So today I watch a video from a so call news media on YouTube that put on the Video description that DuckDuckGo giving data to Google. However, the video as an so call expert on it saying that “he assume that DuckDuckGo is giving data to Google because they have cookies on their site.” It is really annoyed when company use fear tactics as a well of marketing. This is a case of that because most likely Google pay them to release that clipbat video because they know that thousands of people are looking up DuckDuckGo on YouTube to learn more about them. Below is the video that I watch that say this.
And here is my video with my response. I had to vent because I really do hate fear tactics.
Please let me know what you think of this. I do believe we have a choice in who we want to do business with and it is good practices to make sure you check your facts and not believe what everyone is telling you. That also includes me.
As promise, I am doing another comparison of DuckDuckGo vs Google. This time I am looking at when you search for the word comics. Now the biggest different I found between the two search engine, is one use your location in your search and the other does not. Could you guess which one use your location? Of course you can, we are know that Google use your location for advertisement. Which can get in the way, if you are using search engine to learn about something. We all hear the phase, if you don’t know something, Google it. I guess you could say the best place to learn what a comics is by going to a comic book store. However, comic book store are usually Marvel and DC which mean, if you are not into heroes stories, than it just does not appear to you. Now there are some comic stores that have other publisher and self-publish comics, but it is best to call first before going to found out if they carry them.
DuckDuckGo does not used your location in the search for comics. Now DuckDuckGo will recommended places to buy comics but it is online . So on their first page, you have more link to other website. Google take up most of the first page for map of local comics store, alternate search topics, and topic stories about the topic of comics.
Google provide more source for comics about pop culture that is controversial. Such as one of the Top Stories is Dark Phoenix from a opinion digital news source that is very extreme left. Also, it provide more news blogs that are on the left when it comes to the political side such as the Washington Post.
If you click on a few of the links that Google found on the front page, they will take you to lots of comics that was at one point in newspapers that are call comic strips. At least four of them: Comic A-Z List GoComics, Free Comics – Comic Strips, Comics – The Washington Post, and Comics/ArcaMax Publishing. Now I don’t believe this is all Google fault for thinking that comics are all comics strips and Marvel and DC. There have been some debate in the comic industry that many who work in Marvel and DC have out right say that graphic novel is not comics. So this have rewrite in some people what comics is, because their are graphic novels that starting up popular shows such as Scooby-Doo. I have talk with people older than me ( I am 36) who are in their 40s and 50s, and back then their was no difference between what a graphic novel and comic was. They was the same thing and still is, it is just a few people in the comic industry will not recognize that is the case.
DuckDuckGo have one Ad post at the top. It have 13 links other than the Ad link. It give you more sources for you to look at on it first page. Now DuckDuckGo does have Washington Post listen twice, however, one of the post from Washington Post have describe of example of what comics title are. DuckDuckGo is playing it safer by having only links in their search, it is design different from Google. Google search engine have example of all their features on the first page. DuckDuckGo does have images and map features, you just have to click the tab on the top of the page to look at images and map.
However, I do found a few things great about DuckDuckGo. First their Ad link, Renta! Online – Manga Store, is manga which Google did not ever think was comics. Manga is the Japanese word for comics. Many people in the comics industry does not think of manga as comics;however, manga is growing more popular every day. Which means that DuckDuckGo is keeping up with the trends of comics fans. The second ad is to My Comic Shop which gives you a range of class comics such as Godzilla, The Walking Dead, DCeased (a DC comic), and Captain Marvel (a Marvel comic).
In the search with DuckDuckGo above, I look at around 5 pages under image to see how it look vision when you do the search. In the search, you get a good look at what comics have been over the years. Many of the comics that are not heroes, are pretty well know that I grew up with such as Archie, The Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny, Heathcliff, Futurama, Garfield, and more. These are great example of comics that are not subject around a hero and villain story. If you asked most youth today about these comics, but most likely they would not know they had a comic. The youth today in the US does not know that Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, Spider-man came from a comic. When I say youth, I am talking about high school, middle school, and elem school children, the ones that comics was written in the first place for because they did not like reading without pictures.
