[HN Gopher] Nona - A German Search Engine ___________________________________________________________________ Nona - A German Search Engine Author : danskeren Score : 125 points Date : 2021-11-18 16:43 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nona.de) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nona.de) | the-dude wrote: | I searched for _Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitan_ and it | had plenty of hits. | barbazoo wrote: | I thought you spell Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitan | with 3 "f", i.e. Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitan | quaintdev wrote: | Feels snappy. I could find some people I know which I was not | sure if it would find. | | English version of the main interface would have been great. I | have added it to my Firefox anyway. | chespinoza wrote: | I wonder what would be better? having search engines able to deal | with different languages or having different search engines for | every possible language, Don't see the point for the latter to be | honest, having an universal language makes more sense to me. | visarga wrote: | First we do search. After retrieval comes question answering | based on the retrieved snippets. Then comes multi-hop question | answering with the need to correlate information between | multiple sources. Just watched a video showing how it can be | done https://youtu.be/-ethT5YDVmo?t=1256 | marginalia_nu wrote: | Regardless of whether you serve them through the same search | box, from a practical standpoint, I think you'd want basically | a separate back-end for each language. Stuff like relative term | importance, word extraction, ranking, they all benefit from | being kept separately. | blondin wrote: | different search engines for every language. | | it looks like a lot, but a typical user will only use a handful | of them. and having each tailored to a language or region is | better than a universal search engine. | Borrible wrote: | And there still is the German meta search engine, MetaGer. I | already used it more than 20 years ago. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaGer | | https://metager.org/ | | It also has a TOR hidden service: | | http://metagerv65pwclop2rsfzg4jwowpavpwd6grhhlvdgsswvo6ii4ak... | keb_ wrote: | I just used this for a few English-language queries and the | results... are surprisingly great. | andrefuchs wrote: | Clever name! Anon backwards. | poolie wrote: | Hah, you are the first one who got it :) | marban wrote: | There's only one chance to make a lasting impression as an | aspiring Google competitor and there isn't a single one that even | made it into my bookmarks. I understand there's enough love for | DDG on HN but life is too short for mediocre horizontal search | results. | CountDrewku wrote: | My results are the same or better than Google in DDG as far as | I can tell. I haven't missed Google a bit since I switched. So, | either the difference for the average user is minimal or there | isn't a difference. | Semaphor wrote: | It's a frequent complaint. I wonder if some people just use | search differently and the lack of tracking makes it work | worse for them on DDG? I'm in the same boat as you (except | for their horrible decision to just ignore what you search | and show you almost random results when they don't get | enough/any hits) and rarely ever use !g. | HelenePhisher wrote: | Part of that might be that non-english searches in DDG are | a horrible experience. | freediver wrote: | How do you evaluate? | throwaway158497 wrote: | Great effort. As a individual developer, How does using Bing | results work? Can I signup for their search engine API and modify | them based on my secret sauce, without raking up 100$+ bill every | month? | freediver wrote: | The bill will be based on your usage. For Bing API it is $7 per | 1,000 queries for full results (news/video/images). So just raw | results without any other effort will cost you about $7/mo | assuming you do 30 queries/day. | poolie wrote: | ...and you are not allowed to cache results - so you actually | have to call the api everytime you do a search. | jtagx wrote: | Looks like they are using Bing / Microsoft for their search | ryantgtg wrote: | Seems like most new search engines are "bing + some other | sources." Just wondering, does Bing charge for this use? | | Personally, in the past month I've noticed a significant | degradation of results from DDG, and since I don't know what's | going on I just blame Bing. Because of that, each time we have | posts about alternative engines I first check to see if they're | not using Bing. But they all are! | danskeren wrote: | They list their data sources here: | https://hilfe.nona.de/features/datenquellen | | Bing for Web+Image (and I assume News+Video) Search, | ListenNotes for Podcast, OpenWeatherMap for their Instant | Answer weather results, etc. | | I like their UI, and as far as I can tell then their icons are | custom made, at least I can't find them anywhere. | l5870uoo9y wrote: | Yes