this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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This is why I whitelist duckduckgo in firefox in my ublock extension. I will gladly look at the relevant ads at the top of the list, knowing they are just that. I glance at them, most of the time it's a sales pitch, I go "not interested" and just move down the page to the results. 100% fine with that.
I don't know if it's the theme I use on DDG or what, but I've seen ads barely marked as such in the search results.
I'm all for non-intrusive (video/sound) ads, but I think not making text ads obvious is not good behavior. Especially if they call themselves an alternative to the ad-addicted search engines.
I'm working on a home project, so when I search on ddg for "how to build raised garden boxes" I get some "shopping" links with the word "ads" right next to it clearly visible, which I instantly skip over, then two text results labeled clearly as "ads" then the actual results. One text result is a sales pitch for a premade garden box and the other is a link to a video instruction (which I'm assuming will also have a sales pitch) so I can easily skip over those two links and now I'm at the results. No video or sound at all and it's all labeled as such for me. I'm using a default "dark" theme under the appearance settings.
What I'm saying is that the ad looks like a search result. A little "ad" next to it doesn't make it stand out for me. In some themes, that has the same color as the link title. I've clicked on them more than once thinking it's an actual result (my eyesight is not the best, I know).
The ad block should have a distinct color scheme based on the overall theme chosen. Otherwise, I consider it dishonest.
Oh, will whitelist that site also!
Personally I'm starting to try just paying for search with neeva and kagi. Not sure it's worth what kagi wants, but neeva is inside my yearly threshold.