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DuckDuckGo vs Google

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Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#481

Post by b52_ »

feelin_googley wrote: post #479

Why does DDG not present "direct" URLs in its search results? Why does DDG, like Google, by default instead prefix all results with a URL pointing to DDG servers enabling DDG to track what results that the user clicks on? Google started doing this some years ago, e.g., all the URLs in search results are prefixed with something like https://www.google.com/url?q= Needless to say, this serves no useful purpose for users…

I suspect they do indeed use such URLs to track which link the user clicks. It's not that they log the IP with the click, but rather, the click allows implicit relevance feedback with respect to the issued query. This can be used for machine learning (to improve ranking, for example).

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#482

Post by 1_player »

feelin_googley wrote: post #479

Why does DDG not present "direct" URLs in its search results? Why does DDG, like Google, by default instead prefix all results with a URL pointing to DDG servers enabling DDG to track what results that the user clicks on? Google started doing this some years ago, e.g., all the URLs in search results are prefixed with something like https://www.google.com/url?q= Needless to say, this serves no useful purpose for users…

I do get direct URLs on DuckDuckGo. I remember there was a setting somewhere to enable direct URLs, not sure where it's hidden now.

edit: screenshot: https://cl.ly/0W1O013N302b/Screen%20Shot%202017-09-20%20at%2...

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#483

Post by MistahKoala »

michaelbrooks wrote: post #221
MistahKoala wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attempted it but extension support is not especially user-friendly.

I would recommend Vivaldi as it supports Chrome extensions. Chrome apps can be installed, but not used (hopefully Vivaldi fixes that). I really like the idea of Brave, but not having extension support is a major hurdle which I hope they get over.

I'm currently using Vivaldi, but have to say that it's not really an ideal analogue of Chrome as it doesn't carry over some of the everyday features and affordances of Chrome. That's partly understandable, because it's actually (apparently) intended to be a browser for Opera users to migrate to. It's also a bit buggy.

I'm surprised there isn't a straightforward and user-friendly Google-less Chromium browser available.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#484

Post by miles »

feelin_googley wrote: post #479

Why does DDG not present "direct" URLs in its search results? Why does DDG, like Google, by default instead prefix all results with a URL pointing to DDG servers enabling DDG to track what results that the user clicks on? Google started doing this some years ago, e.g., all the URLs in search results are prefixed with something like https://www.google.com/url?q= Needless to say, this serves no useful purpose for users…

Clean Links is swell for getting real links in Google results:

https://github.com/diegocr/CleanLinks

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=15769

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#485

Post by gpm »

feelin_googley wrote: post #479

Why does DDG not present "direct" URLs in its search results? Why does DDG, like Google, by default instead prefix all results with a URL pointing to DDG servers enabling DDG to track what results that the user clicks on? Google started doing this some years ago, e.g., all the URLs in search results are prefixed with something like https://www.google.com/url?q= Needless to say, this serves no useful purpose for users…

> Why does DDG not present "direct" URLs in its search results?

They explain it here: https://duck.co/help/results/rduckduckgocom It's to prevent sites from seeing what search term you found them by.

Turning it off: Menu button at the top right of search results -> other settings -> Privacy Tab -> Redirect (Toggle)

Edit: Note that I have the redirect setting turned on, and don't get the redirects. Presumably because I'm running firefox nightly and they know that this browser supports rel="noopener" (which they use on the link).

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#486

Post by dispo001 »

Brakenshire wrote: post #393
benbenhu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget to use the bangs that can allow you to check other engines results fast if you need. For people afraid of getting off google, you can always search something like '!g my-search', it works the same for youtube(!yt), google image(!gi), or even hackernews(!hn) And of course the best bang is the 'I am feeling lucky' one (!), i.e.: 'hackernews !'

Would be interested to hear what search engines people here use. I feel the promise of DDG is the ability to match your search engine to your purpose. Maybe if you want to search for a particular code snippet you can use a search engine that is friendly to programming syntax. Or if you want more lateral results, you use a search engine with an unusual algorithm. But I haven't yet been able to find alternatives, if th…

https://yacy.net

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#487

Post by pessimizer »

anc84 wrote: post #110
romo5 wrote: post #89

People are conditioned to think Search has to work online. This was true when Google was created. No one had the processing or memory available on their desktop to search an entire index of the "useful" web. Not anymore. How large is a "useful" index of the web today? And can it fit on your laptop? The answer is yes. Can the entire thing be queried fast? The answer is yes. As an example take the entire stackexchange…

You vastly underestimate the amount of knowledge in random blogs and small websites. If you are only after the "mainstream" sites, sure, but that's quite the bubble. I want and need access to all the blogs, forums, wikis.

Google is pretty terrible at finding that stuff (as well as DuckDuckGo.) Instead, the first two or three pages of results are the SEO kings, often with identical copy. https://millionshort.com is a search engine that is entirely a reaction to that.

Re: DuckDuckGo vs Google

#489

Post by jccalhoun »

Kluny wrote: post #337

What's with this person's writing style? I've never seen so many literary tics in one place. "In short", 14 usages. Almost every sentence starts with a prepositional phrase like "In fact...", "Yet...", "However..." Confusing sentence structure like "How would have the net looked like?" It's so irritating to read.

I am glad I'm not the only one. It reads just like terrible undergrad papers I have to read because it is just simple sentence after simple sentence. I got as far as "That is why I decided to cover it in its utmost details" in the forth paragraph before I gave up.
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