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Which search service do you recommend in Gemini space?

I’m currently using gemini://geminispace.info/search/ as my default in Lagrange. At the moment - and this could just be the nature of the contents of Gemini space currently - I get a lot of results for a library flooding my results. The results contain the terms I searched for, but that domain won’t have what I want.

What are the alternatives and is there much difference anyway? Please let me know your preference.

Posted in: s/Geminispace

🚀 IO

2023-09-01 · 5 months ago · 👍 Addison

10 Comments ↓

🚀 IO [OP] · Sep 01 at 17:44:

The library is library.inu.red. There are other domains dominating the results too.

I can’t imagine a good way to change search behaviour myself so unfortunately I don’t have a constructive suggestion. One idea I had was that any domain could have a limit of how many times it’s represented in search results, with a link after the last occurrence titled “more results from this capsule”.

☕️ Morgan · Sep 01 at 20:26:

I don't really use search; just bookmarks, link lists and aggregators.

🚀 skyjake [...] · Sep 01 at 21:07:

Have you given Kennedy (by @Acidus) a try? I've found it to be quite sophisticated.

— kennedy.gemi.dev/

Check out the features here:

— kennedy.gemi.dev/docs/features.gmi

🐝 Addison · Sep 01 at 21:18:

I maintain library.inu.red; I'll update its robots.txt to discourage indexing full documents and ask the owner of geminispace.info to purge and re-index that host.

I never really use search features on here so I didn't realize how overrepresented it is, but I see what you mean.

🚀 IO [OP] · Sep 01 at 21:42:

@Addison, I didn’t mean to single you out. It’s just that I’m on mobile and I haven’t figured out how to save a draft yet. I couldn’t check other tabs on my Gemini client to copy the other URLs.

There is great content on your library. I’m not sure if de-indexing is right!

🐝 Addison · Sep 01 at 22:45:

@IO Thank you for saying so; and I don't feel singled-out, so no harm done. I don't often use search engines on gemini so this wasn't something that had crossed my mind.

In my opinion it's for the best that the gemtext documents themselves are not indexed. The Topics and Authors listings will still be indexed, so folks who want to search for a particular subject will be able to find what they need with less background noise. As a reader I would rather get sent straight to '/topic/Abc' rather than have to sift through the 200 articles that happen to mention the term I entered.

🐝 Addison · Sep 01 at 22:56:

@skyjake @Acidus Kennedy is very impressive, I'm bookmarking this. Thank you for the recommendation.

🍵 michaelnordmeyer [mod] · Sep 02 at 10:57:

Kennedy has by far the most features and therefore is able to provide the best search results. If the number of results are too many, filters can realiably weed out unwanted results.

Other search engines have only a subset of the features of Kennedy and don't lead to the same reliable results.

The only problem with Kennedy is that it crawls only manually and the last crawl has been on 2023-07-23.

I created a page with meta information about different search engines and crawlers, which are not always available on the respective search engine's pages:

— Meta Information About Geminispace Crawlers

🧇 Acidus · Sep 15 at 14:31:

It's always fun to play with different approaches to indexing and surfacing data. Honestly the "just play" elements of it are one of the main things I love about Gemini.

I built Kennedy for myself as a fun project, and I've just keep adding features for things I'm interested in. That's how the Delorean Time machine (like Archive.org, but for Gemini) came to be as well. Recently my interest has been around trying to surface non-text content more effectively. It's also lead me to some cool content that I wouldn't have found other wise.

I'm so pleased with all the positive feedback on Kennedy! Comments like that make my day ❤️ I'll keep working to make it better for everyone.

🧇 Acidus · Sep 15 at 14:31:

oh, and special shout out to @michaelnordmeyer who has reported some many bugs and other issues over the years.