Imagining a beneficent search engine
"Imagining a beneficent search engine: Content advisories and what-if Google were powerful & brave"
HT: now-deleted Twitter account's thread: "Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Here's a list..."
Text of image:
screenshot: A mock Google search page: Query: [insert query here]
It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search in our index!
Want help reformulating your query? Check out these free external guides for domain-specific advice from community-experts on identifying and revising queries for your searches.
Need help choosing other search systems? Here is a community-managed open source table for selecting search systems: [insert filterable list of search engines with distinct indexes or filtering/interaction features (inc. Internet Archive, government and library web-based search systems, competitor search engines, experimental search engines), links to and community-written guides to question-asking & exploratory browsing on forums and other social media platforms (inc. expert comments on safety, privacy, & transparency reports like links to Ranking Digital Rights, etc.), links to locale-specific librarian desk reference services, collaboration with Wikimedia: 'how to search Wikimedia'. [include permalink to this table]]
Want to learn more about this content advisory? Click here to read this last month's community ombudsperson's public audit of 'query-match content advisories'. This includes statistics from our systems and feedback from searchers, representatives of these other search systems, and community stakeholders.
Currently: Google [cetaxisd] "It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search Try using words that might appear on the page you’re looking for. For example, "cake recipes" instead of "how to make a cake." Need help? Check out other tips for searching on Google."
![screenshot: Google search results page for [cetaxisd].](/images/tweet_1559316629263044608_1.png)
My mockup of a beneficent search engine is not meant to be a suggestion, but a speculation. What if the dominant search engine were such that it would admit such a resource? What if we were such that it would willingly do so? What might we learn from its absence?
Note: "content advisory" is language from a recent Google post. Here is a link to that post (1: see: "Expanding content advisories for information gaps") & an earlier one re the feature (2). [links are not endorsements]
- https://blog.google/products/search/information-literacy/
- https://www.blog.google/products/search/getting-great-matches-google-search/
Inspiration for what-if:
This thread helps me imagine a what-if:
Imagine a beneficent Google that, instead of its OK/patronizing/apologia “content advisories” with “It looks like there aren't any great matches for your search”, pointed users to other search systems.
Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Here's a list of sites you may have never heard of, it's how we overcome the madness:
The original tweet is also available at Archive.org
Updated on 2023-07-11: updated tweet display to cards.