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DuckDuckGo Traffic

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Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#41

Post by pottertheotter »

grimgrin wrote: post #29
sdrothrock wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an offshoot discussion and I have nothing against DDG or bang commands -- just presenting another side of convenient searches. > I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing “!yt badgerbadgerbadger” to get specifically YouTube results was fantastic. I find "use your own search" to be much less friction than going through DDG since it takes me right to re…

There's a thing I wish FF had that Chrome has had for a long, long time (an older comment of mine): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056174 re: ease of searching within sites and building that availability (of sites) up

I switched back to FF from Chrome a year ago and that's one of the things I miss the most. I really like FF and will continue to support them, but there were so many little conveniences Chrome got right that FF seems to completely ignore.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#42

Post by hatch_q »

jmarbach wrote: post #28

Ironically I just made the switch to DDG today with Firefox because Google’s results have become so polluted and irrelevant. I expected Firefox to ship with DDG as the default but alas it did not to my surprise. Why is Google still the default in Firefox?

Google pays Mozilla to have Google as default search. If DDG comes with hefty sum to Mozilla - they'll change it.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#43

Post by h4waii »

teeray wrote: post #14

Bang commands[0] really sealed DDG for me. I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing “!yt badgerbadgerbadger” to get specifically YouTube results was fantastic. !g (search on Google) also makes it far easier to switch. Don’t like the results? Prefix !g and try again. My other favorites: !sr [name of subreddit] - much faster than “reddit.com/r/[name]” !r - Red…

Just an FYI for other, you can also suffix your search with this, so if you type it all out and decide you need to hit up your !g fallback, it still works at the end.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#44

Post by jonny383 »

I originally started switching my default browser search results to DuckDuckGo about 18 months ago due to privacy concerns and not wanting to support Google.

A strange side-effect I noticed over this period was being able to find things _much quicker_ than my colleagues. I thought maybe I was just better at picking what words to type in - but after we did some comparisons, DDG really does just provide better results now (and increasingly so) for the kinds of searches we're doing.

The bangs are useful, but honestly I haven't really needed to use them. Occasionally I'll use a !g or !yt, but this is maybe 1% or less of my searches.

I've even taken the rare step of disabling uBlock and some other Firefox extensions because I _want_ DDG to succeed.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#46

Post by jnericks »

teeray wrote: post #14

Bang commands[0] really sealed DDG for me. I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing “!yt badgerbadgerbadger” to get specifically YouTube results was fantastic. !g (search on Google) also makes it far easier to switch. Don’t like the results? Prefix !g and try again. My other favorites: !sr [name of subreddit] - much faster than “reddit.com/r/[name]” !r - Red…

You can also use the bang command at the end of your query.... Just learned this myself recently and makes changing your search engine quickly if you don't like the results

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#47

Post by ben-schaaf »

h4waii wrote: post #43
teeray wrote: post #14

Bang commands[0] really sealed DDG for me. I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing “!yt badgerbadgerbadger” to get specifically YouTube results was fantastic. !g (search on Google) also makes it far easier to switch. Don’t like the results? Prefix !g and try again. My other favorites: !sr [name of subreddit] - much faster than “reddit.com/r/[name]” !r - Red…

Just an FYI for other, you can also suffix your search with this, so if you type it all out and decide you need to hit up your !g fallback, it still works at the end.

Another FYI, it doesn't actually matter where you put it. As long as there's a space behind the g it works.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#48

Post by idclip »

teeray wrote: post #14

Bang commands[0] really sealed DDG for me. I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing “!yt badgerbadgerbadger” to get specifically YouTube results was fantastic. !g (search on Google) also makes it far easier to switch. Don’t like the results? Prefix !g and try again. My other favorites: !sr [name of subreddit] - much faster than “reddit.com/r/[name]” !r - Red…

Someone on that dev board is old school. 90s IRC days old school.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#49

Post by darthreid »

this is truly awesome to see how much DDG has progressed, it’s nice to know there are still some tech companies out there that won’t gouge its’ users for every last bit of information and advertising they can

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#50

Post by winrid »

idclip wrote: post #48
teeray wrote: post #14

Bang commands[0] really sealed DDG for me. I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing “!yt badgerbadgerbadger” to get specifically YouTube results was fantastic. !g (search on Google) also makes it far easier to switch. Don’t like the results? Prefix !g and try again. My other favorites: !sr [name of subreddit] - much faster than “reddit.com/r/[name]” !r - Red…

Someone on that dev board is old school. 90s IRC days old school.

While I understand the nostalgia, I think this convention has carried into "today" in Games too, like "!kick bots". Maybe they're gamers. ;)
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