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DuckDuckGo Traffic

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Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#101

Post by franga2000 »

herpderperator wrote: post #55
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…

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.

Google's site: prefix makes Google show results it has from that site. A DDG bang will redirect you to the site's own search results.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#102

Post by ojosilva »

I'm not good at graphing data, but isn't the graph exponential while the growth is almost flat or, at best, linear? They mention the graph is yearly but still their best period was 2017-2018, which is not accurately plotted.

I'm not trying to throw mud at DDG's great accomplishments but it does feel a little deceiving if you just look at the graph and go out sharing it with your friends like they're outpacing Google or the search market overall 5-10% yearly growth, which means they are currently at par at most, once their initial boom passed.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#103

Post by kucing »

Kiro wrote: post #62
kucing wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I get a reference to this? :)

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so... > We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing.

> In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing.

Hmm I think the Bing is overemphasized if we say that "DuckDuckGo uses Bing underneath so the company whom you should really be complaining to is MSFT."

CMIIW!

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#104

Post by franga2000 »

stebann wrote: post #91

I like DDG because it covers most of my basic search needs. I only use Google when I need services that are related to my location. Searching with Google is becoming less effective for me because the first pages almost always bring up ads or business-related content (like blogs that are sponsoring something or are trying to sell some product or service).

Same here. Google is scarily good at giving me local results, but for general web searches, DDG is almost always more accurate. Google almost always takes my very specific query and stretches it too far, so the results are actually for something a lot more commonly searched for. I see this a lot with programming-related searches where I'm looking for a very specific problem and Google just gives me general tutorials on the topic while DDG usually has the correct SO answer in the answer card and all the other results are more relevant too.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#105

Post by severine »

avian wrote: post #39
input_sh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone hearing about this for the first time, are custom searches portable? Do they sync with Firefox Sync? Do they work on Firefox for Android?

> Do they sync with Firefox Sync? No. > Do they work on Firefox for Android? Yes.

I think akvadrako above[1] has it right, they appeared on my mobile phone on sync, as they are bookmarks.

Again, I think, I'm not sure ;)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22115461

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#106

Post by garmaine »

ojosilva wrote: post #102

I'm not good at graphing data, but isn't the graph exponential while the growth is almost flat or, at best, linear? They mention the graph is yearly but still their best period was 2017-2018, which is not accurately plotted. I'm not trying to throw mud at DDG's great accomplishments but it does feel a little deceiving if you just look at the graph and go out sharing it with your friends like they're outpacing Google…

Growth is the first derivative, not the second.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#107

Post by ekianjo »

larschdk wrote: post #94
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…

For me, the killer feature is DDG's solid keyboard navigation of search results. Google's never worked properly and they eventually removed it.

and "copy link" actually works as it should on DDG - it does not become a google link.

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#108

Post by arminiusreturns »

Kiro wrote: post #98
tomThom wrote: post #78

I don't want to sound like an astroturfer but bing results have actually gotten much better too. Though search is a big field and something I wouldn't mind mozilla getting into too.

That's why DDG's results have been getting better, since it's Bing underneath.

This is an oft repeated misconception, their results come from multiple sources. (ddg user since ~2013, and there were times when they did heavily favor yandex or bing usually, but these days the sources are much more varied, and they also have their own crawler called duckbot I think)

Re: DuckDuckGo Traffic

#109

Post by the_gipsy »

larschdk wrote: post #94
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…

For me, the killer feature is DDG's solid keyboard navigation of search results. Google's never worked properly and they eventually removed it.

It did work very well for me, at least for a typical search. Ctrl+T, , Enter, Down arrow a few times, Enter.

There is a lot of value to me in this, the user, but actually negative to google: you can't really justify inserting ads into keyboard navigation, can you.

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