What is "Search Results Independence"?

Brave Search
1

Hello,
I noticed while reading through the help section there is an FAQ asking about “Search Results Independence” that has no answer. It is just blank when I click to expand the result. Could someone tell me what “Search Results Independence” means with respect to the Brave Browser and Brave Search specifically?

I attempted to view the above referenced help section using the Brave Browser. Further details below.

Thanks

Brave Version (check About Brave):
Version 1.64.116 Chromium: 123.0.6312.105 (Official Build) (x86_64)
Operating System:
macOS Big Sur 11.7.10 (20G1427)

2

@LudicrousSpeedGo I think that’s a question they need to take out of the help section or I guess add some details to. I’ll tag in @steeven just so he’s aware and can tag the appropriate people to look at it.

Back when Brave Search was first established, it also used the APIs from Google, Bing, and possibly other search engines (I forget if others). This was especially true for Image Search, which relied on Bing.

When searches were done, they would have something show on the right side of the screen that said Search Results Independence and it would let you know what percentage of results came from Brave vs the other search engines.

Back around April 2023, Brave Search became fully independent and cut off the APIs to Bing and all. With Brave Search no longer using other search engines, it’s now always 100% for Search Results Independence.

You can see article on achieving independence at https://brave.com/blog/search-independence/

And you can see the same question on Brave Search’s Help that at least has a vague answer of them being fully independent and then linking to the same article I gave you. That is at https://search.brave.com/help/independence

1 Like
3

@Saoiray Thank you. I don’t think I’ve ever had a question answered so thoroughly and forthrightly in a community forum before. I appreciate the level of effort it must take to respond so thoughtfully to questions that not too many people seem to care about (at least by the count of the number of views of this topic currently standing at a whopping 35 views).
As a side note, I find it a bit ironic that Brave went through all of the work to make Brave Search what it is today but there is both a low level of interest in this topic and that Brave would drop the ball on cleaning up the FAQs. Based on these two extremely limited data points and some cynical extrapolation one might make the argument that users must not actually deem the privacy afforded by independence from Google search, Microsoft’s Bing and other search providers as particularly important. Or that Brave, in failing to add new content for this FAQ (yet removing the old information) indicates a lack of care demonstrating an organization that also doesn’t deem this privacy focused feature as particularly important.
On the other hand, perhaps the terminology of “Search Results Independence” rings like vague corporate speak to users who thus have no interest in attempting to decipher its meaning?
idk but the sloppiness of Brave’s efforts to update this FAQ provides one the opportunity to think about these things and I’d argue that’s less than ideal for Brave.