and a few other data sources for weather, stocks and so on | (https://hilfe.nona.de/features/datenquellen). And it's made | with Symfony (https://hilfe.nona.de/ueber-nona/technik-tools). | trutannus wrote: | Regardless, they return far better search results for queries | in German than Google does. For example, if you look for | something about a changing legislation in the Bundestag, they | will have articles published in the past 30 minutes, where as | Google won't surface the same articles for a few weeks. | MildlySerious wrote: | I like that they offer an ad-free experience for 2EUR a month. I | would like more of the internet to offer this type of | alternative. | alexfringes wrote: | Interestingly, this approach seems to be gaining more traction | in Germany specifically. One of the larger newspapers, Die | Zeit, applies it for the free tier of its website. There's a | big annoying modal when you go to zeit.de if you want to see | that approach in practice. Hilariously the choice I make in | that modal never seems to stick. Maybe there's a separate GDPR- | compliant toggle somewhere to allow them to track that I want | to be tracked ha! | Semaphor wrote: | Zeit, Spiegel, Golem... Those are the ones I frequently see, | but there are probably more. | throwaway47292 wrote: | Google makes like 50$ per month from you and Facebook makes 30$ | per month (or something in this ballpark), things are way | beyond what most people are willing to pay. | [deleted] | theK wrote: | 30 cent per user per month, maybe. Not 30 usd | petters wrote: | How do you then explain Facebook's revenue being 86B in | 2020? | syberiyxx wrote: | Google Ads cost $~4-8 per lead for our company. Google is | raking it in. | [deleted] | MildlySerious wrote: | The alternative to paying for an ad-free experience is ad- | blockers. I very much doubt that they make anywhere near as | much from me. | anticristi wrote: | 30$/user/year seems to be accurate. Facebook reported 86 | billion USD for 2020 [1] and 2.89 billion MAU [2]. When | computing the ratio, the geek inside me feels particularly | satisfied to reduce billion from the numerator and | denominator. :) | | So 2EUR/user/month seems priced well. | | [1] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release- | details/... [2] | https://www.statista.com/statistics/346167/facebook- | global-d... | arketyp wrote: | I wonder how much is enterprise revenue albeit the sites | are used as personal services. | throwaway47292 wrote: | wait wtf why wont they just charge it then | | ffs | | i thought its 30 per month and thats why they dont do it, | now i am even more upset for all the spying.. | throwaway47292 wrote: | oh wait, thats 2.8b mau but most of them are worth | nothing, look at west europe and north america, and only | subset of them, its like 200 million people that have to | pay >>> (89000000000/200000000) / 12 | 37.083333333333336 | tiluha wrote: | Most people would not even pay a cent | throwaway47292 wrote: | i think the problem is that the people that will pay a | cent are the people they are making 40$ per month from, | and the rest of the MAUs are probably almost worthless | | so if they start charging, they will only lose | kube-system wrote: | I wonder how many users are unbanked and can't even pay a | cent. | ushakov wrote: | they don't make nearly as much | petters wrote: | Why do you say that? The revenue of Facebook is public (86B | in 2020). Is a lot of it not from users, or is the figure | incorrect, or do they have many more users than they say | they have? | lopis wrote: | I couldn't find it anywhere in their data statement, nor in their | about page or terms and conditions, where the results were coming | from. Finally at the bottom of the SERP there's the indication | that results come from Microsoft (Bing). However, all links to | Bing seem to happen in the backend, including linking to images. | Would like to know how much data they share with Bing, but so far | as it's visible from the client side it looks pretty solid. And | they have podcast search, which is cute. | poolie wrote: | Hi. We list every source in our help-section: | https://hilfe.nona.de/features/datenquellen | dathinab wrote: | Indexing the web and doing a initial evaluation is hard and | costy. | | Because of this only a few search engines do so, if we exclude | Asia the only starch engines I know which do so are Google, | bing and Yandex(?). | | All other defer to one of thos search engines (most times bing) | while decoupling, post and pre processing queries to a varying | degree. | RGamma wrote: | This situation almost screams for web indexing as a service. | Would love to see some search engine innovation, especially | advanced curation, classification, archival and filtering(!) | abilities. | machiaweliczny wrote: | There is index of most sites to download at | https://commoncrawl.org/ | allanrbo wrote: | Brave say they have their own index actually, but also | sometimes use other providers (maybe for when their own index | didn't return