You use the word “harvest”. Which has a meaning along the lines of: Collect and save for later use. That’s not necessarily the case in your example though. Nothing needs to be collected or saved. It only needs the one IP, the one time that search is done, then it can be (and on most of your “tested” engines is) forgotten.
If you search for “restaurants in Edmonton”, you’ll likely receive exactly what you think.
If you search for “anarcho-communism” or something equally non-related to location. Than the IP won’t matter, beyond giving you results in your local language.
A truly blind search, would generally suck. You’d need nearly half a dozen qualifiers to find some relevancy.
That’s just a test though, to see if the search engine is using some form of tracking. If they searched for something like “news” or “hot milfs” they don’t want “hot milfs in your area”.
No one said it was tracking. Is using location as a search term without it being asked for. What OP is looking for is a search engine that would return different results for “restaurants” and “restaurants near [location]”
True, but there is no requirement for a search engine to use such an algorithm to net results. I know this because I’ve been using search engines since the Windows 95 era. It’s possible to have what I seek. I’m just starting to question if anyone makes it.
I’m going to try the .onion version of DuckDuckGo later and see how that goes.
Update: This is … extremely odd. Simplified explanation: Tor connects you via a specific circuit of nodes, which you can see by clicking an icon next to the address bar. The last node it connects to is the exit node. But here’s the thing: Even the Tor edition of DDG insists on providing location-biased results that match the location of the exit node. I tested this by running a search on DDG and then connecting via a different circuit several times. Each time, the results were tailored to the location of the exit node. This is very disappointing. I’m going to do some searching and try some different search engines, but I think it’s safe to say I will not find what I’m looking for in any fork of DuckDuckGo, not even the .onion version.
Update 2: Ooops, I was using the clearnet version. I switched to the .onion version, which it turns out has to be done manually. I’m still getting very different results based on the exit node, although it’s much less obvious now. I’m thinking there might be some other .onion search engine that does what I need.
Every search engine will use your location. Especially when you make location based searches.
Do you think “restaurants in my area” should mean Earth? Or would you include the ISS also?
Ideally it should also include the restaurant at the end of the universe
How is that place still in business
A place like that relies on repeat customers
Any website you connect have access to your public IP for each request, hence location recommendations
Content deleted by creator due to lemmy.ml tolerating brigades from hexbear
deleted by creator
Content deleted by creator due to lemmy.ml tolerating brigades from hexbear
You use the word “harvest”. Which has a meaning along the lines of: Collect and save for later use. That’s not necessarily the case in your example though. Nothing needs to be collected or saved. It only needs the one IP, the one time that search is done, then it can be (and on most of your “tested” engines is) forgotten.
If you search for “restaurants in Edmonton”, you’ll likely receive exactly what you think.
If you search for “anarcho-communism” or something equally non-related to location. Than the IP won’t matter, beyond giving you results in your local language.
A truly blind search, would generally suck. You’d need nearly half a dozen qualifiers to find some relevancy.
Content deleted by creator due to lemmy.ml tolerating brigades from hexbear
That’s just a test though, to see if the search engine is using some form of tracking. If they searched for something like “news” or “hot milfs” they don’t want “hot milfs in your area”.
That isn’t tracking. That’s just using the IP the search came from to specify “my area”.
No one said it was tracking. Is using location as a search term without it being asked for. What OP is looking for is a search engine that would return different results for “restaurants” and “restaurants near [location]”
Content deleted by creator due to lemmy.ml tolerating brigades from hexbear
deleted by creator
True, but there is no requirement for a search engine to use such an algorithm to net results. I know this because I’ve been using search engines since the Windows 95 era. It’s possible to have what I seek. I’m just starting to question if anyone makes it.
I’m going to try the .onion version of DuckDuckGo later and see how that goes.
Update: This is … extremely odd. Simplified explanation: Tor connects you via a specific circuit of nodes, which you can see by clicking an icon next to the address bar. The last node it connects to is the exit node. But here’s the thing: Even the Tor edition of DDG insists on providing location-biased results that match the location of the exit node. I tested this by running a search on DDG and then connecting via a different circuit several times. Each time, the results were tailored to the location of the exit node. This is very disappointing. I’m going to do some searching and try some different search engines, but I think it’s safe to say I will not find what I’m looking for in any fork of DuckDuckGo, not even the .onion version.
Update 2: Ooops, I was using the clearnet version. I switched to the .onion version, which it turns out has to be done manually. I’m still getting very different results based on the exit node, although it’s much less obvious now. I’m thinking there might be some other .onion search engine that does what I need.