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DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

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Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#161

Post by nologic01 »

My experience with both DDG, which I use as default, and Google, which I use as backup has been steadily deteriorating over time.

That is the opposite of what you would expect if incentives and business models around this most basic utility were not broken.

If people can build collectively incredibly useful resources like wikipedia and openstreetmap why not an index of the web as a public good that is devoid of the race to the bottom dynamics of SEO and adtech and whatnot.

Why do we need to worry about privacy violation and/or gross commercial bias when trying to access the most important information machinery invented in recent decades, the web?

Imagine you try to find your way in an unknown city and the only maps available are the sketchy freebies handed out at hotels, choke full of commercial ads, spam and fake entries.

We have normalized too much, we are accepting as inevitability suboptimal services. This is not theoretical and without systemic implications. Knowledge worker productivity - which is a large fraction of modern economies - depends on the speed and quality of information retrieval.

At some point people must snap out of the spell and work towards a sane internet that puts the interests of billions of users first.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#162

Post by jemmyw »

freediver wrote: post #75
user3939382 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a big advocate of them, but they broke their promise to grandfather in users on original plans, they doubled their prices, and have everyone counting the number of searches they make. Until they get a reasonable unlimited price plan I wouldn't use them.

As the founder of Kagi, I want to address the recent changes and challenges we have faced. When we made our initial plans, we believed they were both realistic and sustainable. However, the search market has experienced dramatic changes in the past six months, far more than in the previous 16 years. Additionally, we've been confronted with an economic downturn. As a small, bootstrapped business, Kagi has had to make…

Thank you for building Kagi. I've been using it for some time and I really appreciate the product and your transparency. I wish I could use Orion too but the last time I tried I ran into a bug, and although we did interact over support I didn't have time to continue. I'm not convinced the world needs another WebKit browser but I can understand the frustration a search service would have with the existing browsers directing to competitors.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#163

Post by freediver »

manmal wrote: post #146
DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

I think Kagi is great, but I’m paying on the order of €10 per month and was suddenly told yesterday that I exceeded my 1k requests quota. That’s not a great way of dealing with paying customers. Google warned me multiple times before they hiked my Workspace price. I’m _this_ close to going back to DDG with the occasional Google drilldown.

1000 searches are included in the $10 plan. Currently you are offered the option to pay for additional searches at 1.5 cents per search. Not ideal we know, but someone needs to pay for those, and the notice you received is courtesy (you can also remove it). How would you handle this differently?

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#164

Post by pndy »

nickcox wrote: post #88
Svip wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quotation marks work for me: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=%22lowes+pet+bedding%22&atb... I notice in your HN post, you're using fancy quotation marks; I assume you're not using the same while searching DDG.

Doesn't work for me. Like the GP, I get results unrelated to Lowes, bedding or even pets.

DDG for more than a year when there's nothing to show for the phrase, it dumps some unrelated stuff but somehow tied to my location.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#165

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

freediver wrote: post #110
tannhaeuser wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the changes in the search market, I'm assuming you mean the introduction of ChatGPT and the higher prices Bing is able to command due to bundling it, or rather the brand boost and raise of profit expectations at this time. Which would spell further trouble ahead for kagi and ddg going forward, wouldn't it?

You are correct, the ascent of ChatGPT and its impact on the search industry has been substantial. Fortunately, the swift commoditization of models (and rising pressure from open-source) is reducing their potential influence to pricing, quicker than we initially anticipated. On the other handm, we were forced to reassess our approach due to the situation with Bing, which led us to invest further in alternative partne…

Have you considered or are you working on building your own index?

I'm not in the space, but that seems to me like the natural way to avoid having your company brought down on a whim by Microsoft, in the long term.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#166

Post by skinkestek »

hedora wrote: post #27

I’ve also noticed that “”’s stopped working as expected there recently. Sample query: “lowes pet bedding”. The quotation marks do something; they remove some results from tractor supply and home depot. However, many results don’t contain the word “lowes” or “bedding”. For example: https://animalcare.lacounty.gov/licensing/ And, none contain the exact phrase. Google does the expected thing (return one result). Annoyin…

Reported it a number of times to DDG a few years ago, then just gave up because they clearly don't care.

