Brave Search introduces Discussions to add real-human conversations to search results

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Brave Search, a search engine operated by the maker of the Brave Browser, is showing content from user discussions for certain queries now.



Brave Software acquired the search engine technology developed by Tailcat in 2021. Tailcat was originally developed by Cliqz, a company Mozilla had invested in. Tailcat was rebranded to Brave Search, and was set as the default search engine in Brave in some regions.

Brave Search is available as a web search engine that anyone may use. It works similarly to other search engines, but still has a beta tag.

The new Discussions section is added as a block to the search results. A search for "how to upgrade to Windows 11" returns articles, video content, and also the new discussions section. The returned results were not matching the search query for this particular result. Instead of providing answers to the question, all four visible results asked whether it was worth upgrading to Windows 11.  Discussions needs finetuning to return better results in Discussions.

Brave Software notes that Discussions is bringing "real human conversations (and answers)" to the search results pages.

With Discussions, search results on Brave Search are augmented with actual conversations related to the query, pulled from popular forum sites like Reddit. This allows users to easily see what the community is saying about a topic, rather than just reading content curated by websites.

Discussions is an attempt to add value to the search results by adding another source of information to the results. Traditional search engine algorithms may favor certain sites in the results, which often reduces the quality of the results.

The recently posted article Google Search is dying provides some examples of how bad Google Search has become in recent time.

Discussions adds another viewpoint to the search results according to Brave Software. While content from sites such as Reddit has already been included in organic results, Discussions is giving that content its own section in the search results to elevate it and make it more visible.

Currently, Discussions is pulling data from Reddit and StackCommerce only, but Brave Software promises that more sources will be added in the future.. Brave Search's algorithm analyzes the search query to find out if discussion content is available to add to the quality of results. It uses a variety of signals for that, including recency, popularity, quality of content and relevancy.

Brave Software is working on another feature, called Brave Goggles, for Brave Search, which " will allow users to create their own result filters, and rulesets to constrain a searchable space or alter result ordering".

Closing Words

Discussions promotes content from certain discussion forums and sites in Brave Search. Only two content sources are used at the time, which is very limiting.

Adding more sources may remove the limitation. It will be interesting to see whether Brave Search's Discussion feature will include non-forum sites, e.g., blogs with lots of comments on a certain topic, in Discussions.

Now You: have you tried Brave Search? What is your take on the new Discussions feature?
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