Alright, so everyone's been writing about PRESEARCH due to the contest that is going on in Publish0x. Since I've wrote about my thoughts on Presearch before months ago (and whether if they are better than Google), I thought why not just make a Part 2 about it?
On my previous post, I've mentioned the pros and cons of Presearch and whether if they are actually better than Google. You can read more here before continuing this post. Since many of the posts have pinpoint the recent updates on Presearch nodes, the replacement of DSearch in Presearch Engine, and the changes in rewards for searching, this article will focus solely on user experiences and whether if it's already improved from 6 months ago and whether if, this time, Presearch can finally convince me to switch from Google full time.
1) Loading Time Comparisons
Back in my previous post, I compared the time taken for me to search for the word "lazada" with Google and Presearch, resulting in 0.5 seconds and 7 seconds respectively. This time, with the upgrade of DSearch to Presearch Engine, the search speed has improved by around x2 faster to 3.66 seconds, while Google still yields around 0.56 seconds. The 3-second delay is still far from the instant search result that Google is able to provide. For a seasoned user of Google, it's still pretty unacceptable especially if you need to search for multiple information swiftly. Furthermore, often times I find myself switching to Google search engine a lot because there seems to be better search results in Google than what Presearch can provide. Other than that, if you're not bothered with these, then earning PRE tokens while searching in Presearch is still not a bad thing for users.
Speaking of earning PRE while searching......
2) Changes in PRE token rewards
Since the launch of Presearch Nodes, the rewards have dropped from 0.25 PRE per search to around 0.12 to 0.13 PRE per search, while also decreasing the daily limit for earning PRE from 8 to 3.6. That's an approximately 50% decrease for both. I think it's a good thing due to higher user adoption in the Presearch ecosystem and rewards will also be given to the node operators for securing their operations and the Presearch network.
As you can see from the price chart, the price increase reflects the positive changes in the implementing the mentioned new features and the rewards decrease are just adjustments to financially sustain the project.
Besides, 6 months ago, I can only withdraw my tokens to very few exchanges such as ProBit & HitBTC, but now with KUCOIN listing, the PRE token liquidity is much better. All these factors caused the surge in price action which is a very positive thing for the long-term success of the project.
3) Widget improvements
Ahhhh, finally Presearch heard my voice when I mentioned that inserting widgets will improve the user experience of the search engine, and is part of the reason why Google stands out for me. They have added a summary of the company on the right side of the page, to which was not observed before in the DSearch engine, with other machine learning tools that links the most popular searches to the keywords that you searched are also added.
However, there's still more work to do in that field. As you can see from above, you can't convert units directly on the search page like what Google can. The major reason I love Google is that it's very easy to do unit conversions, language translations, calculator and locate for coffee shops in their search pages. Presearch's limitation to only draw up the basic search results is still the bottleneck for Presearch to stand out with Google. Nevertheless, I'm happy that Presearch has come forward and made these small and important improvements.
4) PRE verification level
Sadly, this is still the one thing that made me hate using Presearch. 6 months ago, I've done my due diligence in searching for keywords without abusing the rewards system, and today I'm still stuck at Level 7, which means I can only withdraw 70% of my current collected PRE amount. As a disclaimer: Yes, I've finally reached 1,000 PRE tokens after many months of searching, but it's annoying that due to my level, I have to collect 400+ more PRE tokens before I can start withdrawing, which will take me more than 100 days (or > 3 months) at the earliest to reach that goal. To make matters worse, because Presearch is build on the Ethereum network, they also limit and delay withdrawals due to high gas fees. This is not good for the user experience and the decentralization of the project, where our hard earned rewards are still controlled by Presearch in this manner. Despite my probable understanding that Presearch wants to avoid users from abusing the system and dumping their coins to exchanges, I don't see the tendency for the users to do such a thing now that Presearch nodes are up and running, while keyword staking is still a great feature to have for users to be able to advertise their businesses and leave their referral links on top of search pages.
Summary
So will I still prefer Presearch over Google after 6 months of using the platform? It depends. For less time incentive searches, Presearch still does a decent job in fetching the necessary search results for me, and the advantages of earning rewards while searching and the token utility is pretty much why people will keep using Presearch for many years to come. However, they are still a long way to become the next Google search engine as they are still lacking in searching speeds, widget tools and search results. Since they did fantastic for protecting our data privacy, more focus should be on search optimizations and better user experiences. Likewise, Presearch really needs to communicate properly with the users about the PRE verification levels where I found in Reddit that there are users who will get their PRE levels downgraded for searching normally and not abusing the system.
A suggestion that I would like to give for Presearch is to maybe form a partnership with BRAVE Browser to integrate both the Browser and search engine features together as one. Would like to have a system where we can donate our tokens to charities or content creators with either BAT or PRE tokens, while finally morphing themselves together to become the most private and secure internet browsing platform ever! Another suggestion would be to migrate the platform to other blockchain ecosystem such as Cardano, Elrond or Harmony ONE so that they can facilitate withdrawals at significantly low fees and fast transaction times.
That's all folks! If you would like to try out Presearch despite all the downsides I've mentioned, you can sign up here.
