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It might be more effective if you try it yourself. Google something you normally google, then repeat the search with &pws=0 at the end of the query string.
Interesting, what is the pws arg?
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Have you tried it recently? I generally agree that people made excuses for DDG when it was clearly worse and unusable, but today it’s good enough to use instead (I think it’s better). I’d try it again if you haven’t for a while. Maybe your needs are different than mine, but since we’re both on HN there’s probably pretty good overlap. Small thing, but I really like how DDG results are primarily links to websites and I…
I have tried it recently and my co-founder and I are literally building a new search experience because we are deeply unsatisfied with the current ones.
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It might be more effective if you try it yourself. Google something you normally google, then repeat the search with &pws=0 at the end of the query string.
Interesting, what is the pws arg?
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…
A lot of DDG fans on HN blame the user or social conditioning and use that as a crutch. It’s BS. You need to provide clear examples of the differences in order to really make this argument to someone who might switch. What specifically are the differences? The last time this topic came up someone told me I was a total noob because I didn’t know how to use search and that was basically the extent of it.
That's no more or less BS than people saying that "DDG results are shit". I don't see anything wrong with trying to guess why DDG doesn't work well for some people, even if the conclusion happens to offend someone's personal choices.
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> Don’t use natural language So... its worse. People want to use natural language.
If I wanted to search using natural language, I'd use Ask Jeeves. DDG is just fine in my experience.
I somehow doubt that changed.
Edit: Well I be darned, turns out it was their bread and butter:
https://econsultancy.com/the-state-of-natural-language-conve...
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…
When I search for Fish Tacos on DDG's maps and Google, it's night and day. DDG gave me 4 results, none anywhere near me. Do you have a suggestion for how I could have been more effective?
It's only good enough when you're in the US, I live in the UK and DDG consistently returns non local results even though the country is set correctly, it's especially annoying given how many US cities are named after their UK counterpart.
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.
On top of that I live in a small city that shares a name with a larger city. Google understands this and gives me results for my local, smaller city, but DDG needs to be explicitly told city name, state name.
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Did you include the word "film" in your search? Otherwise there's no reasonable expectation for it to show up. It's like searching for "Philadelphia" and expecting the movie to show up and not the city.
I understand what you're suggesting but for fun I did that search on DDG and the film was the 8th result (on the first page of results ;)
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Don’t use natural language, use keywords and quotes. Essentially the way people searched 5-10 years ago. I rarely need !g
> Don’t use natural language So... its worse. People want to use natural language.
This reminds me of telcos trying to get in to content. "Humans appear to value short audiovisual bursts of stimulation. We shall conquer all by providing all the memes!" And then they knife Tumblr.
It isn't that "people" "want" one search method over another. The search grammar is not why they're there.
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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.
Do you have United Kingdom toggled on?