enough results?). https://brave.com/brave- | search-beta/ | munaf wrote: | I love that people keep making alternatives, but I can't shake | the feeling that whatever displaces search engines won't be | recognizable as a search engine. | | (And I have no idea what it's going to be.) | rp1 wrote: | A search engine could replace a another search engine, but it'd | need a better take than just being German. Google wasn't the | first search engine after all. | [deleted] | tgv wrote: | Seems to respect privacy. At least it only includes one external | js resource, and doesn't leave cookies. And while the interface | is in German, it does find results in various languages. | | Edit: I must add that I had my ad blocker on... | poolie wrote: | Yeah, we are using plausible.io as external analytics-service, | without any cookies. | keewee7 wrote: | My ideal search engine would be 2008-2012 Google results but | filtering out anything that even remotely smells of blog spam | containing affiliate links. | bserge wrote: | So, Yandex. That's pretty much what it is today. | | Except it's Russian, so the propaganda conditioning kicks in. | freediver wrote: | Curious how much would you be prepared to pay per month for | your ideal search engine? | solarkraft wrote: | For me (student) 5EUR/month is the no-brainer price for a | useful service I use semi-daily. Beyond that it starts to | hurt. | 88840-8855 wrote: | I would prefer a netflix model run by the gov. You pay 10 | Euro a month when having an internet connection. This is | distributed based on your activity. Sites you use often are | being paid more to run their infra. At the same time those | sites are not allowed to run ads or affiliate crap. Also | profits should be capped and taxed with 99% above a | threshold. \ | achempion wrote: | Do you know how to do ranking of that king without pinging | anyone to setup your analytics tool and have previous history | or searches? | aeyes wrote: | Did 2008-2012 Google have that? I think they mostly used | backlink count. | qwertox wrote: | What is the relationship between Nona and Chronoto [0]? | | Chronoto sells luxury watches, is the same owner, registered at | the same address and has the same commercial register entry. | | [0] https://www.chronoto.de/impressum/ | | --- | | > (1) I agree that Nona Search Technologies GmbH ("Chronoto") may | use my e-mail address for advertising Chronoto, including | advertising in connection with the sale (e.g. information on the | value of the watch and the sales process), the purchase (e.g. | interesting offers of watches) and ownership (e.g. offers of | insurance and financing, as well as maintenance and repair). | poolie wrote: | As it says in the imprint: Chronoto is a showcase for the | search (and crawler) technology behind Nona, which we are going | to offer next year. | | Chronoto doesn't sell watches, it's just a (meta-)search | engine. | qwertox wrote: | So assuming I want to build a car search website where I get | payed via referrals from let's say a predefined dozen of | dealers, I could subscribe to this offering from Nona Search | Technologies GmbH where it would crawl their sites and give | me their new offerings in a predefined format? | poolie wrote: | For example, yeah! But you would still have to code the | stuff around it. Like tracking referrals etc. :) | neathack wrote: | It says that Chronoto is a _search engine_ for luxury watches | using Nona 's search tech. | freediver wrote: | Cool name, good design.. I also like the fact it has podcast | search built in. Well done! | stanislavb wrote: | I dunno, there is something obviously wrong with this engine. | | When I search for "saashub", saashub.com isn't on the first page. | And that's a website that's been online since 2014 and has more | than one million page-views a month... -\\_(tsu)_/-. | poolie wrote: | It seems that saashub.com is not indexed by bing (the data- | provider for webresults that nona uses) at all. You might want | to register that domain at the Bing Webmaster Tools. | Minor49er wrote: | Compares well against Fireball, another German search engine that | also has plenty of results for | Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitan | | https://fireball.de/search?q=Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellscha... | vogre wrote: | Russian Yandex is okay with it too | https://yandex.ru/search/?lr=213&text=Donaudampfschiffahrtsg... | timeon wrote: | Looking at Ukraine's border... no thanks. | hakanensari wrote: | Googling this took me to the electrifyingly long Donaudampfschi | ffahrtselektrizitatenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellscha | ft. | | It seemingly won't even render properly here, at least on my | iPhone. | zoomablemind wrote: | > Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitan | | "Danube steamship company captain" per Google Translate, in | case anyone else wonders what that beauty of a word-train means | in English. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-11-18 23:01 UTC)