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DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

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Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#161

Post by xyst »

Grimm1 wrote: post #110

To my knowledge duck duck go uses Bing's search API to get their results. To me Bing and Google have not been sufficient for my searching needs and the needs of a large group around me for a long time now. On a separate but related issue because DDG is using Bing the overall experience is lackluster, as other user's have noted things like very slow to re-index new results, new information climbs up to the top very sl…

If that’s the case, then I’m sticking with Ecosia since it uses Bing as well. Not sure if Ecosia has it’s own crawler, but at least they appropriate some profits to plant trees.

They also have an alias to redirect the search to google if the initial search doesn’t yield anything useful.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#162

Post by azinman2 »

gonehome wrote: post #82
whalesalad wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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’ve always had the opposite experience with DDG. Technical queries gave just garbage results, where as I got meaningful hits on google each time.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#163

Post by bla3 »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #118
Grimm1 wrote: post #110

To my knowledge duck duck go uses Bing's search API to get their results. To me Bing and Google have not been sufficient for my searching needs and the needs of a large group around me for a long time now. On a separate but related issue because DDG is using Bing the overall experience is lackluster, as other user's have noted things like very slow to re-index new results, new information climbs up to the top very sl…

> To my knowledge duck duck go uses Bing's search API to get their results. And their own crawler and wikipedia and stackexchange and about 400 other sources: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so... That said, yeah it is mainly a better Bing.

That page basically confirms this. It says

> To do that, we've developed an open source Instant Answer platform called DuckDuckHack,

which links to https://duckduckhack.com/ which says "DuckDuckHack is now in Maintenance Mode".

And the "four hundred sources" link links to 400 special case replies. They are probably useful, but fire rarely. It's basically Bing, and that page is a bunch of spin.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#164

Post by smichel17 »

andrewprock wrote: post #136
VikingCoder wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I do not use DDG for map queries. Google Maps is still light years ahead of anyone else for maps. For non-map queries, DDG is now well ahead of Google except for long tail stuff, for example: technical error messages.

I currently also use Google Maps for map queries.. But I use it through DuckDuckGo, with !gm. I actually find this a better experience than navigating to Google Maps before entering my query.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#165

Post by hedora »

hedora wrote: post #129
whalesalad wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google gives me bad results. It ignores some of the words in my queries, and the context boxes are generally spammy and irrelevant. Even if the correct information is somewhere in the results page, I bounce before I can find it. From what I can tell from the article, this might be because I type too much stuff into the search bar, and because Google’s manually curated semantic web stuff is not relevant to me. However…

I think, on reflection, the issue is that typing “harry potter sport” and clicking on the wikipedia article at the very top of the page (above the first ad) is a much lower cognitive burden than the Google way, where I guess people are trained to type “harry potter” and then skim an entire page of ads, search results and noise to find the word “Quidditch” (which doesn’t appear, I just checked).

If I google harry potter sport, it presents the Wikipedia article in a context box, then the same article in a differently formatted context box, an ad, and then a third link to the same article at the top of the organic results.

Duck duck go displays the same link twice (once in a big context box). This seems better, though arguably not great.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#166

Post by lobotryas »

teekert wrote: post #142
burlesona wrote: post #116

A few years ago I switched my desktops to use DDG while leaving my phone using Google. At first I had to !g all the time. Now that’s rare. Now I’m starting to have the other problem. If I search for a company, product, person, etc., on DDG it’s the first hit. But on google I just get a wall of ads and videos, and it’s hard to tell where the actual homepage is for the thing I’m looking for. So as of now I would say, g…

My story is the same! Also, when I want colouring pictures for my kids, DDG just lets met tap them and print them. That is nolonger possible using Google since some months. I also very much appreciate the code snippets when (already started typing "Googling"!) Searching for code related things.

Pretty sure that’s because google got hit with a lawsuit about hot linking. DDG will suffer the same fate once they get big (and rich) enough.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#167

Post by minikites »

lobotryas wrote: post #166
teekert wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My story is the same! Also, when I want colouring pictures for my kids, DDG just lets met tap them and print them. That is nolonger possible using Google since some months. I also very much appreciate the code snippets when (already started typing "Googling"!) Searching for code related things.

Pretty sure that’s because google got hit with a lawsuit about hot linking. DDG will suffer the same fate once they get big (and rich) enough.

I can't say for sure but I bet that's a problem they would love to have.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#168

Post by einpoklum »

burlesona wrote: post #116

A few years ago I switched my desktops to use DDG while leaving my phone using Google. At first I had to !g all the time. Now that’s rare. Now I’m starting to have the other problem. If I search for a company, product, person, etc., on DDG it’s the first hit. But on google I just get a wall of ads and videos, and it’s hard to tell where the actual homepage is for the thing I’m looking for. So as of now I would say, g…

> But on google I just get a wall of ads and videos

EFF privacy badger + uBlock Origin can definitely remove all the ads (as opposed to skewed search results). As for videos, I think you can get uBlock Origin to remove those too (I haven't tried because I'm ok with video search results).

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#169

Post by Waterluvian »

frenchyatwork wrote: post #98
Waterluvian wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a DDG booster for a while. Their search results are usually good enough. Except after longer use I've found two major issues that eventually forced me back to Google: 1. I can Image Search the most basic of terms and literally get "No Results Found" once or twice a day. Sometimes I'll get like... 8 photos. 2. I will weirdly get the Wikipedia link for a relevant query, but the British or Spanish or some othe…

> ... the British or .. some other version often isn't even in English. There's only one regular English version of the Wikipedia, unless you're refering to the Galic one, which would be a little odd ( https://ga.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%ADomhleathanach ).

I'm surely messing up the details. I just remember getting other versions of Wikipedia as my main result.
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