back to article Google's UK grip slips a bit, brutal dominance basically unshaken

Google's share of the UK search market has fallen below 90 per cent for the first time in five years, but only by 1.41 per cent. The Chocolate Factory dipped to 89.33 per cent of the market in October, Experian Hitwise reported, while Microsoft's bing and Ask and Yahoo! sites upped their shares. Bing is up on its previous …

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  1. Si 1

    That would be me then...

    I switched after Google brought in their privacy changes. So far Bing has been pretty good, although on occasion I've had to go back to Google because Bing just isn't finding anything relevant.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: That would be me then...

      You could use startpage.com from Ixquick - that gives you Google without the privacy risks.

      Personally, I'm OK with Google search - that was originally what made Google best until they brought in sponsored results which I have caught a number of time being abused by crooks. The rest I won't touch with a barge pole because I have a legal (and business) obligation to protect client information..

      1. sueme2
        Thumb Up

        Re: That would be me then...

        thanks, it works without js and doesn't pop tabs or windows. blekko is good too.

  2. Saul Dobney
    Unhappy

    Google's search results have gone downhill

    I'm probably not a typical Google user (instant turned off, 100 results per page, personalised results turned off), but I am a longstanding intensive user and in the past six months the quality of Google's search has totally gone to pot. Way too many results from individual sites particularly Youtube (but also ehow, fixya). I almost have to search with a permanent -youtube option. I did a few checks about a month ago and of the 100 results on the first page for some searches I actually only had 5-6 different sites listed. In some cases a single site had 40+ of those links from the first 100 and it wasn't even that they were good quality results.

    1. janimal

      Re: Google's search results have gone downhill

      I agree. Google are just as bad as the rest now. They seem to have defaulted to an OR search on multiple keywords instead of an AND

      I don't thikn Google really care that much about search anymore. They when they have ad-words, analytics, personal and corporate gmail, drive, maps,calendar etc... to mine data from the drones?

      I think in part though, the web is begining to suffer from ubiquitous use and commercialisation. There is so much noise out there that general searches are much less effective.

      Once upon a time the web was a majority of porn, academia and geeks which suited me just fine. Now it is shopping, propaganda, scams, every possible flavour of opinion, ghastly celebrity tossers covering contentless rumour sites (I'm looking at you Dail Mail!). At least there's still porn, although even that is homogenous and unimaginative crap.

      Things were different when I was a lad

      1. Paul Shirley

        Re: Google's search results have gone downhill

        Google search quality went bad years, not months ago. They're losing the fight against SEO, drowning in a tidal wave of manipulation .

        It's one reason I'm so skeptical of scum like fairsearch. SEO is failing them but not because Google are filtering well, instead they're drowning in a flood of shitty competitors all trying the same abuses.

  3. DutchP

    My primary search engine these days is duckduckgo.com.

    Occasionally I can find what I'm looking for (mostly obscure errors from my Gentoo box) and I try my luck at startpage.com.

    Haven't really used Google in quite some time.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I hate to agree

    with anything and anybody, but facing the facts... I have no choice: google search is getting shittier. First, the results on page one, which, if not "sponsored", then present some one-day traffic scraping sites. Yeah, right, you can trim the results in advanced search (another several clicks), or better still, choose your preferences to be stored in a cookie. Cookie, huh? Thanks, but no, thanks, I trust Google with cookies, like I trust Apple with complying with a court order, like I trust Mr Clegg with keeping his word, like I trust an energy company to reduce prices when they have had a good year, like... etc.

  5. MJI Silver badge

    Search engines all failing

    OR rather than AND - that really annoys me.

    I run greasemonkey scripts to keep private with google. I also use yahoo and a couple of the older search engines. I don't use the German tin plate toy search engine.

    But search engines in general are not as good as they used to be.

    1. Argh

      Re: Search engines all failing

      I think it was always a bit ORish. In the past, you could put "+" in front of a term to make sure that it was required in the page. They changed that to double quotes now, so if you put double quotes around each search term individually it should make sure that the page contains them all.

    2. bugalugs

      Re: Search engines all failing

      gurgling " the German tin plate toy search engine " bought your post up at #5..

  6. Martin 63
    Pirate

    Pondering

    Ive used google search for years, but thinking about switching, purely on the principle that they pay no tax in the UK and I do. Any suggestions?

    1. Ian 5

      Re: Pondering

      Same here - I'm pretty disgusted with the likes of Starbucks and Google.

      Try using Quintura: www.quintura.com - I really miss searchbastard.com though, search results with abuse...

    2. Paul_Murphy

      Re: Pondering

      As per a previous poster I use DuckDuckgo - https though very US centric, so most searches I need to put 'UK' in front.

      You could make a start by looking here:

      http://memeburn.com/2012/02/dont-google-it-other-search-engine-options/

      ttfn

      1. Phil101

        Re: Pondering (DuckDuckGo - US centric)

        I found that until I clicked that DuckDuckGo defaults to US as your location. You can change this in settings. If you don't want to allow cookies then you can bookmark https://www.duckduckgo.com/?kl=uk-en&kad=en_GB to indicate you're in the UK and want real English.

  7. Gordon Pryra

    What's the point in bashing Google?

    They are the only real search engine out there. While the world + dog is intent in filling up the index with adverts for viagra, they do a good job of keeping it in line.

    If your scared about "privacy" then you better know what your talking about. SE's other than Google and Bing need to finance themselves. If you don't see adds, then you can bet they are selling your habits to someone to pay the host costs if nothing else

    Google's own browser Chrome has many add-ons to stop adds, as does Firefox.

    Microsoft having 3 search engines is ironic considering the stance both the big SE's have on duplication.

    Someone mentioned tax, that's a different story and people should be facing jail time for it. If not the corporations, then the people overseeing the situation that allows them to do it (and has allowed them for at least the last 80 years)

  8. billium
    Mushroom

    duckduckgo

    duckduckgo use bing as their webcrawler.

    I f you think Google are bad, imagine the monopolist in control!

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