Brave announces a new feature called Discussions intended to eliminate the shortcomings of traditional search engines by surfacing more results from web forums.
Discussions augments results in Brave Search with actual conversations related to the query. The ultimate goal is to provide users with information about what real people are saying on a topic.
Brave Search, made by the same developer as the open-source web browser, is striving to overcome “SEO spam,” which it defines as content made for search engines rather than humans.
Brave Seeks To Maintain Privacy & Offer More Useful Search Results
With a goal of de-prioritizing marketing-focused and machine-generated copy, Discussions in Brave Search combs forum threads on Reddit and Stack Exchange.
Results are then shown in a breakout box whenever the browser’s search algorithm considers them relevant. Brave intends to add further sources for Discussions soon.
Available on both its desktop and mobile browsers, Brave expects these results to be particularly useful for users with questions about products, current events, travel, computer programing and coding, or highly specific questions.
Recently surpassing 12 million daily queries, Brave Search provides a privacy-centric alternative to Google. Discussions maintains Brave’s commitment to not tracking users, while seeking to provide more useful search results.
This is just the first step in Brave’s efforts to broaden the appeal of its search engine by providing higher-quality results.
Its next initiative will be Brave Goggles, which will allow users to perform searches based on their own filters and rules.
Feature Comes As Users Question Quality Of Google Searches
In a Reddit thread from April 19, user PizzaInteraction posed the question, “Does anyone else think Google search quality has gone downhill fast?”
The thread, posted to r/NoStupidQuestions, had received more than 40,500 upvotes and nearly 3000 responses at the time of this writing, many of which supporting the position that SEO tactics have negatively impacted results on the search engine giant.
In the top comment, user Pierson230 said:
“I find myself adding ‘Reddit’ the search fairly often, because at least it will show people asking/answering something like the question I have. Nothing worse than getting linked to a bunch of poorly written ‘articles’ about what the 10 best widgets are with links to Amazon products in the body of the message.”
This thread comes on the heels of a viral blog post from search engine blogger DKB on February 15, entitled “Google Search is Dying.” The article claims there has been a steady increase in Google searches using the term “Reddit,” which is attributed to user trust in responses from the social site.
Source: Brave
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