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Just started testing Brave Search, and it scored a rare 100 on the first test: If you type in the name of a favorite boutique hotel, will you get that hotel's true website -- or the usual hairball of third-party intermediaries?
(For anyone who's ever tried to modify a reservation, the difference is astonishing. If you're booked with the hotel, all kinds of adjustments are at least possible. If you're booked with Booking, Travelocity, Expedia, etc., it's somewhere between hard and hopeless.)
Brave gets it right. Bing, Google and even DuckDuckGo do not.
> (For anyone who's ever tried to modify a reservation, the difference is astonishing. If you're booked with the hotel, all kinds of adjustments are at least possible. If you're booked with Booking, Travelocity, Expedia, etc., it's somewhere between hard and hopeless.)
That's utterly backwards IME. On Booking.com, most modifications are the push of a button (that, crucially, is right there in the UI that I already know) and if I need to do something complex I can send a message and they'll sort it and get back to me. On a boutique hotel website, maybe I'll get a phone number that I have to look up the international dialing code for and then call in that country's business hours, if their website isn't just completely broken.
That was a surprisingly peculiar example, but a quite practical test! I appreciate that you shared it.
(Ad) and (sponsored) were ok at first, but then they became the first screenful of results on most devices.
That’s when my childhood BFF google went off the rails.
Interesting, my test of a search engine’s ability to return relevant results is usually some sort of obscure search for tech help like;
“Best way to modify the xyz on a raspberry pi 4”
I stopped using DuckDuckGo because it always failed at searches like this compared to Google. Brave was ok
Google usually does through the maps place card. To update that card, the hotel manager has to receive a postcard posted by google. Obviously expedia etc can't easily do that.
Are you counting ads as results?
I just put "the 252 boutique hotel" into Google (without quotes) and the first non-ad result is the hotel's own website. It's also first in Brave. And first in Bing. So no difference here.
Generally in my experience, I've never had a problem finding a hotel's website via Google.
Fails my personal benchmark, unfortunately:
haskell megaparsec operators -> should return [0] somewhere high in the result set. Found it on the third page of Brave Search. For comparison, it's the very first result on Google, second page for Bing, and the third page for DuckDuckGo.
Sure, it's a bit obscure, and I don't even write that much Haskell these days. But it's calibrated to determine whether I can rely on the search engine to quickly surface what I need to be productive, and whether I can trust its 'negative results' (I don't see what I want on the results page -> I need to refine my query or take a different approach). The version number returned in the URL also shows how well the engine handles keeping up with versioned documentation pages and aggregating 'link juice' between them.
I try this on every search engine alternative that pops up on HN. Very, very few pass. I find it often works like an adversarial example, yielding completely nonsensical results.
[0] https://hackage.haskell.org/package/megaparsec-5.2.0/docs/Te... (or any other megaparsec-#.#.# version)
I'm moving my comment here because I'm not sure why people are repeating the false information about 3rd parties providing lower prices than direct booking because of some contracts.
That's simply not true. I just did a search now to see if anything has changed. I randomly searched for hotels in the Seattle area for a 5/18 reservation. The 3rd item in a hotel's result [1] is the hotel's direct booking price. It matches the same reservation on the hotel's website [2]. Another hotel's result [3] has the lowest price as direct booking. Again for another hotel in NYC [4], the 3rd item is the hotel's direct price.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/XtDkLZj.png
[2] https://i.imgur.com/gHJgB3I.png
Huh, interesting idea. I personally deliberately book though Booking and alike because it's so nice to have everything hotel related in one place especially when having long trips.
I respect your experience, but third-party sites are cheaper than the true website and hotels refuse to match it even if you ask them. Even if adjustments are easier (and in my experience Booking.com has been fine), it doesn't offset the price difference.
I stay in hotels a lot though, if you travel occasionally and on special occasions I can absolutely understand.
How is it that Brave managed to build an indexer and remove dependence on Bing in less than two years but DuckDuckGo hasn't been able to do it in a decade.
> Announcing the Brave Search API
> In continuing our mission to offer alternatives to Big Tech, Brave is planning to release the Brave Search API. Through it, developers and companies will be able to build search experiences that compete on quality with Big Tech. Those interested should stay tuned for more details, or contact us at bizdev@brave.com.
That's going to be very important for search engines like phind which rely on the bing index service.
