[LINK] blekko search engine and "content farms"

rene rene.ln at libertus.net
Sat Jan 29 21:14:47 AEDT 2011


On Sat, 29 Jan 2011 19:44:15 +1100, Jan Whitaker wrote:
> All I did was click the homepage link to open it for the first time.
> Hadn't even asked for a search yet. I don't like toolbars (anymore)
> because I don't trust them. So that wasn't it.

OK, I've no idea then - the problem doesn't happen when I use Firefox, but 
then I've only got FF v2 installed. Also doesn't happen with Opera 11.

[...]
> and why would someone login to a search engine anyway? What are the
> benefits/dangers of that?

In the case of blekko, apparently because blekko thinks/hopes some/many 
people will want to "slash the web".
http://blekko.com/ws/+/help

===
"what is a slashtag search?
Slashtag search lets users slash in what they want and slash out what they 
don't. Knock out the spam sites and search only the sites you want to 
search
[...]
how do I create a slashtag?
You must be logged in to your account to create a slashtag. Click on the 
"create a slashtag" link in your left-hand column.
..."
===

As for dangers, I'm sure your 'imagination' can answer that as well as 
anything I could/might say :-)

>Yes, I think that's exactly what Duckgo does. It's a proxy search
>congregator similar to Startpage, perhaps?
>Just changed some settings and discovered that it requires cookies.

Duckduckgo claims that you can change/set search settings without using 
cookies, by using URL parameters instead of cookies. (I haven't actually 
tried that yet, but I've no reason at all to doubt that it can be done - 
and imo it's a *brilliant*/desirable option). They sort of explain how to 
do that here:
http://duckduckgo.com/params.html

Ideally, to make it easy to use duckgo with URL parameters instead of 
cookies, one needs to establish desired duckgo settings somewhere in 
browser search engine options. I know how to do that easily in Opera, and I 
expect it's easy in Firefox, if/when one knows how - but I haven't looked 
into how to do it in Firefox. Possibly, if using Firefox, and one goes to 
this page:
http://duckduckgo.com/faq.html
the third item/clickable link may say "Add to Firefox" (to me it says "Add 
to Opera - probably because it knows I'm using Opera). If it does, and one 
does that, then it may become obvious how to edit/change the URL parameters 
for use when using Firefox to search using duckgo.

Irene









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