Stuck with DDG until Kagi though since Google is almost equally bad at this, equally non responsive when we report it[1] since Google has managed to fight their way from product I loved to use and company I'd love to work at down to products I actively avoid and company I went to one interview with and didn't care to follow through :-/

[1]: except the nifty trick someone mentioned about throwing you out of your current experiment and into another so it sometimes seems they have fixed it in 15 minutes)

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#167

Post by nltrf »

DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

I would use them if you could pay anonymously. Using a search engine where every query is tied to my credit card is not for me.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#168

Post by perihelions »

xlii wrote: post #111
DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

I’ve been using Kagi for multiple months and due to advocacy I made few people pay for it too, but I’m completely disheartened by their business model. The whole explanation of the recent “we want to stay afloat” was weird, unexpected (price doubling with my usage, to 20$/mo) and felt untrue (ordinary user doing 30 searches per day?). I felt like it was written by Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler - made sense but also very…

- "(price doubling with my usage, to 20$/mo) and felt untrue (ordinary user doing 30 searches per day?)"

It's like anti-marketing. Target the paying customers most likely to talk a lot about your product – power users with heavy search workloads – and do stuff that makes them unhappy. And that's you, I guess: I'm reading your comment because you're the sort of person who *would* write HN comments reviewing their new search engine. And now I'm unhappy with it too, by contagion.

(30 searches/day is for illiterate gibbons)

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#169

Post by stakhanov »

xlii wrote: post #111
DanHulton wrote: post #70

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…

I’ve been using Kagi for multiple months and due to advocacy I made few people pay for it too, but I’m completely disheartened by their business model. The whole explanation of the recent “we want to stay afloat” was weird, unexpected (price doubling with my usage, to 20$/mo) and felt untrue (ordinary user doing 30 searches per day?). I felt like it was written by Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler - made sense but also very…

> The whole explanation of the recent “we want to stay afloat” was weird

I didn't find that weird at all: They were overly optimistic, both on how many people they'd be able to recruit for a paid service, and on the economics of how many searches these people do.

I'd be willing to bet that those skew heavily in the direction of power users and knowledge workers using search professionally, so they probably do a lot of searches. I was really surprised when I read my own numbers. In the survey they asked me to fill out, I wrote that I'd expect I'd be doing maybe five searches a day. Turns out the number is actually in the range of 30-70 most days.

One data point that seems to support that is that Kagi previously didn't take any outside investment, with the whole thing being bankrolled by the founder who had had a prior successful exit. But at the same time when they announced the pricing, they also announced they'd be willing to take on board small investments from enthusiast users. So it's looking like they really are starting to get worried about money.

I also indicated in the survey, that, for a really good search engine, the amount of money I'd be willing to pay would be a multiple of what their actual pricing is now. A good search engine is an investment that could pay phenomenal dividends for me, allowing me to make better decisions for my business by having better information as input. It allows me to waste less time, when searching for solutions to technical problems. It allows me to connect to the right people. So, I don't want to think of search as a commodity, like electricity. I think that, as a knowledge worker, I'm really only ever as good as the search engine I'm using, and I just want to hand somebody a pile of money to make me the Ferrari of search engines so I can have a competitive advantage against all those people still riding the bus. (The bus is full of billboards and paid for by people who never want the bus to reach its destination, so they can keep the passengers' eyeballs focused on the advertising).

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#170

Post by skinkestek »

elbigbad wrote: post #61
kennywinker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot - more likely to recommend your service to friends and family when they ask their power user friend which service to use. A move like that is shortsighted at best, not good business sense.

It is very, very, exceedingly rare where I am put into a conversation to recommend a search engine. I can recall about twice ever. While it’s true both times I did recommend DDG, my trusted recommendation to friends/family can’t be worth it to them alone.

I actively put myself in these conversations multiple times a year, both here on HN but also IRL.
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