I love how on mobile Brave browser you can add YouTube videos to your Brave playlist and then play them while your screen is locked.
Also I switched from StartPage to Brave search, but I do wish Brave search had a translator feature. Like on StartPage I just search "translate" and get an input box. I find it better than most other browsers' translators.
I actually find their Goggles [0] feature really interesting.
Just the fastest and most ergonomic browser I've tried.
I wish Firefox was like Brave, to be honest. Until that happens, I'll stick to Brave for both mobile and desktop.
This is about the Brave Search engine, which you can use in any browser:
I've set Brave Search to be my default search engine for private windows (incognito mode). I've grown annoyed by the cookie consent dialogs and captchas that are presented to me by Google when I open Google's search engine in a private window. Brave Search doesn't have those annoyances.
Surprisingly good. I tried "what is a monad" and got reasonable results. Searching my own name resulted in socials instead of my personal website, but that seems reasonable since my personal website isn't super popular. I guess I'll have to try it out for a few days or even weeks to really know, but a completely new search engine would be amazing.
I first used Firefox when it was Phoenix, back in 2002. You downloaded a zip file, extracted it and ran it.
For the next 20 years I used Firefox. But I could feel the performance difference from Chromium browsers.
I finally threw in the towel and switched to Brave out of the collection of them now. I hated switching because it meant yet another user lost to one of the remaining handful of unique engines for browsing the web. I like competition and standards, and the more the better with browsing engines. Even if it may bring developers some pain.
I've been very happy with it. People gripe about ads, crypto integration, etc. but it can all be avoided and/or turned off. It has the speed of Chromium but with additional features and is privacy-focused.
But to get to the point, regarding the search ...
I'm happy to see they (somehow!) have been able to build their own search engine now. Obviously that's no simple task, I have no idea what goes into powering that but it has to be a major investment.
It seems pretty good. If they can sell API access for cheaper then the others and still return quality results, that seems like it has potential to be a good revenue stream.
They are very clear about the Web Discovery Project, what the purpose is, what it collects, etc. And obviously it's opt-in.
I really hope they succeed with this. Another example of where competition is definitely good.
Brave search is surprisingly good. In the past I've often clicked the "fallback to Google Search" option but these days I rarely do that.
It could be that Brave is getting better, or Google search is getting worse, or both.
I've been using Brave Search for almost 2 years now, and it still surprises me how good it is compared to Google!
When I was on DDG, I often had to use `!g` to find better search results. That is extremely rare with Brave Search.
The results are accurate, the UI is polished, and the widgets are extremely helpful. It keeps getting better with time too!
Using Brave Search feels like the Google Search from mid 2000s. Anyone tired of Google should give it a try.
While they did some shady stuff with their browser in the past, the search engine is surprisingly good and their relation with the community is pretty decent, I wish more search providers start providing their own results instead of using Bing API.
Sadly it failed my test. When I search for "Python str split" it includes trash results and midway down the first page of results is the python API documentation after some YouTube videos, W3Schools and "GeeksForGeeks" spam garbage. DuckDuckGo at least has the results correct for this case and an infocard on the side that understands it's a Python related API question with relevant examples and links.
Read the announcement and it looks like there isn't an option to submit a site for crawling. If that's true, how do they discover new sites? My understanding of the 'the Web Discovery project' is that they're indexing your search and the results you click, anonymously but you won't see new sites in your search results which in turn means the new site won't be indexed by them
Good because I've about had it with DuckDuckGo. Bing has downmodded a ton of Wikipedia (probably to trick people into using their stupid AI). Feeling trapped with both Google and Bing being terrible.
What's the business plan though?
I've been using brave search since it became public and it was known they bought tailcat.
Have been very happy with the search results, and for people who don't like the simpler programming tutorial sites you can even make a custom "goggle" to block those from the results completely.
I would really like to move away from google search, but unfortunately every other engine I tried sucks for localized searching...
I get it that I come from small central europe country which is not that interesting market wise but it looks like google is able to provide relevant results while any other engine does not.
For example I tried brave to search for watch I'm currently considering buying. When using site:sk it gives me 3 results... Same google search returns thousands results...
I tried it, and honestly it sucks, all the rankings are terrible, I searched stackoverflow and I got seo spam as one of the top results, the title or meta didn't even include "stackoverflow".
I also hate how it's not full width.
