DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

Post by magicalhippo » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #55

magicalhippo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess it depends on domain. I've changed the default in Firefox a few weeks ago and find that for "regular" searching DDG is enough that I don't go to Google. But for specialized searches I frequently reach for the Google override, and sure enough Google has significantly better results. Like searching specific, weird errors messages and such.

That’s the thing. The vast majority of my searches are development/coding related. I always find what I’m looking for in the first few returns. I sometimes wonder if I’d get even better results on google?

Post by jp_sc » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #64

chuckgreenman wrote: post #25

I think I've figured out what is happening when people tell me that DuckDuckGo's results "aren't good enough". What's really happening is that they've been trained to search a certain way to using Google and because DDG doesn't have all the historical data of your searches on their platform they can't fill in the gaps as well. After a couple days using DDG I found the right vocabulary to get good local results and wh…

Please teach me how to use DDG, as I’m clearly missing something. I’m happy to switch to a service that provides better results in exchange for a bit more effort in constructing search queries, but the results I get for that effort really do need to be better. The only specific advise I’ve ever seen is “use !g if you don’t get good results the first time”, which really isn’t encouraging.

Post by bramjans » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

osehgol wrote: post #21

I switched after Google's redesign too, this time it's good enough for good.

Post by sefrost » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

KuiN wrote: post #58

motogpjimbo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in the UK. It's noticeable that for many search terms, DDG's top autocomplete suggestion is the term you just typed, with "uk" tacked on the end of it. That suggests that many users in the UK are finding DDG's search results to be too US-centric.

This is _by far_ my biggest issue with DDG. I've been trying to use it for most of my searching and I'm fine with having to append '!g' to ~25% of my searches, it's not ideal, but whatever, I can manage. Having to append 'uk' to 90% of searches after the first results page is full of useless American shit, for search terms that Google UK handles flawlessly, gets old, very quick.

Post by dimator » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

anderspitman wrote: post #15

I switched over to DDG a few weeks ago. I slowly regressed to more and more !g usage, and finally switched back to GOOG a couple days ago. Then just an hour ago I searched for "google fiber stadia", because I was curious how well they work together. The main reddit result opened in an amp page (and of course reddit pressured me to install the mobile app). I went back to the results and started scrolling down. I hones…