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Ask HN: Which search engine do you use, and why?

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Re: Ask HN: Which search engine do you use, and why?

#41

Post by coatmatter »

rocgf wrote: post #19

Unfortunately, I think your results will be heavily skewed in a place like Hacker News, which may or may not be what you want. So far, half of the replies are about DuckDuckGo, which doesn't even account for 0.1% of all searches globally. Personally, I've switched to DDG about 2 weeks ago and it's been pretty much seamless. This depends mostly on what I search for; if it's something very specific, Google will provide…

I believe this isn't wasn't intended to be a broad survey representative of the population, but one for the hn audience in case there might now be something better than DDG/Bing/Google.

I mostly use DDG but !bing seems to work better with code, and !gi seems more comprehensive with images (plus, I trust Google to being better with images...)

Re: Ask HN: Which search engine do you use, and why?

#42

Post by driverdan »

I've been going back and forth between DDG and Google for almost two years. When I first started using DDG it wasn't great. It'd often be missing what you'd want or have worse results than Google. Over time it has improved dramatically while Google's quality has declined.

Today DDG is on par with Google. My biggest complain is that they both have bad results for many searches. I don't necessarily fault them since search is a Hard Problem.

One thing they both do that's quite annoying is prioritizing ecommerce results over original source product pages. For example, if you search for a specific product you'll often get Amazon as the top result rather than the manufacturer's site.

Re: Ask HN: Which search engine do you use, and why?

#43

Post by rinze »

stfwn wrote: post #8

DuckDuckGo. I went back and forth between DDG and Google a number of times before I managed to stick with DDG. I rarely go to Google at this point, only in cases where the search is extremely specific and it really needs Google’s omnipresent eye. DDG’s results have gotten a lot better in the last year or so and the !bangs are super handy. Meanwhile Google is experimenting tirelessly with AI that ‘corrects’ my searche…

> Meanwhile Google is experimenting tirelessly with AI that ‘corrects’ my searches, pushes mentally draining and content starved hype sites to the top and redirects me to buggy AMP versions of sites that were fine previously.

I have been back and forth between Google, DuckDuckGo and Bing for this precise reason. I don't want my search engine to outsmart me, or to think that I am interested in the most recent result instead of the most relevant, or... a bunch of other similar stuff where Google is the worst offender. Recently I have used DDG more because I have the feeling it just does what I tell it to do, not what it thinks I'm trying to get at.

Re: Ask HN: Which search engine do you use, and why?

#44

Post by NewEntryHN »

DuckDuckGo and Google, although I barely use any search engine.

I use Firefox search keywords to emulate DuckDuckGo's bangs (and much more), download, browse and search documentation on disk when possible, and use the location bar's immediate search on history and bookmarks to its extreme. I notice people have no idea how faster it is to actually wait half a second for the suggestions on bookmarks/history to load and quickly skim them and find what you're searching, although it only works if your history dates back to 7 years and you basically have half the web in your Firefox history.

When I really need a search engine, my algorithm is the following: do I just want the link to a specific site/page I'm thinking about? Yes -> DuckDuckGo. No -> Google.

Re: Ask HN: Which search engine do you use, and why?

#45

Post by oelmekki »

rocgf wrote: post #19

Unfortunately, I think your results will be heavily skewed in a place like Hacker News, which may or may not be what you want. So far, half of the replies are about DuckDuckGo, which doesn't even account for 0.1% of all searches globally. Personally, I've switched to DDG about 2 weeks ago and it's been pretty much seamless. This depends mostly on what I search for; if it's something very specific, Google will provide…

Even for HN, this discussion will probably be biased, anyway : if you use an underdog like DDG, you probably are more willing to let people know about that than if you use plain old google search.

That being said, a discussion about searching habits is always interesting. Eg, comment from user "NewEntryHN" is both unexpected and an interesting point of view.

Re: Ask HN: Which search engine do you use, and why?

#47

Post by jlarocco »

DuckDuckGo, but half the time I use the "bang" keywords to specifically use another site. I like the simple page layout, that they don't track people and that it does what I ask without trying to guess what I really mean. I don't know how it compares to Google, but most of the time I find what I want in the first page of links, so it's good enough for me.

My biggest complaint is that it doesn't index many forums and mailing lists, so it can be difficult to find answers for really specific questions. It does look at StackOverflow, but there's a number of communities (Linux users, some niche language developers, etc.) that don't use StackOverflow much. In that case I'll often use "!g" to get Google results.

Re: Ask HN: Which search engine do you use, and why?

#49

Post by joefarish »

whitepoplar wrote: post #20

Google. I've tried to use DDG several times in the past, and while the product works well, Google has the "familiarity effect" baked into its search. I've been conditioned for nearly two decades by Google's layout and visual cues. At a moment when I'm uncertain of something and am searching for an answer, the last thing I want is to be uncertain/unfamiliar with the search tool itself. Those stacking of anxieties, how…

I had exactly the same problem when I tried to move to DDG. The 'Basic' theme looks quite similar to Google's search results. After trying DDG with this theme I was able to make the switch stick.
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