Sadly didn't pass my test, looking up sports info like "UFC Schedule" and getting a custom built interface. For example,
Google's: https://www.google.com/search?q=ufc+schedule&rlz=1C1GCEU_en&...
Bing's (doesn't have UFC Schedules but has "NFL Standings"): https://www.bing.com/search?q=NFL+standings&qs=n&form=QBRE&s...
I have been using Brave Search for a year now. It has been great. It provides relevant results and I love how Brave AI floats a summarizer to the top with cited and hyperlinked material when applicable.
Very rarely I will need to hit the Find Elsewhere 'Google' button. This is usually done for niche technical searches where Google prioritizes some forums dedicated to the topic like Reddit or Stack Overflow. I _could_ re-search with the site operator, but after scrolling down with the Google escape hatch there, the flow just seems more natural.
Just as an aside, I have also been experimenting with SearX searches. The experience isn't as streamlined as Brave Search, but I can incorporate Brave Search into my results. I find the value proposition interesting for SearX, but implementation still lacking.
I know brave is basically chrome but i am very pleased with the experience. Works a charm on linux and is good enough at blocking ads that i dont really need pihole. The only thing i miss is syncing between devices, i mess that up and cant get it right. All in all is quite good.
Great to have alternative entry points into the web.
DDG seem to do quite well in that a lot of their users will deem the relevance good enough, perhaps not aware of its 100% reliance on Bing. More often than not new search engine skins with comparable results to Google and Bing do tend to be the actual results of Google and Bing. Apparently the average searcher doesn't know nor care.
If everyone 'donated' at least a few searches a day to true alternative engines, it'd help diversify search, surely. The fact that Google has such a high amount of revenue per search has helped them price out competitors e.g. being defaults on browsers and devices. Can see why Brave would launch a browser to assist/complement search.
Brave is great -- but just objectively they aren't growing. Their MAU was literally larger a year ago. Compare last month's stats to last May's stats: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1643104574532894721
https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1532100051966697472
Weird how a company can experience NEGATIVE growth for something like browsers and search
Stoked for the independent Search API. Google and Bings are pricey. I anticipate it having a quicker adoption path compared to than the UI.
I love brave browser and have been using it for over a year now, but I find brave search to be visually unappealing. It seems very squished up to the left and small, I wish they would let it breath a little more.
as a brave user on my personal devices its nice to see that theyre continually working towards independence. brave browser with brave search has worked fine for me, i barely notice the difference having switched from chrome/google.
Interesting timing.
Just today, it told me to use Bing or Google for image search.
I understand the reasoning, but it felt a bit like "whelp, we give up"
My standard test for a search engine: "California style burrito in Austin" I got mixed results.
The "BraveAI" result was halfway decent, recommending a place I've never heard of, but not listing any of the other top ones I know of.
On the sidebar map, it listed a restaurant in New Hampshire. Hilarious, but not what I was looking for.
I have a love-hate relationship with Brave search. I love the browser, but the first thing I do (after disabling the crypto stuff) is change the search to Google. I’m tempted to change it to ChatGPT.
For searching every day things, brave search is great. For searching technical things, such as scientific articles or programming errors, the results are not just badly ordered - they’re often missing entirely.
At least, that’s how it was the last time I used it, which was admittedly about a year ago. If things have changed, let me know.
Isn't Brave the browser that pretended you could donate to any creator and then kept the money for themselves?
Have we forgiven them now?
How does Brave monetize this? How do they monetize their app in general? Is there a ppc ad platform they're offering?
Is there search independent? They have no page talking about their robot. The Cliqz index they acquired was a database of query url pairs scraped from Google. It is not obvious how true their claims of independence are or how they are building an index beyond further scraping of Google and opaque Brave browser add-ons
Everything I've seen come out of Brave has been fantastic. This is another great milestone.
I have brave search as default but always do a google bang “!g”. I do this for every search but figure I’m giving brave some data on all my searches to help improve it. I guess it’s be better if I clicked a link on their results too for reinforcement learning.
I'm not sure if I will add it to my searx instance. The problem is that Brave gets more shady over time(shady BAT "donations" to creators, Brave VPN, ads on the homepage, and the let's not forget the crypto).
I get that they need to pay employees.
Glad there are more options for search tools. Seems pretty good!
But still very happy with how Kagi works