Fully switched, first to Firefox, in 2018, on desktop and mobile, then to DDG, last summer. It is really good now, so no looking back.
DuckDuckGo Traffic
51–60 of 251 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic
#52I've been using DDG for a gradually increasing share of my searches and as my primary mobile browser for years.
The search side has been great, though Google still wins for many queries, due to personalization. On the other hand Google also fails for me on many searches by being "clever" compared to its functionality a decade ago and assuming I've made a typo or are searching for something I've not.
On the mobile app side, DDG is a bit frustrating though. About 5% of sites have major issues. Probably the worst is Indie Hackers, where I simply can't log in. After hitting oauth, a blank page with a Firebase URL comes up and I'm still not logged in. Fortunately most sites with oauth-based login don't have this issue on DDG but enough do that it's annoying.
Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic
#53Over the past 5 years I’ve tried DDG several times. Each time except the last I wanted to stick with it but the results simply didn’t stand up to what I’d see on Google. About 6 months ago (a year? I can’t remember) I switched and haven’t looked back. Now, when I look at google, the results actually look less relevant. As well, the ads on Google have become very obnoxious. I don’t feel like I’m being served the best…
I have similar experience. Upon reflection, when searching, I had some preconceived expectation about the result, maybe a stackoverflow answer, maybe a wiki article, that made me "think" google result was better. But in reality, it was because I was expecting the result, in particular the result from google, before having the result. The longer you use DDG, the less google-specific result I expect. Of course, DDG's search is improving, but I think it is my own search result expectation that leads to the impression that google's search was better.
Now I use DDG exclusively.
Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic
#54Over the past 5 years I’ve tried DDG several times. Each time except the last I wanted to stick with it but the results simply didn’t stand up to what I’d see on Google. About 6 months ago (a year? I can’t remember) I switched and haven’t looked back. Now, when I look at google, the results actually look less relevant. As well, the ads on Google have become very obnoxious. I don’t feel like I’m being served the best…
DuckDuckGo uses Bing underneath so the company whom you should really be complaining to is MSFT.
Can I get a reference to this? :)
Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic
#55Bang 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…
I just wanted to point out that you can also do this on Google, just use the `site:` prefix. Example: `site:youtube.com badger`. Obviously the bang prefix you're referencing are shorter, but this is nothing new.
Edit: Ah, I misunderstood. The bang prefix will send you over to the search results page of the site in question. That's pretty neat.
Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic
#56Bang 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…
I just wanted to point out that you can also do this on Google, just use the `site:` prefix. Example: `site:youtube.com badger`. Obviously the bang prefix you're referencing are shorter, but this is nothing new. Edit: Ah, I misunderstood. The bang prefix will send you over to the search results page of the site in question. That's pretty neat.
This is not correct. DDG's bangs delegate to each site's search engine.
Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic
#57As much as I love Google for what they did for entire human knowledge back then, I would love for their monopoly to experience a real challenge at least somewhere else except China and Russia. Switched to DDG a year ago and happy to use it since!
Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic
#58Bang 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…
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…
Wow, thanks for sharing. I didn't knew about the add your own keyword functionality. Pretty nice!
Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic
#59I love DDG, I just want to point out that everyone is hating on Google's new search results, in part because of a distracting favicon, and DuckDuckGo results have had similar favicons for months now.
You can turn off the favicons under Settings -> Other Settings -> Appearance, the bottom option.
Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic
#60[deleted]