What is Direct Match?
-
@darren91: I turned it off. I typed in 4 characters (dere) and I have a bookmark which starts with 'dere', it would still suggest dermstore.com.
Very annoying. -
@darren91 The suggested domain from Direct Match come from a localized list from Vivaldi, not from sites you visited.
-
@Fizh Change the order or disable it Direct match in Settings → Address Bar → Dropdown Menu Priority.
-
@DoctorG said in What is Direct Match?:
@Fizh Change the order or disable it Direct match in Settings → Address Bar → Dropdown Menu Priority.
I've probably just missed this if it came up before, but that's a very useful setting!
-
The help pages and linked article say that the suggestions come from locally-stored files, but... where are they? What files? If I want to see what's in them or control their contents, how do I do that?
-
@sstoneb Perhaps files like ....partner.....json in program's subfolder default-bookmarks contain more information.
-
Okay but what if I use YouTube frequently so i expect to go there when i type 'Y' + Enter, but instead it sometimes directs me to yelp.com that i never use?! Can I change what direct match points to?
-
@LinLee
Hi and no but you can disable Direct Match in the address bar settings > Drop-Down Menu Priority.Cheers, mib
-
@mib2berlin Yeah This I have found, but I see that it supports the devs + this would be the only website I use so frequently so I expect my combination to let me fast into YouTube, so if I could change just this one and leave the rest it'd be preferable
-
@LinLee
I guess this is not possible without some developer knowledge.
But there are many ways to get the results you want.
Try to move Direct Match down in the list.
Create a bookmark for YT and a nickname y, this gives:
-
I didn't find out about Direct Match until today.
And I can say it's working atrociously for Skyscanner. It goes to a certain URL that updates the whole page seemingly every second. I'm getting epilepsy. (https://www.skyscanner.net/flights?market=uk&locale=en-gb¤cy=gbp&referralServiceVersion=meeseeks-referral-service-v1&associateid=AFF_TRA_19354_00001&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=2283642-Vivaldi&utm_campaign=&campaign_id=2283642&utm_content=Other Referral&adid=1477112&click_timestamp=1733957464800&irmweb=&irgwc=1)
-
@Nebu
Hi, strange bug, please report this to the bug tracker, I can confirm internally.For information on how to report a bug, see this URL: https://vvld.in/how-to-report-bugs
Once that is done, please share the bug number (beginning with VB-).
Add your vivaldi.net username, please.
On the form, you can add your email address. Once submitted, you'll get a confirmation. You can reply to this with any logs or further info.Cheers, mib
-
@Nebu I guess you have some block list to remove Cookie Warnings in Settings → Privacy → Ad and Tracker Blocker? Try to disable blocker in shield of address field on the site.
-
-
This feature slows down the address field/search functionality so as to be almost useless. I frequently typed in stuff and ended up on the wrong location because Vivaldi's suggestions was delayed/hadn't updated to account for the last typed characters yet.
It was first after approximately 250-500ms of not typing anything that the suggestions was updated to reflect the current typed query.
After having been taken to NordVPN due to Vivaldi's "Direct Match" suggestion when randomly typing a search query that began with "nirvana", I flipped out and disabled this feature and lo' and behold now the address field/search suggestion popup actually refreshes in time with my typing, and is actually usable and comparable to other browsers! I was on my way to drop Vivaldi due to this laggyness, actually, but am glad to have found out what caused it.
I really don't understand how it's possible for the browser to be this laggy when looking up what's supposed to be a local file of bookmarks. You cache these affiliate/partner bookmarks once on launch in a trie and then just look up that for results on every new typed character. It's not rocket science, nor should it result in this kind of random delay before updating the suggestions while typing. What are you doing instead? Opening the local file for reading and parsing it all over again and again on every typed character or something?!
-
I just found out Vivaldi is doing this after a number of months of not understanding how the hell affiliate links were being added to my URL's; thought my browser was hijacked.
Absolutely and utterly scummy behavior.
Vivaldi used to be THE browser for power users. Now it's been slowly going the rate of any other monetized piece of crap in this industry. Terrible UI changes, terrible functionality changes, numerous bug introductions, destroying the entire autocomplete function and not fixing it for over a year, and now silent affiliate injection... as if the recent Honey scandal wasn't bad enough.
People aren't generally against monetizing something, but you have to disclose when something like this happens, not silently do it in the background.
Every month I get driven further and further to finally going back to Firefox... and I switched away from it years ago for a reason.
I use Win10 v1703 and Chrome <v52 because newer versions' text rendering (DirectWrite) makes my eyes bleed.
Sad when nobody in charge of application development understands how bad eye strain with text rendering is for certain people.
-
@DAOWAce To be clear: Vivaldi is not adding affiliate codes to links you click, and it is not intercepting visits to sites to change any existing affiliate links. Vivaldi had nothing to do with the honey scandal. Vivaldi is not doing anything in the background, and as you can see the above article was posted publicly explaining why the change was made so it was disclosed,
Direct match is effectively a form of default bookmarks, just like Firefox has. As the above article says, you can turn it off if you want.
-
@DAOWAce It wasn’t silently, you are replying to a blog post informing users after all. It was also mentioned in the corresponding snapshot releases and in the stable release.
-
@luetage And how did I find the blog post? By googling the affiliate code. Not everyone's going to be reading update notes and blog posts.. in fact I'm sure the majority of users don't.
https://vivaldi.com/changelog-vivaldi-browser-6-4/
This is the first mention of direct match in the release notes... and it explains nothing. I'm assuming you mean the blog post about the new release, not the changelog?
@LonM You don't need to be clear, I understand, and was making the reference to Honey out of frustration and disgust. However, it was not disclosed in-browser, which is the problem.
Clicking the "learn more" on the search options page (why is it in 2 places with different help texts?) sends you to https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/navigation/what-is-direct-match/, which does a good job hiding what the feature does, only stated in one sentence near the end: "In some cases, clicking a suggestion might involve a third-party affiliate network, which could set cookies for correctly attributing revenue to the right party, like how all affiliate links work across the web."
This blog post is much more honest.
Also, the "direct match" moniker belies the true nature of the function, and is an anti-function in many cases as it directs to URLs we've never visited in history, and (by default) ontop of the URLs we were trying to visit (another issue with the revamped address bar).
In more recent versions of the browser, it seems even more advertising was added too: https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/795273 (starting point of confirmation and discussion)
These concerns are valid, and seem to keep piling up.
