than rawdogging it as an unbound series of words, each of which seems to be pulling up results unconnected to the other words in the phrase?

There are only 2 reasons I can think of why a website’s search engine lacks this incredibly basic functionality:

  1. The site wants you to spend more time there, seeing more ads and padding out their engagement stats.
  2. They’re just too stupid to know that these sorts of bare-bones search engines are close to useless, or they just don’t think it’s worth the effort. Apathetic incompetence, basically.

Is there a sound financial or programmatic reason for running a search engine which has all the intelligence of a turnip?

Cheers!

EDIT: I should have been a bit more specific: I’m mainly talking about search engines within websites (rather than DDG or Google). One good example is BitTorrent sites; they rarely let you define exact phrases. Most shopping websites, even the behemoth Amazon, don’t seem to respect quotation marks around phrases.

  • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    Why? I’ve never used it, so not disagreeing, but that seems a pretty strong reaction to a search engine.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      it’s more about the browser and by extension the brand, not so much about the search engine per se.

        • pyre@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          4 months ago

          over the years, too many to count. for me the first red flag was them trying to replace ads with their own “safe” ads, rather than blocking them. they have brave rewards, which i automatically distrust. they push crypto, which is probably their biggest sin. but they also auto added affiliate links to binance urls. just all around shitty, opportunistic goblin vibes.