Can anyone who uses @StartpageSearch on their phones offer any insight here?
I did a search for shoe stores in a specific mall in Toronto, and the initial results came up with shoe stores well across town. I scrolled down a bit to see if any relevant hits showed up, and they were below the initial, wrong info.
Why?
There was an option to allow access to my location for more specific results, but I'm perhaps misguided in thinking that...
... since it's picking up where I am regionally (i.e. it knew I was in Toronto), I should be able to get specific results about specific stores in a specific mall without location access.
Today I did a search for "sheridan nurseries burnhamthorpe" to find a link to the specific branch of Sheridan Nurseries on Burnhamthorpe Rd.
The first hit was for "Gardening Place" on Steeles Avenue in Brampton, a place with a different name on a different street, literally a different city.
To be fair, again, at least under that first hit (complete with a map helpfully pinpointing where that totally wrong place was), was a link to the right place.
But why was that the second link and not the first? It clearly had understood enough to find what I wanted, but why again was that second on the list?
Incidentally, doing both of those same searches with Startpage on my laptop got the right mall and the right nursery on the link of the first try.
Why does the mobile version not offer the same results as the laptop version for literally these same search criteria?
If that's by design, it seems backward to me: When I need to find info about a location on my phone, I'd say it's more likely I need to head there so need that info ASAP, as opposed to searching on a laptop, where I'm at home and may not need the info as pressingly (meaning, I'd understand alternative options more there, though it's still weird to list them first).
(Which is to say, whether on a laptop or phone, "Hey, since you're looking for shoes at a mall in SW Toronto, maybe check out these standalone stores in NE Toronto" makes zero sense to me regardless of what device I searched with).
Does anyone (maybe @StartpageSearch itself) have any suggestions how to improve results on my phone? Is there a toggle in the settings where I can turn on Relevant Results First, or something? (And if so, super weird to me that that isn't just the default, but anyway...)
I avoid Google when I can, I've recently stopped using DDG, searX totally dropped the ball in initial tests... I just want a privacy-oriented search engine that delivers helpful, intuitive results.
@reay@StartpageSearch
I’ve been using Startpage exclusively for years. I never use any other search engine except DDG onion on my Tor browser.
There is a toggle for promotional messages in settings and I’ve seen my results become a bit more relevant when I turn that one off.
@reay@StartpageSearch
This is what I have on my settings under appearance. Which browser are you using? Although I would think that wouldn’t necessarily matter.
@cygnusx11@StartpageSearch This is all I get under settings for it. Hitting Startpage at the top just brings me to a list to select what search engine to use as a default.
Hitting back goes to Settings for the full browser. 🤷♂️
@reay@StartpageSearch
Ah! I see, you’re accessing Firefox settings, not StartPage’s. Go to https://www.startpage.com and go to the setting button on the page. There you can adjust all your startpage settings and also click support for loads of tutorials. The key is to save your settings by copying the unique web address it produces after you save your settings and using that as your Firefox homepage. 1/2
@reay@StartpageSearch
Afterwards, this should help with your search preferences, etc. I would send more images and instructions. I think it’s best to go to their support page and follow their tutorials. They are much more instructive than I could ever be, 😃. Let me know if you get stuck. After all, I am also using Firefox on an iPhone, 👍 2/2
@cygnusx11@StartpageSearch Looks like I’ll have to check out some tutorials.
Followed your suggestions and saved the changes and made that my home page and tried the shoe stores at Sherway Mall search again on the phone, and got what looks like precisely the same (way wrong) result:
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