Author Topic: Keyword searching  (Read 2677 times)

Offline teanndaorsa

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Keyword searching
« on: January 26, 2020, 11:31:57 am »
So, a reader asked the other day about the old search functionality that was present on the site, provided by freefind.com, which has since been removed. I do realise that the new search engine is only good for tags, and sometimes you want to search for specific words or phrases in the story. While it was nice to have the old search boxes around, the find service itself didn't do a great job, and it did have some impact on the servers to use it. Quite frankly, Google is better at doing site search in every respect. So, I'd recommend to all the readers that if they want to search for something in particular, to take advantage of Google's site search.

That is, if you go to google.com (in Incognito or Private Browsing mode, ideally, because Google does love to save your search history), and enter something like:
Code: [Select]
site:boundstories.net mansion lakeYou'll get any stories which mention those keywords, but only on the site you specify. If you want to find only stories which contain all the keywords, instead of just some of them, change it to:
Code: [Select]
site:boundstories.net "mansion" "lake"The quotes around keywords tell Google that any results must include that word, and not to show any results which don't.

There would be quite a bit of work involved in extending the new search engine to support keyword searching as well, so that's unlikely to happen any time soon. I might look into adding back a Google site-search box at some point but in the meantime using the approach above should let you find anything you want on any given Plaza site.

Offline gaby

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Re: Keyword searching
« Reply #1 on: June 26, 2020, 03:01:46 pm »
That is, if you go to google.com (in Incognito or Private Browsing mode, ideally, because Google does love to save your search history), and enter something like:

Hi. Teann. Do you recommend to use Duckduckgo.com instead of Google for this? (I mean in order to avoid the search history thing  ;D)

Offline teanndaorsa

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Re: Keyword searching
« Reply #2 on: June 27, 2020, 11:10:51 am »
That is, if you go to google.com (in Incognito or Private Browsing mode, ideally, because Google does love to save your search history), and enter something like:

Hi. Teann. Do you recommend to use Duckduckgo.com instead of Google for this? (I mean in order to avoid the search history thing  ;D)

Honestly I have no experience with it, Chrome's Incognito mode has always sufficed for me, but then I'm fairly tech savvy and know what gets saved and what doesn't. I was simply referring to the fact that Google tries to be helpful and record what you do, so that it's available to you when you search again later. When you are logged into a Google account, that extends even if you move to other devices or computers. So if you have family or share your computer/device with others, it is all too easy for them to inadvertently get offered items that you've searched for if they happen to use your machine, and those items - once recorded - can be quite awkward to purge later even if you really know what you're doing. In Incognito mode, when you close that window, the search history is gone, dumped from your machine, and the only traces left are in the logs of the sites you visited, and they typically won't be sharing those. For 99% of users that would I think be sufficient.

I would imagine something like Duckduckgo is trying to block naughty sites themselves from tracking you, as opposed to stopping your own computer from tracking what you're doing, which is what Incognito mode does. If that's something you're worried about, then sure, it's probably a useful tool. It's a very hard thing to do well, because fundamentally you're still interacting with those sites and to do that you need to offer up some information about yourself. And fundamentally, it shifts the question of trust to Duckduckgo itself. Does Duckduckgo track me? Maybe. Probably not. Do I trust that other people would raise a ruckus if they were doing sinister things? Not sure. I am pretty sure though that if Google was scraping data out of Chrome in Incognito mode, someone would notice and raise hell.

My general approach is to offer naughty sites a minimal amount of information about me, and to only interact with them in limited and careful ways. But I'm not worried about those sites "outing" me, because they and I are usually on the same page about how much fun kinky stuff can be. Still, it's always probable that they are vulnerable to attack or leaks, same as every other organisation, so if you don't want your business email address showing up in a big data dump, a la "Ashley Madison" users, you should take more care. At the very least, if you want some level of protection in that sense, it makes sense to have an email address / account which is separate from the email addresses that are more easily identifiable as "you".

If I was going to recommend anything though, it would be to do whatever is easiest for you to remember. You might forget to use Duckduckgo one day, just as I've forgotten to use Incognito mode sometimes.

Offline gaby

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Re: Keyword searching
« Reply #3 on: August 01, 2020, 03:24:52 pm »
I understand you. Chrome and Duckduckgo are different things. Chrome is a browser and Duckduckgo is a search engine. You can use Duckduckgo in Chrome.

Even if you use Chrome in incognito mode, Google still keeps your information. You can try Firefox in incognito mode instead of Chrome if you wish.

Duckduckgo people says they do not keep your information (Google does it). It is not perfect but you can try it.  8)

 

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