I wrote recently about Google, Bing, and DSearch (Presearch) and why Google is still my mainstay and while I'd like to make DSearch my "first query" engine I'm still using Bing. Why? Because DSearch seems to give out rewards really haphazardly, like sometimes not at all.
Well, I've figured out how to workaround the token earning crisis that kept me from using DSearch and thought I'd share.
Basically, it seems that for whatever reason tokens aren't being granted (at all?) on dsearch.com but they are being granted on presearch.org. BUT, and here's a big but, they seem to only be granted when you make the search from the home page and not from any search results page.
For example, if I go to presearch.org and type in "civil war" I'll be brought to https://engine.presearch.org/search?q=civil+war and earn a token in the process. But if I launch a new search from this results page I won't receive any pre token.
In order to get additional pre tokens I have to go back to presearch.org and make the query from that page again. That's a pain. It is easy to forget to go back to the main page to search (and it shouldn't be necessary).
The way I've found to make it a bit easier is by going into Presearch's settings and selecting "Open homepage searches in a separate tab". This causes PRESEARCH to leave the main page open and to launch the search results page in a new tab. If you click on a link on the search results page it opens in that same window so now you are on the third party site rather than the Presearch search results page.
Usually I find this annoying (when searching Google I have it launch the third party sites in a new tab) but I'm much more likely to close out this tab and go back to the main search page for Presearch than use the back button to leave the third party site and return to Presearch...so mission accomplished.
I'm not saying any of this is the way it should be. It shouldn't and I hope the folks over at Presearch will fix this all up soon...but in the meantime if you've been yearning for some PRE tokens, this is the best way I know to get them (other than paying $$).
Theoretically, you are losing out a bit by using presearch instead of dsearch. I compared the results for my "civil war" query and they are similar but not identical...but as this is really just a "first query" situation for me it isn't that great of a loss.
Ohh, there is one other way to earn PRE tokens by searching - get the Chrome extension for presearch and then use the query bar (where you enter URLs) in your browser to make the queries. This seems to work as well.
What about the search engine I've proposed - nextsearchengine.com? I'm still slowly working towards it, but it is difficult to do as a side project. If anyone has a spare $125,000 they'd like to throw my way I'll jump on it full-time right away (would cover my salary, hosting, legal, accounting, designers, and some minor marketing for a year).