In the gallery above is Google search in image. The first thing I notices there are a lot of memes mix in the search. Also there is a lot of comic strips as well. The search I did was the word “comics” not memes or comic strips. The second thing is most of the memes and comic strip are one side point of view from the left political party in the US. There are more political comics than anything in the search, many from left wing digital news media. The third thing is Marvel and Dc take up the spots that are not so political and Marvel and DC have political memes as well. I will say that they do have a little bit of non hero story comic in the search but you do not found any until the third page such as Archie. However, the number of non heroes stories are way less. You have to really scroll to found them and this is a problem for anyone who don’t have very good internet. Internet is becoming more expense and many families in low income housing usually depend on their government smart phone or have a low data base plan for their smart phone. My point is most people will go with the first two page in the search because if it become hard or take too long to load, people will go with what they can learn in the moment.
Now you can do the search on your own and see what you get when you search the word comics on both DuckDuckGo and Google. However, from a teacher point of view, I like DuckDuckGo better. It did put some comic strips and meme in the search but not to the point that Google did. DuckDuckGo put mostly titles of comics series in their image search.
I believe DuckDuckGo is a good alternate to Google as far as answering the question for what I am searching for. I hope that this was helpful to you and I would like love to hear your feedback on what I wrote.
I have created a new blog on WordPress to reach more people on a different platform. It have been hard to get the work out about my website and my blog on here. So I thought I would start to build my name on other platform until I have a large follower base on there so I could direct them to website.
Before it or not but I am reaching more people on WordPress than Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. It took forever to get people to reach to my post on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. And I found out why that was the case, Google and Facebook both have been painting my name is a bad light. Facebook have classification me as a public figure and have post my followers count on the search engine Google and got the count wrong. And they did not stop there, Facebook post another link to my Facebook page with the follower count lower than the one before. Here is a snapshot of it.
I have wrote about this on my blog so if you would like the whole story, than check it out: DuckDuckGo vs Google, Part I.
I have not giving up on this blog instead I will be updating a lot of the post on here with videos to go with them. And I will posting more video content on here. I will used this place as a center place for all my platforms I am on. Because of the environmental of the internet, I will be branching out to more platform to get my message out there.
I do two new social media platforms I am on:
VERO as my self Maria Hargis
MINDS as sakiLeo
If you was wondering about the username Saki Leo that I use a lot for that. I used to play a lot of dating sims on my phone and I like using the name Saki Tanaka as my character name. So I adopt the Saki from that and the Leo is because I am Leo, born in August.
Normally I am not a tech writer. However, this was bugging me. I will start off my telling you how I came to doing this. I was trying to log in to YouTube using my Chrome like I normally do. However, I kept getting error message and YouTube have a big message something went wrong come back. I try login on another browser Internet Explorer and I had no problem. This is the first time ever that Chrome was doing this to me. I have used it for years and never had a problem. So I don’t know what may have change that, only that I wrote about Google in another post. I decide to try using something else behind Google search from now on.
Someone told me about a new search engine DuckDuckGo and I decide to give a try. The layout is very simple and I prefer DuckDuckGo mainly because of how the search did on my business Maria Hargis Art. It look like it understand that my search is a business so it priority the search base off a customer would want to buy art. The order:
My website
About page on my website
My Etsy shop
So from the image above, you can see from the first page, that I have wrote a comic series Nocturnal Orphan. A little about me where it tell you have a Facebook group for my fans: Maria Hargis Art Fan Group and it tell you my Twitter username is @hargis_maria. Than it tell you that I am an artist that love acrylic as a media, what subject matter I paint, and it tell you a little what I like such as “I am a nerd and proud of it.” From this first page, it have described me in a nut shell.
Google have change my search so many time in the past when it come to searching Maria Hargis Art. This time I did the search Maria Hargis Art, my website comes up with the a different layout. Because Google like to keep changing how my search are done when I check up on them. I decide to look what it would be on my phone. Than you have to scroll down a little bit and the order after my website is:
VA Comic Con, Dec 8, 2018 Comicon in Richmond &Fairfax! Virginia Comic Con with a picture of Angie and the blue dragons painting I did.
Facebook, Maria Hargis Art page with 58 like, and not update. It is 59 likes.
Instagram, Maria Hargis Art with followers of 184 which again not up to date. I have a 194 followers.
This is another version on my computer using FireFox (because I don’t true Chrome). After it shows my website and image here is what it look like when you scroll down:
Va Comicon (same as what the phone found)
Facebook: Maria Hargis Art and again got my likes wrong and say I am a Pubic Figure???
