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DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

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Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#231

Post by nova22033 »

mrweasel wrote: post #33
qsort wrote: post #20

I truly don't get Google's move. I'm sure the model is fine, but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. If I wanted to ask an AI, why can't I ask the one from my subscription... that I'm already paying for... that's actually good... that can also search the web? I assume it's a play to test the waters for how the ad market is going to work, because as a product I really can't see why I would ev…

> I truly don't get Google's move. Users aren't adopting their AI at the rate shareholders expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search.

That doesn't make sense. Presumably AI search costs more

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#232

Post by aprdm »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #211
aprdm wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you make it without AI ? Are you parsing through millions of pages yourself ?

The LLM results are presented confidently and succinctly in a way that is designed to tell you “yes” OR, it not applicable, it just mashes together statements (which often leads to a response that contradicts itself one sentence later). That’s not the same as your vetting search results. Well before Google screwed it all up there used to be some correlation between top hits and what you were looking for. SEO has mudd…

That hasn't been my experience. It has been working really well for what I need.

SEO optimization totally ruined google search for me for the past few years

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#234

Post by gbalduzzi »

Legend2440 wrote: post #172
mrweasel wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm not opposed to the idea that Google AI mode is so good that people use it more, I also feel like the average person only have so many queries per day. Google statement would indicate that people had a number of queries that they just opted to ignore, because find the answers was to cumbersome. I'm not entirely sure I'm buying that, unless users keep prompting the AI to reduce the amount of reading they need…

AI mode isn't for queries, it's for questions. You ask it direct, specific things like 'how do I do in ' and it provides a fast answer. People have many more questions in their life than they do queries.

In programming forums like Hacker News people are incredibly detached from the average experience with technology, sometimes it is buffling.

Most non technical people I know asked questions to Google even before the AI overview. Instead of looking for the answer in seo-bloated articles, they find it in the overview.

I think google should improve in detecting the kind of query when I need a link that I don't remember, and deactivate the overview on those. If I search for "ryanair booking" I clearly need the url for booking a Ryanair flight, AI overview is useless

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#235

Post by worik »

mrdependable wrote: post #75
qsort wrote: post #20

I truly don't get Google's move. I'm sure the model is fine, but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. If I wanted to ask an AI, why can't I ask the one from my subscription... that I'm already paying for... that's actually good... that can also search the web? I assume it's a play to test the waters for how the ad market is going to work, because as a product I really can't see why I would ev…

They want to capture more of the value that was previously going to others. That's basically what this has all been leading to. Why let a cooking website get visitors and ad revenue when they are free to take the content and show it as their own? Now they are going to do the same to e-commerce. Either they are going to let customers buy their products through Google's interface, or they won't be discovered. No more o…

"Greed is bad"

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#236

Post by nitwit005 »

qwerpy wrote: post #143
osigurdson wrote: post #28

I actually like AI mode in Google. My main reason is if I just have a quick question it seems a lot quicker than logging into ChatGPT/Claude as I can just type it in the address bar. Of course DDG / others can do the exact same thing as they already have an AI mode. Maybe you can even set up ChatGPT as a search engine - not sure. The key for this use case is speed - it has to be nearly instant.

I'm as anti-Google as anyone out there. I block all their ads, refuse to pay for youtube, go out of my way to avoid their hardware, etc. But I have to admit AI mode is great. It's fast, free, not yet cluttered with ads, and useful. I treat it as a search engine that does a fuzzy search rather than the more literal text match search that we're used to. I recently bought a Bambu 3d printer after Reddit/HN drew my atten…

> It's fast, free, not yet cluttered with ads

That was essentially how people praised Google in their early days. It certainly has ads now.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#238

Post by nitwit005 »

juancn wrote: post #199

Google has ~90% of search where DuckDuckGo has A ~30% jump of DuckDuckGo is about 0.3% of global search traffic, basically a rounding error for google. Still, it's an interesting signal, but not nearly enough to worry Google. If the jump had been 300% that would merit some thought.

That's users changing products in advance of a change, which is a relatively uncommon thing. We'll presumably see another bump when Google actually rolls out their changes.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#239

Post by tredre3 »

Hugsbox wrote: post #34
noncoml wrote: post #22

DuckDuckGo have to change their brand name if they want non-technical people to take them seriously

This has been my issue with DuckDuckGo from the start... it needs to be something a little more catchy and that rolls off the tongue. Saying "I'll DuckDuckGo it" feels so clunky. As small of a gripe as it sounds like, it really does matter.

But none of Google's alternative sound any better.

I'll bing it.

I'll brave it.

I'll ecosia it.

I'll kagi it.

I'll startpage it.

I'll yandex it.

Okay "I'll brave it" does sound fine, especially in our brave new world, but it's still ambiguous when speaking it.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#240

Post by esseph »

xp84 wrote: post #206
WarmWash wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It started when Google made a hard push to improve search for everyday people. They essentially nerfed "expert google skills" to bolster "noob google skills". Regular people are/were really bad at using google, so google moved towards showing what it thinks you want rather than what you want. They paved over the skill gap between people who understood keywords and word order, and people who just typed in a quasi legi…

> they seem to overwhelmingly use AI overviews now too. Hard agree. The only thing I've ever witnessed another person do on Google (this is only an incredibly slight exaggeration) is: 1. Type a 'query' - either a brand/website name or some kind of stream of thought like "dishwasher error 03F" (without quotes) 2. Click or look at the very top thing in the results. This used to mean 80% of the time they'd click the top…

> Either way, approximately all users always just use whatever is on top and ignore everything else.

Wtf

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