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How to live without Google (2017)

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Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#32
post #3

For a couple of month I have set duckduckgo as my standard search engine, but I often do not get satisfactory results. Is this because I am used to the Google results or does duckduckgo indeed not prioritize in a good way?

I've done the same, few months back. And yes, sometimes (well most of the time) results are not satisfactory if I'm looking for a specific thing (e.g Expecting a relevant result from StackOverFlow).

I'm using Firefox Containers, I hop on to Google Search with a temporary extension

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#33
post #3

For a couple of month I have set duckduckgo as my standard search engine, but I often do not get satisfactory results. Is this because I am used to the Google results or does duckduckgo indeed not prioritize in a good way?

I switched to DDG about two years ago.

A bunch of results (20%? 30%?) are not very good, and it's not an exception. Also I know it's suppose to come down the line, but not having a filter for results of the past year is a PITA.

In my case though, Google is not very good either, I remember getting very random results (mostly focused on popular or local trends, when I'm looking for something specific) about half of the time.

In fine, I see DDG as an alternative giving access to both Google and DDG. Switching to DDG when Google was bad was not simple, the reverse is (just add a !)

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#34
post #3

For a couple of month I have set duckduckgo as my standard search engine, but I often do not get satisfactory results. Is this because I am used to the Google results or does duckduckgo indeed not prioritize in a good way?

I default to DuckDuckGo as my search engine though I use !g for anything it doesn't get right. I was on call with a colleague and we were problem solving and I needed to look up something and I typed it in the search box and a bunch of porn results came up. She just laughed but I knew it was a close shave. DuckDuckGo's image search can come up with porn for rather innocuous terms, e.g., https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sear…

Maybe it's your DDG "safe search" preferences. There are three options: Strict, Moderate, Off. I clicked the link you provided and not any adult content showed up (it's in "moderate" mode by default). Some adult content appeared in results after I changing it to "off".

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#35
Still early for a release (work in progress/use at your own risk) but I'm having real fun working on dnsadblock.com. Within days it made me switch from Chrome to Firefox. As soon as I changed my DNS server Chrome tried to contact it's mothership roughly 146,000 times in just 24 hours. Being able to see the actual numbers is something scary.

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#36
post #3

For a couple of month I have set duckduckgo as my standard search engine, but I often do not get satisfactory results. Is this because I am used to the Google results or does duckduckgo indeed not prioritize in a good way?

I default to DuckDuckGo as my search engine though I use !g for anything it doesn't get right. I was on call with a colleague and we were problem solving and I needed to look up something and I typed it in the search box and a bunch of porn results came up. She just laughed but I knew it was a close shave. DuckDuckGo's image search can come up with porn for rather innocuous terms, e.g., https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sear…

[deleted]

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#37
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

duckduckgo is definitely not an alternative for google. you can't even compare.

Why do you think that? I switched to duckduckgo about a year ago and never even looked back. The results are perfectly fine and I am pretty satisfied with them. What do you feel is not comparable? One thing I noticed, which is great, that duckduckgo does not filter/censor your search results (except pictures). edit: The only "bad" thing about it is its name. typing duckduckgo.com into the url bar when I am on some ot…

https://duck.com

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#38
post #33
post #3

For a couple of month I have set duckduckgo as my standard search engine, but I often do not get satisfactory results. Is this because I am used to the Google results or does duckduckgo indeed not prioritize in a good way?

I switched to DDG about two years ago. A bunch of results (20%? 30%?) are not very good, and it's not an exception. Also I know it's suppose to come down the line, but not having a filter for results of the past year is a PITA. In my case though, Google is not very good either, I remember getting very random results (mostly focused on popular or local trends, when I'm looking for something specific) about half of the…

Same here tried using DDG, sometimes I get nothing relevant and find myself going to back to Google, I even tired forcing myself to use bing but still the results are not just good enough.

Re: How to live without Google (2017)

#40
post #3

For a couple of month I have set duckduckgo as my standard search engine, but I often do not get satisfactory results. Is this because I am used to the Google results or does duckduckgo indeed not prioritize in a good way?

It's almost like Google is actually good at Search and replicating that isn't easy
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