Facebook: Maria Hargis Art and this time the same page but it change my like to 57!!!!! And still have been as a Public Figure???
Facebook: Maria Hargis Art and it is title about but does not show any about information and again say I am a Public Figure??
Instagram: Maria Hargis Art (Instagram is own by Facebook) and my followers are wrong again saying I have 184 followers when my followers count is 194.
You know at first I was going to just review DuckDuckGo vs Google but now it is looking more and more that Google is being dishonor about it search. They have been trying to get me to used there Google Ads but I would not want to use them when I see things like this. The fact that it show Facebook on the whole first page of the search, it is using my name to direct people to Facebook. This does make sense with what I have been reading for instant the Justice Department (DOJ) is preparing a potential antitrust investigation involving Google.
I may not have a large followers base like a public figure would have; however, it is not a good idea to do this kind misleading information that is not true. Because it may just spark to me to write about it and for other to do the same. The numbers of followers I have may not matter to Google but it does matter to me. This search make it look like I am losing followers which is the opposite.
If you would like to follow me on Twitter, @hargis_maria (follower count 46); Facebook Business page: Maria Hargis Art(follower count 59); Facebook community page; Maria Hargis (follower count 109); Instagram: @mariahargisart (follower count 194). I will update the count on the next blog to document my information.
I am also two other smaller platform: Vero as Maria Hargis, and Minds as sakiLeo.
I was going to cover DuckDuckGo vs Google when search Comics, but I will do that as part II. Oh, and don’t worry I have capture the image I need for this one too. So if Google decide to change their search, I will capture that too.
If you have ever Google comics, than the only thing will come up is DC and Marvel, Super Hero genre. When you asked the average adults if they read comics, they may say no or redirect you to their kids. I believe the average adult opinion have been influence by social media betrays of comics. Social media promote most of the time DC and Marvel everywhere. Google search engine will only pull up heroes genre. Many YouTubers will say that it is because of Google SEO system. But I have a feeling that is not the case, because I am sure that I am not the only comic writer who used SEO on their website.
It have been cover in other articles that Diamond Comic Distributors dictate that only DC and Marvel make it into major comic stores across the nation washing the competition. Marvel is own by Disney while DC is own by Time Warner Bros. However, Time Warner Bros is own by AT&T.
While Disney and Google have a huge Ad partnership which gives Disney access to multiple platform. So no matter how good your SEO is for your comic or book, Disney will get first dibs on a Google search if you have something in common with Disney productions.
Quote from article above: “Disney and Google share a passion for bringing quality content and information to everyone, everywhere,” wrote Philipp Schindler, Google’s Chief Business Officer, in a post announcing the partnership. “With this new relationship, Disney will bring its entire global digital video and display business onto the Google Ad Manager, which will serve as its core ad technology platform.”
Quote from article above:“We’re committed to helping businesses transform through our edge-to-edge capabilities. This collaboration with Google Cloud gives businesses access to a full suite of productivity tools and a highly secure, private network connection to the Google Cloud Platform,” said Roman Pacewicz, chief product officer, AT&T Business. “Together, Google Cloud and AT&T are helping businesses streamline productivity and connectivity in a simple, efficient way.”
And if you think that is crazy, Google and AT&T have a partnership over business cloud thought G Suite. So Google have created a separate network that all business can communicate to their employee. They can chat, video, streamline, and more on it. Ever tho Google have not came out and say that they have an ad partnership with AT&T like what they have with Disney, that does not mean that Google would treat Time Warner Bros less than Disney. In business you want to be careful about how you treat your business partnerships so it would not surprise me that DC would get more priority over little known comics and other creators.
It is a little scary how much control Google have over the internet. It is hard for new creator such as myself to stand out and be able to get in front of the right audiences. Google have been often me $150 for Ads for my website but they kept decline my ad but will not tell me why. They keep giving me a general answer and they have no way for me to talk with them about it. They don’t have person customer services for us small entrepreneur. It would not be so bad if they did not speak in code. Speaking code is there way of playing dumb so they can only help their over 1 Billion Club.
I would like to heard your thought on this topic. I would like to heard from other creator if they have similar problems or not. If I am mistaking and you found the Golden goose, pretty share.
Little Elf in big Pond of Drama, The Comic Industry USA 