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DuckDuckGo Review

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Re: DuckDuckGo Review

#11

Post by jackowayed »

util wrote: post #9

It'd be nice to see a more systematic review comparing the search engines head to head on the same set of queries or tasks. So far the reviews here seem pretty unscientific. Also, does anyone know if BOSS is now serving Bing rather than Yahoo results after the switchover? It would seem kind of bizarre for Yahoo to continue serving its own results just for this one property (unless they're serving stale results). In a…

A systematic review would be really hard because a fair sample size is probably hundreds if not thousands, and it may not always be easy to define which one did "best".

I think he's stopped using BOSS altogether. Just Bing API, a few other API's that I've never heard of, and his own crawling.

Also, he does a lot of reordering of search results, so things meant to game Bing wouldn't be that effective.

Re: DuckDuckGo Review

#12

Post by madhouse »

What I like most about DDG (switched to it about 2 months ago) is zero-click info.

While google does provide more relevant search results fairly often, DDG's zero-click info easily makes up for that as far as I'm concerned.

The various bang stuff also came very handy a good few times.

Re: DuckDuckGo Review

#13

Post by util »

jackowayed wrote: post #11
util wrote: post #9

It'd be nice to see a more systematic review comparing the search engines head to head on the same set of queries or tasks. So far the reviews here seem pretty unscientific. Also, does anyone know if BOSS is now serving Bing rather than Yahoo results after the switchover? It would seem kind of bizarre for Yahoo to continue serving its own results just for this one property (unless they're serving stale results). In a…

A systematic review would be really hard because a fair sample size is probably hundreds if not thousands, and it may not always be easy to define which one did "best". I think he's stopped using BOSS altogether. Just Bing API, a few other API's that I've never heard of, and his own crawling. Also, he does a lot of reordering of search results, so things meant to game Bing wouldn't be that effective.

Even if it was just 3 or 4 queries, I think it would still have value over what we've seen so far, and some people might have an idea on how to evaluate a few more paired comparisons: http://blog.crowdflower.com/2009/06/bing-an-improvement-over... . It would also be interesting to see an estimate of how much the ordering for his results differs from Bing's on the query stream hitting his site. (I wonder if Microsoft does this in order to look for places where they might improve.)

Re: DuckDuckGo Review

#15

Post by MikeCapone »

zeynel1 wrote: post #14

I like DDG but as far as I know I cannot use the bar as I do with chrome; I have to go to the DDG page.

You can use DDG as your default search in the Chrome bar.

Chrome -> preferences -> Basics -> Default Search -> Manage

Re: DuckDuckGo Review

#17

Post by dsteinweg »

devmonk wrote: post #3

Great review, and I'm impressed with the results of my first searches! I found what I was looking for everytime. Also like the interface. As I scroll down, it loads the next page, just like Google and Bing should and could, but don't. Also like the bang: http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html But what I find missing are cached results. I use this Google feature once every few weeks. I also don't understand the business mode…

> Google is a freakin' giant. I don't see how you compete with that, unless you are a large company like Microsoft.

I agree with your statements here, but still, I think it's flawed thinking. Just because Google is big doesn't mean one person (or a small group) can't come up with innovations and compete.

Even if Gabriel says DuckDuckGo is not a competitor to Google, or if it doesn't have a sustainable business model, I applaud his efforts. I too enjoy the bang syntax, and that's something I wouldn't get using other search engines (even if DDG isn't classified as such).

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