The curious case of DuckDuckGo • Hacker News Board

Re: The curious case of DuckDuckGo

#11

Post by sidman » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:31 AM UTC

I remember during uni I got the results closer to what i wanted them to be from google. It didn't have the instant or any of those fancy things but it just gave me what i wanted. It still does now but i just gotta troll through a few more links (which is ok by me)

I feel that the main difference now is because of the immense size of googles data from some 7-8 years ago when i first started uni. However to be able to structure the size of the data they have and still provide relevancy is still an awesome job i think.

I just wonder though, if duckduckgo ever did become a contender (from a data size perspective) and started to approach the size of googles dataset whether they would have the same kinds of problem.

Re: The curious case of DuckDuckGo

#12

Post by homosaur » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:32 AM UTC

I wish there was some way for the system to ban people if they submit their own blog posts. This is a non-study.

The vast majority of people looking for "java" are looking for the programming language. If they weren't, all those links wouldn't be at the top of Google. For most people, this IS the correct response.

For anyone else, seems like they could just say "huh, programming languages?" And then type "java indonesia," "java coffee," or even "java country." REALLY DIFFICULT

In the first example, all you have to do is click on the non-autocorrected text or even just put that search in quotes. I don't even know why the hell you would look for "college vs. uncollege" anyway, any search for "uncollege" is going to turn up a bunch of pages that talk all about that movement and why it exists.

DDG is a good product, but this article is stupid.

Re: The curious case of DuckDuckGo

#13

Post by gallerytungsten » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:33 AM UTC

re: "Google over does search" (and "autocorrects" your search).

This "feature" has been getting steadily more annoying, particularly with more obscure words, or words where there is a similar word that's in more widespread use.

Thinking about it now, I was wishing there was a way to turn off this feature; but alas, a dive into http://www.google.com/preferences doesn't seem to have "turn off that dang autocorrect" as an option.

Re: The curious case of DuckDuckGo

#14

Post by geraldwl » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:34 AM UTC

I recently had to rent a car for 3 months in Europe.

Google failed miserably. Even the forum posts it uncovered did not really help me find a bargain. There was too much "advertiser" influence in the search results.

Duck came to the rescue -- pointed at a great forum post and ultimately a cheaper rate than I found using Google and the phone. Cheaper by over 20%!

Re: The curious case of DuckDuckGo

#15

Post by lotharbot » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:34 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #3

> I did the same search in DuckDuckGo and I got results as expected. Simple. For this unusual case. In most situations I've encountered, Google's auto correction is quite helpful. > What if I was searching for place Java of Java Coffee fame. I would need to scan through the search results, spanning multi-pages (second page in this), until I came across the one that related to Java, the place. Or, you revise your quer…

> "In most situations I've encountered, Google's auto correction is quite helpful."

I'm a fairly good speller and a good typist, and I almost always mean to search for what I typed. Most days, Google's auto-correct feature is of negative value to me. YMMV of course.

Re: The curious case of DuckDuckGo

#16

Post by mtogo » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:35 AM UTC

thezilch wrote: post #9

mtogo wrote: post #5

Among the benefits listed and hundreds of others are the !bang commands, which i really love. Want to do a search on stackoverflow right from your url bar? !so Hello world Or maybe wikipedia? !w Hello world Or do a google search !g Hello world

How does this differ from using browser-builtin search-keywords, other than not having to rely/wait on a proxy? http://i.imgur.com/Tz7by.png

It's really similar, but you get a few hundred without having to configure anything in your browser, and it's the same no matter which browser[1] or computer you're using without having to sync anything. The downside, as you said, is that you have to wait for DDG's servers.

[1] Which matters a lot to me, since i use 3 or 4 different browsers at a time across a few different computers and often don't have the ability to sync my browser prefs.

Re: The curious case of DuckDuckGo

#17

Post by thezilch » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:36 AM UTC

Mithrandir wrote: post #4

One of the great parts of DuckDuckGo is that if you don't find what you're looking for, you can just type in '!g QUERY', '!b QUERY', or one of the other ~1400 !bangs. https://www.duckduckgo.com/bang.html

This feature is a builtin on Chrome and Firefox. One need not proxy, and eat overhead time, for specific searches through DDG nor Google, and the keyword configuration is also custom.

Re: The curious case of DuckDuckGo

#18

Post by wongm » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:42 AM UTC

homosaur wrote: post #12

I wish there was some way for the system to ban people if they submit their own blog posts. This is a non-study. The vast majority of people looking for "java" are looking for the programming language. If they weren't, all those links wouldn't be at the top of Google. For most people, this IS the correct response. For anyone else, seems like they could just say "huh, programming languages?" And then type "java indone…

What makes you think the vast majority of people looking for "java" are looking for the programming language? How many people in the world are programmers and are you biased by your own particular situation?

The rest of the non-programming world is probably full of people wanting to know where to buy Java coffee, or wanting to know something about Indonesian islands.

Re: The curious case of DuckDuckGo

#19

Post by puredemo » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:43 AM UTC

I've said this for a long time, but I think the biggest thing holding back DDG from truly widespread adoption is the name and branding.

No one is ever going to 'dukgo' someone. Searching is a verb, the naming conventions used with DDG in its current form just don't fly. I'd love to talk shop with Gabriel about the identity decisions, and whether he is open to pivoting the brand identity now that the service is getting more well known..

Re: The curious case of DuckDuckGo

#20

Post by ansy » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:45 AM UTC

This is really an example of taking Google's strengths and making them out to be weaknesses. Google's search algorithm is tuned to what actually works for most people. Does anyone search for Java and click on coffee links? Or links for Java the island in Indonesia? Based on these results I would bet not. The thousands if not millions of people that typed Java before you didn't want coffee or islands. They wanted the Java virtual machine and programming language so all those long clicks to Java programming sites and JVM downloads have corrected the results page to reflect that.

But if you typed "cup of java" or "java island" there would be no mistake. Those people wanted coffee and Indonesia. So that's what links you get.

I have used DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine. But it is not competition for Google. Google is much, much more advanced.

If I typed in a proper name and that proper name was tied to an address in my area such as by being in the local white pages or having an address on a website, I would see the local result for that name because Google looked up the geolocation of my IP. That sounds a little creepy, but I got what I wanted. Google gave that link extra weight for being near my location therefore it wasn't buried on page 50. That's incredibly smart. How would DDG solve the same problem? It doesn't even try.