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DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

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Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#111

Post by 4lejandrito »

Maybe slightly off topic but wouldn't it be nice to have something like WSQL (Web Search Query Language) such as:

   "Select text from *.co.uk where page contains = XXXX and page.popularity > YY".
We then could have different implementations as we do with SQL (mariadb, postgres...) name them Google, Duckduckgo, Bing...

I did a quick search on my default search engine (DDG) and couldn't find anything related...

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#112

Post by grimman »

antome wrote: post #28
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)

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.

It's interesting to me, seeing how many people are so deeply dissatisfied with the results. I switched a couple of years ago, and only had a very small (two-three week) period where I'd check back on the mighty GOOG, only to confirm that they didn't have any better results either.

Might it be due to the way I format my queries?

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#113

Post by bsbechtel »

josteink wrote: post #93
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…

> 2) I suspect that the difference in search results may partly be conditioned responses. We are accustomed to what we find through Google, so when DDG presents something that looks different It's not just that. When you search with DDG you may need to structure your search differently than you would do when searching with Google. People are just so accustomed to using Google-optimized search queries that they don't…

I've been using DDG for almost 2 years, and have never, ever had this issue, unless you consider that when I search for something, I may not find it on the first query, I revise my search query, and search again. This revision process happens with Google searches too, and I'm not convinced I do it any more often, on average with DDG, than I did with Google. I also do lots of technical searches to find programming related information, which other commenters here mentioned was one area DDG was lacking.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#114

Post by AdamSC1 »

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…

As some folks have mentioned we're constantly improving our results but one of the best things is when we have a specific results case.

So if you have a result that didn't work for you - share the specific case in our feedback tool or by shooting our team an email (mine is adam@duckduckgo.com). One thing that separates us is the fact that you can get involved in our community, build out instant answers, give us feedback on searches that actually gets integrated and shape a great search experience.

Thanks for the feedback though!

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#115

Post by AdamSC1 »

trymas wrote: post #74
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…

Well biggest problem for me with DDG that it does not track me or basic tracking does not cut it. Maybe I do not like some policies about users of big players, though some intelligence about the user makes service much better (extent of tracking is another question/rant). I am not from USA, and 30-50% of my searches are not in english and not some international terms. So when I search for something in my country and…

Hi Trymas,

Thanks for the feedback - I'd be interested in hearing what language you're searching in. We've taken huge strides this past year in international language, and this is something that will continue to improve, but we always love to know where our weak points are!

As far as the 'python' example, the reason you are experiencing this is two fold. Part of it stems from our approach to not filter bubbling users (http://dontbubble.us/) and of course from the fact we don't record anything about you.

You're totally right that if you search 'python' on Google you'd get info about the programming language, and if my biologist friend searched it on Google she'd see the snake.

On DuckDuckGo that wouldn't be the case (in fact if you search python on DuckDuckGo you get the programming language and nothing about the snake) but a search like 'python food' would return results about the snake.

When we remove filter bubbles and user profiles, search relies a lot more on context, and may expose additional results - it is a different style of searching and one we are trying to continue to improve - and we're really thankful for people who continue to give us a try and give feedback.

We also know that sometimes other varieties of search are what you need and that's why we let you use !Bangs (https://duckduckgo.com/bang) via both our search bar and the URL bar if we're you're default, that re-direct your search to over 7000 different sites!

Thanks for your continued support!

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#116

Post by AdamSC1 »

trymas wrote: post #98
xomateix wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to, you can activate the region button on the top right [0]. It's not the same as Google, but it's good enough in many cases. [0] https://duck.co/help/settings/regions

Yes, I do know about that but it still fails. E.g. I live in country `x` and set my region correctly. I search for `foobarbaz` which is some thing in my country. Though in country `y` there's also a thing called `foobarbaz` and apparently this thing in country `y` is either much more popular of that country is much bigger, so I can't find `foobarbaz` in my country, or I must look deeper into other pages. Google now w…

Hi Trymas,

Feel free to forward this case to me at adam@duckduckgo.com and I can log it internally. The region toggle has gotten pretty good but we understand there will be fringe cases that need to be looked into - and small cases like this getting fixed can help positively impact the entire system!

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#117

Post by AdamSC1 »

rogeryu wrote: post #106
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 totally agree. I tried DDG one or two years ago. It didn't last long. Google simply had better results. It took a lot less effort when using Google to find something useful. Several months ago I tried again. This time it's different. I just try harder. It takes effort. I still use Google, especially at work and for tech (computer) related stuff. For the rest DDG is my first choice and I'm getting used to it.

Hey rogeryu,

Thanks for the feedback! You'll notice we've recently added a new feedback tool in the bottom right of the results page. If you fill out a search and it doesn't match your results (or if we really nail it) feel free to send along the feedback. In the feedback process you can opt in to how much detail about the search you share, and as always we never collect or save personally identifiable information.

Users like yourself who have a foot in both ponds are the type of people we're really eager to hear from, obviously we're close to providing the experience you need but there are a few things for us to tweak and we'd love to figure them out!

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#118

Post by exDM69 »

trymas wrote: post #74
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…

Well biggest problem for me with DDG that it does not track me or basic tracking does not cut it. Maybe I do not like some policies about users of big players, though some intelligence about the user makes service much better (extent of tracking is another question/rant). I am not from USA, and 30-50% of my searches are not in english and not some international terms. So when I search for something in my country and…

> Maybe I do not like some policies about users of big players, though some intelligence about the user makes service much better (extent of tracking is another question/rant).

This is a double-edged sword.

I've had an issue with Google over-personalizing my search queries to the point they become useless. E.g. I was searching for some technical documentation about SIMD intrinsics, and three out of five top results were stuff written by me (HN comments and such). Certainly not what I was looking for.

Overall, I think that all the blogspam and SEO crap in the world has made web search a more difficult problem than what it was in the early days of PageRank. In my experiences with both, Google and DDG, search results seem to be getting less and less useful year after year.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#119

Post by dpcan »

I feel like the search results are getting better.

EDIT: Complaint #1 removed. I can change the THEME in DDG to get blue links. Awesome.

#2 Complaint is that I dislike the font-weight changes on search sites. I don't need my search words bolded. I know what I searched for, I trust that those words are in the search results, you don't need to show them to me.

It's actually the SUPPORTING words around my keywords that are going to make me click them after I've already searched. So if anything should be bold, it should be those words because they set each listing apart from the others.

The Positive (for me):

As I do SEO for some companies sometimes, I often times use DDG as a baseline because it doesn't track me. If I see one of my companies ranked high in DDG AND Google, I believe what I'm seeing in Google in terms of SEO A little more. I know it's not really accurate, and I tell my clients this, but it's nice to say that DDG is not tracked so it's not influenced by my previous searches, and seeing a site ranked high there too is a really good thing in my opinion.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#120

Post by [deleted] »

will_pseudonym wrote: post #14
muddi900 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use DDG because of custom search 'bangs'. I have gotten rid of a whole bookmark sub folder of custom keyword searches. When I want google, which is less and less often, I just add a '!g' to my search. I doubt DDG will ever catchup to the Big G, but It works.

Is that similar to Chrome's "search engines"? They work really well, and I tend to use google's "site:" filter to search sites that have awful search capabilities.

[deleted]
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