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Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

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Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#201

Post by baddox »

akuchling wrote: post #127
megous wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could tell ddg that I only care about postgresql. It seems heavily skewed to oracle/ms server when searching anything sql related. Perhaps because it's powered by Bing?

Add '!psql' to your search. A full list of these is at https://duckduckgo.com/bang .

Two problems with that: it only searches the official PostgreSQL documentation (not things like StackOverflow), and perhaps more importantly, it doesn't work at all (it doesn't correctly pass your query to the PostgreSQL site).

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#202

Post by eitland »

Semaphor wrote: post #186
rurp wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that even quotes don't always work with Google these days. Google's insistence on returning results to more popular, but distinctly different, queries than what I actually searched for is what finally prompted me to switch over to DDG full time. Overall I've found DDG results are actually better and less frustrating than Google's for this exact reason.

That's funny because unlike DDG, Google actually works with quotes. I have yet to find a Google query where Google ignores the quotes (it even goes as far as telling me it can't find anything). DDG, on the other hand, decided a few months ago that their users are dumb and only mistakenly tried to force part of their query. It's really annoying me because it's what makes me use !g more than anything else.

> I have yet to find a Google query where Google ignores the quotes (it even goes as far as telling me it can't find anything).

Happened again and again to me until late last year or something.

Don't know what happened but I do have an tip that might help (and might be a nice idea for some of you):

time and time again I observed weird behaviour from Google (ignoring quotes, excessive fuzzing of search terms etc).

After living with it for a while I'd report it and be surprised by how fast they'd fix it.

And after thinking about it I realized that no way Google is listening to me.

What I'm pretty sure has happened is that time and time again I've been selected for all sorts of stupid A/B tests and when I report a bug what happens is I her added to a queue that removes me from the latest lame experiment a few hours later.

As others I finally left, but I sometimes do a !g and lately Google has gone back to more honestly reporting 0 hits to me when I search for stuff like "some really long and rkfjjfjfirirjrjfjfjfjfj improbable sentence".

As for why they've stopped experimenting with me I don't know.

But thanks for helping me finally move on :-)

And if Google is acting up, report a bug. Any bug. Most likely Google will magically "fix" it within a few hours.

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#203

Post by qu4z-2 »

rurp wrote: post #188
Semaphor wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny because unlike DDG, Google actually works with quotes. I have yet to find a Google query where Google ignores the quotes (it even goes as far as telling me it can't find anything). DDG, on the other hand, decided a few months ago that their users are dumb and only mistakenly tried to force part of their query. It's really annoying me because it's what makes me use !g more than anything else.

It's weird that I've had the exact opposite experience, but you aren't the only person posting that quotes always work for them on Google. I've definitely had them return irrelevant results that did not include quoted terms, but can't remember an example off of the top of my head. I think it would be helpful if I (or anyone else reading this) saved some examples for the next time this discussion comes up.

I have no concrete examples, but even with '+"term"' I've had google return results with "ten" bolded as if it matched, with "term" nowhere on the page.

EDIT: Not those exact terms obviously, but that degree of "That's almost completely different to what I typed!"

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#204

Post by fbn79 »

mangoman wrote: post #79

Back in the day, before I just defaulted to using Google, I remember checking multiple search engines to find the thing I was looking for. You'd check Yahoo/Google/Lycos, try a couple of different phrasings, and then if that didn't work try searching on a few other search engines. Somewhere along the way, Google had won me over, because I almost always found my answer. I had stopped even considering other search engi…

I suggest you to add Yandex to your search alternatives, so you can see what the truth of other side of the world

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#205

Post by puzzle »

rurp wrote: post #188
Semaphor wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny because unlike DDG, Google actually works with quotes. I have yet to find a Google query where Google ignores the quotes (it even goes as far as telling me it can't find anything). DDG, on the other hand, decided a few months ago that their users are dumb and only mistakenly tried to force part of their query. It's really annoying me because it's what makes me use !g more than anything else.

It's weird that I've had the exact opposite experience, but you aren't the only person posting that quotes always work for them on Google. I've definitely had them return irrelevant results that did not include quoted terms, but can't remember an example off of the top of my head. I think it would be helpful if I (or anyone else reading this) saved some examples for the next time this discussion comes up.

Maybe the quoted terms were in page keywords or inbound links.

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#206

Post by tagawa »

kelnos wrote: post #197
gtsteve wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used DDG for a while and I found amusingly I almost missed Google tracking me. I'd search for a restaurant to find opening times or address and the first result would be a restaurant of the same name but in a different city or different country. Google always seems to know where I am. I'm sure that's just some clever algorithms or balance of probabilities or something based on their profile of me. I don't like that…

I'm actually a little surprised that DDG doesn't at least do IP geolocation to provide more locally-relevant results. I'd hardly consider that "tracking" or any kind of privacy invasion, since it's so trivial to correlate an IP with a location, and they don't need to store any data about visitors to do this. (Yes, I know, geo IP databases aren't perfect, and people using VPNs will get incorrect results. But for most…

We do use IP geolocation for local searches, so it sounds like our triggering is not detecting the context correctly. Would you mind sharing the search query please (if you’re comfortable), so I can take a look?

As an example, something like “pizza near me” should work: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pizza+near+me

In terms of protecting privacy, you’re right, we don’t need to store the IP address (or any personal data), so we don’t. There’s more detail about how we do anonymous local searches here: https://duck.co/help/privacy/anonymous-localized-results

Disclaimer: DuckDuckGo staff.

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#208

Post by dnlsrl »

da_chicken wrote: post #175
megous wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could tell ddg that I only care about postgresql. It seems heavily skewed to oracle/ms server when searching anything sql related. Perhaps because it's powered by Bing?

I wish I could tell DDG that I don't give a shit about Python 2.7. Stop linking me to the Python 2 doc! I haven't used Python 2 in five years!

!python3

Re: Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway

#209

Post by JeremyBanks »

godshatter wrote: post #176
JeremyBanks wrote: post #2

:s/DuckDuckGo/Bing

They do have their own web crawler. I don't have any idea what percentage of their results come from it, but presumably as they grow their own search results will take an ever-increasing slice of the pie.

There doesn't seem to be any evidence that it's used for indexing at all; it seems more like it's just used to scrape additional info from sites that they index via real search engines like Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4851680

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