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DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

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Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#81

Post by frakkingcylons »

dimator wrote: post #62
guilhermetk wrote: post #19

After a few failed attempts to migrate from Google as my default search engine due to poor results, a couple of months ago, I decided to give DDG another try. Been using daily since, I don't even remember what Google is. Not sure if the service did improve that much or what, but I'm glad I could move on. Youtube, you are next.

I must be in the minority here, but even after trying ddg exclusively, I find myself doing !g all the time, to the point where I just switched back. I do many technical searches throughout the day, and ddg falls short basically every time. Google is always closer to the mark with my search intent , with for example, deep links to stack overflow answers that ddg misses.

My experience is the same, I eventually just switched my default search to Startpage

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#82

Post by harha »

time0ut wrote: post #12

Ddg is so good at this point I forget I’m not using Google. I only have to drop in a !g a couple times a month at most. I am actually surprised it is only 100M per day. I think it would be much bigger if there was actual fair competition.

I get reminded that I wasn't using Google in the rare case where I can't find what I'm looking for and !g or need to use a device I don't own and it shows how bad it's gotten (in particular hard to distinguish the ads - and the sheer amount of ads)

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#83

Post by f1refly »

simias wrote: post #40
ravedave5 wrote: post #10

I've been switched to DDG for about 4 months now. I am loving the Ads I get in youtube now that google doesn't know what I am interested in they have noting to do with anything I care about. It's wonderful. DDG still has a way to go for really technical queries. I just can't get the same results about this error or that in Java. Until then I'm 100% DDG for personal and 100% google for work.

I use DDG as well but I went further and told Firefox to use a dedicated container for google domains. I also did it because they made Youtube really annoying to use when you're not logged in, so I made a burner account but it's only active inside this container and they can't track me around the web (at least, not with that).

You might enjoy invidious. It's a frontend for youtube that cuts 99% of the bloat and show videos directly in your html5 player. It even supports subscriptions without a google account!

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#84

Post by randomstring »

I would estimate that greater than 90% of that traffic is bot traffic. Having run two web search engines in the past: search.netscape.com (pre-google) and blekko.com. Robots accounted for > 80% of traffic at Netscape (around 3M searches/day in 2000 IIRC) and definitely more than 80% at blekko. Maybe 90% or more. Some traffic is obviously bot traffic (single source IP, common patterns, obvious bot useragents) and then there's the non-obvious bot traffic that is random-ish, but in aggregate is clearly bot traffic. For instance, way too many queries matching the pattern "(mortgage|home loans) (zip|county|city|state)" even if they are coming from random IPs and user agents.

At blekko, under high traffic, we would loadshed obvious bot traffic first and prioritize searches from humans.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#85

Post by harha »

himujjal wrote: post #73
time0ut wrote: post #12

Ddg is so good at this point I forget I’m not using Google. I only have to drop in a !g a couple times a month at most. I am actually surprised it is only 100M per day. I think it would be much bigger if there was actual fair competition.

specially for local results. thats where DDG is not upto the mark. Google has an advantage there. BTW, I DDGed for the last 2 years and never been happier. They have improved tremendously

> specially for local results. thats where DDG is not upto the mark. Google has an advantage there.

I've had a different experience, I prefer being able to choose the location. For technical queries it gives me better results, for general queries less SEO'ed content and when I want something local I change the switch. Bonus is that I can choose a different location, which has been useful this year because my travel pattern has changed to staying at a remote location for longer periods - I can still easily get my home country results when I need them without trying all sorts of extra keywords.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#87

Post by bjourne »

Unlike Google, DDG doesn't filter out StormFront and other similar sites (Bing also doesn't, apparenty). I think that is good because tech companies shouldn't impose politics on very basic tech like search indexes. I wonder how long it will last though.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#88

Post by rkalla »

randomstring wrote: post #84

I would estimate that greater than 90% of that traffic is bot traffic. Having run two web search engines in the past: search.netscape.com (pre-google) and blekko.com. Robots accounted for > 80% of traffic at Netscape (around 3M searches/day in 2000 IIRC) and definitely more than 80% at blekko. Maybe 90% or more. Some traffic is obviously bot traffic (single source IP, common patterns, obvious bot useragents) and then…

This is a fascinating trend - how could you even launch a search service today where that portion of your processing time is going to be spent powering bots (ad agencies?) and not addressing human queries.

Wonder what a human-centric 'search' experience will look like in 2025... no more search bar, pre-emptive article fetch based on whatever some ML algorithm decides for you?

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#89

Post by danShumway »

6chars wrote: post #36
guilhermetk wrote: post #19

After a few failed attempts to migrate from Google as my default search engine due to poor results, a couple of months ago, I decided to give DDG another try. Been using daily since, I don't even remember what Google is. Not sure if the service did improve that much or what, but I'm glad I could move on. Youtube, you are next.

> I don't even remember what Google is If DDG has such severe memory-related side effects, I'm not sure I want to switch.

I started using DuckDuckGo, and one day I woke up and all of my email was on Fastmail instead of Gmail. No memory of switching, but all of my contacts were moved over. My accounts were using Fastmail aliases.

I called up my siblings and asked, "where did you get this email address, why are you emailing me here?" And they just said, "what are you talking about, you've always been on Fastmail." I have no idea what's going on. Sometimes I'll go to update my system, and I'll be using Pacman instead of the normal Debian package manager. Then the next day it will switch back. Sometimes I'll search for things online, and I won't find the result I'm looking for, but then a day later I'll get a physical letter in my mailbox with the answer to my question written on it.

So anyway, long story short, I decided to switch Bing instead and so far that's had only minor side effects.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#90

Post by conradfr »

Airyleech wrote: post #22
ravedave5 wrote: post #10

I've been switched to DDG for about 4 months now. I am loving the Ads I get in youtube now that google doesn't know what I am interested in they have noting to do with anything I care about. It's wonderful. DDG still has a way to go for really technical queries. I just can't get the same results about this error or that in Java. Until then I'm 100% DDG for personal and 100% google for work.

I use ublock origin, I don't get ads on youtube.

There is on mobile and there's so much nowadays that I had to stop clicking video links on my phone.
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