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DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

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Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#61

Post by netcan »

bsbechtel wrote: post #55

Most of the comments here are complaining that, while people like the idea of DDG, the search results are poor. Two comments regarding that: 1) the only way DDG is going to improve search results is by you using it regularly. Using it regularly drives not only revenue, allowing them to hire additional developers, but it also drives feedback to help DDG improve search results. 2) I suspect that the difference in searc…

I think an unavoidable conclusion is that while people may like privacy or some other benefit/function, they are rarely willing to take a hit on the main benefit/function (search results) to get it. It think this is an important thing to learn here as it applies in many cases.

Maybe everyone complains about bad behaviour of their insurance company, but that does not mean they'll take a higher premium. Some people care about autonomy at work, but most will not take a lower salary to get it. People care about the ethics of manufacturing phones, but they won't take a phone that represents a compromise.

There's something here about "consumer" psychology and choices that is hard to capture in the concrete terms economists like to formalize using. I think there are usually some very basic main points that people make decisions based on and some secondary points that people don't make decisions based on. The secondary ones may be the ones they talk about more or care about more, but not in a way that affects their choices.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#62

Post by dingaling »

tagawa wrote: post #52
antome wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo really is good enough to use on a daily basis now. One big gripe I still have however, is that there seems to be no way to filter by time. I still have to go to google if I want to find a news article or topic which is recent, or within a certain period.

This is a popular request and one we're working on. Admittedly we've been saying that for a while but it's getting close.

A really good filter ( for me anyhow ) would be 'prior to this [ week | month ]', since often I want to search for things from the period before they were news

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#63

Post by takee »

Has anyone considered that the slightly longer and forgettable name DuckDuckGo might have something to do with the low mainstream presence? I think they should rebrand and market with duckgo or maybe just duck.com if at all practically possible.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#64

Post by DanBC »

sundarurfriend wrote: post #19
newscracker wrote: post #3

> “Our biggest challenge is that most people have not heard of us,” Weinberg says. “We very much want to break out into the mainstream.” It won't help at all if more people get to know of DDG and then leave it after a single trial because the results are not great. I value privacy a lot and want something like DDG to succeed and become really big, but I get frustrated very often with DDG. I know many people are very…

FWIW, DDG search in my experience has gotten vastly better in the past year or so. It used to be that 90% of my searches ended up repeated with !g to go to google, but nowadys I'd guess that's like 30%, and even among those, half the time google's answer quality ends up the same. The only cases where Google is predictably and consistenly superior are 1. error/diagnostic messages: DDG still sucks at precision search,…

> 2. queries that require Natural Language Processing: Google understands stuff like "the bad moustache guy from XYZ series" where I myself have only a vague idea of what I'm looking for.

I suspect that Google has been trained by a bunch of people who just don't know how to search, and that's why natural language works and the + operator failed. Have a look at Reddit's "Tip of my tongue" subreddit for examples.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/comments/3xbpmp/tomt_...

Doesn't mention that it's a live action movie; doesn't give any clue about time; doesn't mention that it's (probably) an American film; doesn't mention genre of the movie; etc.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/comments/3xbpsu/tomts...

It's a pop song. About moving west. Maybe from Georgia.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/comments/3xbqxu/tomt_...

> I remember this guy who went out to the woods for the day. The guy was pretty young, I want to say late teens. He made some lunch for himself and then got lost on the way back. I found the video on reddit 1 or 2 years ago. The video production style is very Survivorman-esque if that helps at all.

I haven't carefully selected these. I just grabbed a few from New.

About the + operator. Check my math, but only 1 in 600 searches used it correctly. Another 2 in 600 searches used it, but used it incorrectly.

http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your...

> In the past, we provided users with the “+” operator to help you search for specific terms. However, we found that users typed the “+” operator in less than half a percent of all searches, and two thirds of the time, it was used incorrectly. A couple of weeks ago we removed the “+” operator, encouraging the use of the double quotes, which are more likely to be used correctly.

I'm not sure what DDG is supposed to do here. Are they supposed to target "power users"? People who know what AND and OR and + and "exact phrase" mean? Because that's a niche audience. It would mean DDG is loved by a small group of people, but never breaks into mainstream use.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#66

Post by yohui »

SignMeTheHELLUp wrote: post #40
scope wrote: post #23

DDG results have improved tremendously, top stack overflow / github matches are shown partially which is really neat I FULLY switched to DDG (& also away from Chrome) when I found out when I click save password on login forms my password is sent to Google Servers (I must have missed it on the TOC)

> when I click save password on login forms my password is sent to Google Servers Does this happen even if a user is not logged in to a Google account?

And not just logged in. The user also has to have browser sync for passwords enabled.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#68

Post by tagawa »

dingaling wrote: post #62
tagawa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a popular request and one we're working on. Admittedly we've been saying that for a while but it's getting close.

A really good filter ( for me anyhow ) would be 'prior to this [ week | month ]', since often I want to search for things from the period before they were news

Interesting idea - I hadn't thought of that. Duly noted.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#69

Post by tagawa »

eva1984 wrote: post #58

Tried a few queries with it. Seems like its accuracy has improved greatly over last year, but still throws me a Japanese article for no reason. Search is really a very hard business, in terms of both technology and market. I don't think they have Google level quality right now, so I won't consider use it seriously.

If you could remember which queries gave you a Japanese result I'd love to look into it to help fix it.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#70

Post by scope »

yohui wrote: post #66
SignMeTheHELLUp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when I click save password on login forms my password is sent to Google Servers Does this happen even if a user is not logged in to a Google account?

And not just logged in. The user also has to have browser sync for passwords enabled.

I've NEVER logged in using Chrome's top-right account thingy, I guess made the mistake of logging into my Gmail account and they had/have my permission.

edit: i only use[d] to use Chrome for development, I have an iPhone (all my browsing is done via Safari) so there's no need for me enable browser sync (at least i never explicitly enabled it).

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