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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

#201

Post by rendaw »

atxbcp wrote: post #33
ploxiln wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results. Companies can't help but cater to the 10x bigger market. They probably spend money less carefully too, so are more valuable to advertisers. I don't attribute any malice to this kind of thing. I just expect that if a project or product is trying to be more eas…

> There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results but then they could disable them by default, and users can enable them in the settings ? Removing them entirely just makes the product worse.

Or add a button, etc.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#202

Post by sMarsIntruder »

p-e-w wrote: post #77
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…

Can I use Kagi without linking any real-world identifiers (including credit card details) to my search queries in any way? I'm very much interested in a high-quality search engine, and certainly willing to pay for it, but unless the above condition is satisfied, it's a non-starter for me.

I know HN is against Bitcoin by design (it’s destroying the planet!11), but I really miss the opportunity to pay with Lightning TBH. It’s fine for me having an account, but not using a credit card linked to my name. I found a 2022 thread where someone asked to pay with BTC or Monero, but still. No news.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#203

Post by rippercushions »

fsckboy wrote: post #157
rippercushions wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the previous poster, but I'm a paid subscriber of Kagi and was previously a heavy user of DDG. The key difference that the previous poster outlined and you're missing is that with Kagi, you're the customer, while with DDG, you're the product. Kagi is thus incentivized to improve their offering to better fit your needs as a user, while DDG is incentivized to better serve their customers the advertisers.

neither the previous poster, but I'm not missing what was said, but are you missing that paying a subscription for something, if it becomes popular, becomes an irresistible audience to also advertise to? Have you seen Amazon Prime video lately? it becomes more and more festooned with ads, like happened to cable TV. Pay a subscription, and watch ads, or promotions, or product placements. They're drunk on it.

Kagi doesn't have any ads, and serves an audience that is so opposed to ads that they'll pay for the privilege. Sure, in 10 or 20 years that may change, but for now I don't seem them changing that and taking away their single biggest differentiator.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#204

Post by stakhanov »

AnonCoward42 wrote: post #197
stakhanov wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

> [...] 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 sounds a bit like the use case of ChatGPT/BingAI. Depending on your specific use case it might be the wrong fit - especially if you want to look up PI - however it is excellent as a rubberduck/idea provider.

It's precisely the antithesis of a use case of ChatGPT/BingAI. I want sourced information, and the opportunity to read the source in its original form, make a critical judgment about it, and draw my own conclusions. Giving me the opportunity to ask a question and get an answer, when I have no way of knowing whether the answer is a hallucination is less than useless. It's a waste of time.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#205

Post by SileNce5k »

palata wrote: post #72
Fabricio20 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200 searches per month at $5? Holy christ I might do that in a single day! I guess this pricing isn't meant to countries outside of the US.

Have you ever tried counting your searches? You may be surprised. I'm slightly above the 500/month.

I personally have 519 in the last 30 days just on my work PC. I search way more at home, so I'd estimate that I do at least 1000 per month in total. And this is not counting the searches I do on my phone either.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#206

Post by Super_Jambo »

fsckboy wrote: post #157
rippercushions wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the previous poster, but I'm a paid subscriber of Kagi and was previously a heavy user of DDG. The key difference that the previous poster outlined and you're missing is that with Kagi, you're the customer, while with DDG, you're the product. Kagi is thus incentivized to improve their offering to better fit your needs as a user, while DDG is incentivized to better serve their customers the advertisers.

neither the previous poster, but I'm not missing what was said, but are you missing that paying a subscription for something, if it becomes popular, becomes an irresistible audience to also advertise to? Have you seen Amazon Prime video lately? it becomes more and more festooned with ads, like happened to cable TV. Pay a subscription, and watch ads, or promotions, or product placements. They're drunk on it.

If Kagi adds ads I'll leave it.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#207

Post by palata »

ThatGeoGuy wrote: post #124
palata wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever tried counting your searches? You may be surprised. I'm slightly above the 500/month.

I'm approximately in the 900-1100/month range. Based on their existing pricing at the $10 plan, that's 700 searches plus up to 400 searches at 15c / search. Total is ~$16 / month depending on how many searches I make. The unlimited plan is appealing, but I'm convinced paying something in the range of $16-$25 a month ($192 - $300 / year, or $163 - $255 / year with their 15% annual discount) is still a steep price. Sur…

I agree with the anxiety, that's also something I hate with clouds (AWS and similar). Though for Kagi it's counting my searches, so it's not like a bot on the other side of the world will raise my bill.

For all of those, I would like to be able to set an upper limit. Like "cut my service for the rest of the month if it costs more than X".

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#208

Post by Springtime »

I've been keeping a directory of screenshots of poor DDG results for the past couple years and there have been many conspicuously broken results. It's a damn shame since 2+ years ago DDG was better.

Some examples:

- Double quoted strings ignored, continuing to return results without the quoted string.

- Adding the exclusion parameter doing nothing, continuing to return results with the string.

- Various queries return non-legit sites in the majority top 10 results or more—sometimes being all results. By non-legit, meaning: these are randomized named domains that have scraped other sites' content or are doing word salad query matching. Example query from December last year: `google "oauth" "api" "thunderbird"` returned all non-legit sites.

- Using `site:` parameter to restrict a query to specific site can return fewer results for that domain (eg: two results vs dozens) than just searching for the site name and query without the `site:` parameter.

- Using `site:` parameter to limit to TLD only sometimes returns only single result or nothing despite knowing there are domains that contain the query. Eg: last year when searching `opnsense site:.se` there should have been tons of results from teklager.se but there were none (I have the screenshots), but searching `opnsense site:teklager.se` returned results.

In the most egregious cases that I've documented I submit feedback but it always seemed like a hopeless cause the worse the results became.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#209

Post by sMarsIntruder »

sMarsIntruder wrote: post #202
p-e-w wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I use Kagi without linking any real-world identifiers (including credit card details) to my search queries in any way? I'm very much interested in a high-quality search engine, and certainly willing to pay for it, but unless the above condition is satisfied, it's a non-starter for me.

I know HN is against Bitcoin by design (it’s destroying the planet!11), but I really miss the opportunity to pay with Lightning TBH. It’s fine for me having an account, but not using a credit card linked to my name. I found a 2022 thread where someone asked to pay with BTC or Monero, but still. No news.

[flagged]

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#210

Post by freediver »

palata wrote: post #207
ThatGeoGuy wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm approximately in the 900-1100/month range. Based on their existing pricing at the $10 plan, that's 700 searches plus up to 400 searches at 15c / search. Total is ~$16 / month depending on how many searches I make. The unlimited plan is appealing, but I'm convinced paying something in the range of $16-$25 a month ($192 - $300 / year, or $163 - $255 / year with their 15% annual discount) is still a steep price. Sur…

I agree with the anxiety, that's also something I hate with clouds (AWS and similar). Though for Kagi it's counting my searches, so it's not like a bot on the other side of the world will raise my bill. For all of those, I would like to be able to set an upper limit. Like "cut my service for the rest of the month if it costs more than X".

You can do that with Kagi, there is both a soft limit and hard limit you can set. Although we would like to go towards the future with no limits as soon as economics allow it.
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