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We can do better than DuckDuckGo

drewdevault.com

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Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#321

Post by andreareina »

anaganisk wrote: post #293
andreareina wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, that does seem like a more correct reading of the page. Do we have a source that's unambiguous? Seems strange to have a bot that's able to parse pages for their instant answers but then not use those same results for regular search.

They literally user Bing api for search results which is well known

It's well-known that they use Bing. They also say that they use other sources. In this case I'm looking for an explicit disambiguation of what sources they use for what; my first read led me to interpret it as them also using their crawler to return search links (as opposed to just being used for their instant answers).

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#322

Post by Deely123123 »

bigdict wrote: post #308
miccah wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure others have commented this elsewhere, but DDG has bang operators. For your use case, simply append !g to the DDG search and it will do a Google search instead.

Right, but Google supports Google search without bang operators.

No way!

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#324

Post by jbay808 »

absolutelyrad wrote: post #244
visarga wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had a similar idea, what you're proposing is essentially a ranking/filtering customisation. The internet is a big scene, and on this scene we have companies and their products, political parties, ad agencies and regular users. Everyone is fighting for attention, clicks. Google has control over a ranking and filtering system that covers most searches on the internet. FB and Twitter hold another ranking/filterin…

Would you pay $10/yr for this feature?

Unfortunately I suspect that if it were a premium feature, not enough groups would volunteer the requisite time into compiling and maintaining the site ranking lists. This sort of thing really has to become a community effort in order to scale, I think.

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#325

Post by caiob »

hysan wrote: post #298
nessex wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish Google would prioritize English results for English searches consistently. I'm living in Japan as a native English speaker, and have my OS, browser and logged in Google account all configured for English only. Despite that, Google search results always prioritize Japanese language content. Every now and then (though not consistently) it gives me a yellow popup asking if I'd like English results instead,…

Was going to post the exact same thing. This was my experience while living in Japan too. To me, the takeaway is that you simply cannot catch everyone with your defaults. Google and DDG have made different prioritization defaults and the result of that is what we see in anecdotes in this thread.

You don't have to go as far as Japan. Back when I lived in Quebec, Google would prioritize French results.

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#327

Post by admax88q »

mr_toad wrote: post #248
carom wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest habit I had to break moving from Google to DDG was phrasing everything as a question. If anyone is thinking of making the switch, you can always redirect your searches to Google by throwing a g! in the query.

> phrasing everything as a question. I wonder if this is generational or cultural? Personally, I dislike trying to interface with a machine using natural language, because I know it can’t really understand me, and I’d rather read and interpret the results for myself than have an algorithm pick the “best”. I actually find speaking to machines (e.g. automated phone systems, Siri etc) using natural language quite embarr…

I think its less about trying to talk to Google, and more about phrasing your search the way somebody would ask it on some random forum. That is often the benefit of asking as a question.

Although such queries are habit forming and now google does a decent job understanding the actual question

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#328

Post by DoingIsLearning »

nessex wrote: post #289
kringdom89 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that anyone who claims that Duckduckgo "Just works" only do english search. I usually do "english" / "mother tongue" searchs all day. Everytime, I need to remember to toggle the regional button otherwise I get attrocious results. Whereas google simply understand that if I'm searching using the english language it should prioritize english results while if I'm searching in another language it should prioriti…

I really wish Google would prioritize English results for English searches consistently. I'm living in Japan as a native English speaker, and have my OS, browser and logged in Google account all configured for English only. Despite that, Google search results always prioritize Japanese language content. Every now and then (though not consistently) it gives me a yellow popup asking if I'd like English results instead,…

There was a time, a long time ago, where google had this:

www.google.com/ncr

'ncr' here stands for no country recognition. It allowed many expats to do technical searches without the noise of regionalization results.

Of course someone clever at google figured out that was probably too useful and now it just redirects you back to google.com because screw all those niche use-cases.

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#329

Post by smonff »

DDG is a search engine that respect your privacy. DDG doesn't put you in a « bubble » based on your location, search history, your browsing history, physical moves, time of day, country of residence, IP, and billions parameters I don't know about. Therefore, there are things that cannot be done, like Google or Bing do.

Google is like an oracle because it exploit all of this. And it works, with a cost for your privacy (but maybe you are ok to pay it). DDG is more a "meta-search-engine" with limited capabilities. Bit you got the flexibility of accessing the search engines of thousand of websites.

If you don't care for your privacy, don't use DDG and stay with Google.

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#330

Post by m0zg »

This is severely hampered by the availability of Google. After a few false starts I ended up switching to DDG as my default search engine. My usage pattern is as follows: for things that are predictably easy to find (e.g. the queries "normal" people would issue), I use DDG. That's about 90-95% of all my queries. For obscure stuff, I add "!g" at the end of the query and go to Google. That's the remaining 5-10%, and I doubt anyone can do better than Google there. That way I get both the privacy and the long tail.
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