What makes a good find engine different from a traditional search engine?
Curious whether the distinction is mainly about how results are ranked, the absence of ads, the community layer, or something else entirely. What sets a find engine apart in practice?
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The core difference is intent: a search engine is built to show you a ranked list of links. A find engine is built to actually help you find the answer.
In practice, that means: no ads distorting what rises to the top, community knowledge layered alongside web results, and AI (like Borg) that synthesizes rather than just indexes.
The absence of ads matters more than it sounds. Ad-driven ranking optimizes for what advertisers want you to see, not what you need. When that pressure is gone, the algorithm can actually optimize for relevance.