Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)

duckduckgo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 173 posts

Re: DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)

#101

Post by pieterhg »

rickdale wrote: post #17
ck2 wrote: post #16

I have to admit I was skeptical about DDG chances but hard work and being in right place at the right time with privacy has given it the success it deserves. (and it's written in perl of all things) ps. bonus points for deleting eHow from results

I also think that their name is part of the reason for their success. It's different from 'google' or 'bing' or 'yahoo' and it yet it is specific for what it does and I think lends people a partial understanding as to what the benefits are, right out of the box. I've been getting the DDG newsletters since day 1, but I can't seem to fully adapt to duck duck go. I guess I just am addicted to using google. =EDIT= For th…

I wish they changed their name to just Duck. Much more clear. Ironically, Google owns duck.com.

Re: DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)

#102

Post by TimJRobinson »

joering2 wrote: post #78
ck2 wrote: post #16

I have to admit I was skeptical about DDG chances but hard work and being in right place at the right time with privacy has given it the success it deserves. (and it's written in perl of all things) ps. bonus points for deleting eHow from results

First, I am sure your comment about language selection was personal. Facebook in large part stands on PHP; does that mean PHP is better than perl? Second, I am not sure about their future. It looks like its a temporary spark after all the omg-goverment-tracks-my-searches paranoia. The fact is, if the large organisations such as Google or Microsoft could not admit on the record to participation in PRISM, what makes yo…

Their motto is they don't track your history at all, so even if the government asked for information or it became part of prism they would have nothing to give.

Re: DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)

#103

Post by mda »

schrodingersCat wrote: post #91
Kiro wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of their results come from Bing so how is it a myth?

It is true that ddg gets some content from bing, but also from yandex, wolframalpha, and yahoo. Also, ddg does some indexing themselves. Saying that they are "just a skin for bing" doesn't really describe what they are

How much is "some"? There should be a reason why they never say anything about proportions of their secret sauce :)

Re: DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)

#104

Post by TimJRobinson »

greghinch wrote: post #64

I like DDG in theory a lot, and have switched my default search to it, but admittedly still end up going back to Google a lot, as DDG often doesn't bring up what I'm looking for, whereas it'll be the first result on Google.

My take: In 2 months of using DDG I've only had to go back to Google twice, and there were quite a few queries where it was even better than Google (mainly because of the meta information it showed at the top https://duckduckgo.com/?q=4+largest+countries+in+the+Caribbe... surprised me)

Re: DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)

#105

Post by alex_c »

pieterhg wrote: post #101
rickdale wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think that their name is part of the reason for their success. It's different from 'google' or 'bing' or 'yahoo' and it yet it is specific for what it does and I think lends people a partial understanding as to what the benefits are, right out of the box. I've been getting the DDG newsletters since day 1, but I can't seem to fully adapt to duck duck go. I guess I just am addicted to using google. =EDIT= For th…

I wish they changed their name to just Duck. Much more clear. Ironically, Google owns duck.com.

On QWERTY keyboards, that's a dangerous typo for a general-purpose search engine...

Re: DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)

#106

Post by charlieflowers »

marssaxman wrote: post #99
throwaway420 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To each his own, but I think the name is endearing and cute. I've been using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine ever since the NSA fallout came, and the results are surprisingly usable for most common tasks. In some cases they feel better than Google because I'm seeing some useful sites that Google doesn't ordinarily show. The only area where DuckDuckGo searches have been lacking for me is in finding useful techn…

It's not so much endearing and cute as it is just confusing and weird; it makes the project sound like it must be kind of a joke, not a serious attempt at building a high quality search engine. I don't understand what they were going for.

I can see that, but remember that "Google" and "Yahoo" hardly sounded like uber-mature names when they came out either. They sound like serious products/companies now, but that's merely because of their sucsess.

Re: DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)

#108

Post by GhotiFish »

greghinch wrote: post #64

I like DDG in theory a lot, and have switched my default search to it, but admittedly still end up going back to Google a lot, as DDG often doesn't bring up what I'm looking for, whereas it'll be the first result on Google.

I have a few bookmark keywords I use for searching

so ohgodhelpme will search stackoverflow for ohgodhelpme

g will search duckduckgo

go will search google.

I have noticed that as well, I gradually migrated from typing in "g whatever" to "go whatever"

Kind of depressing actually. Because I do like DDG.

Re: DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)

#109

Post by hkmurakami »

_delirium wrote: post #65
DoggettCK wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't either. Disclaimer: I work for Demand Media on another property (Pluck), and have only been here about 10 months. I do know a few people on the various teams that do work with eHow and the titling algorithms, though. Looks like that was in early 2011, before Panda came and nearly wiped eHow out, and over a year before I started. After that, they made a concerted effort to fix their algorithms and focus on pr…

I think eHow managed to build up a certain reservoir of whatever the opposite of brand loyalty is among techies, so there's some lingering effect. These days I personally don't think eHow is uniquely bad. I don't think it on average has particularly great content (there are a handful of very good entries, but they're unusual), but it's not spam, or at least not more spammy than seems to be the norm in large-scale com…

I've found that for utterly and moronically basic stuff that I've forgotten about, eHow does an okay job. Of course, I can't speak for anything remotely complicated.

Re: DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)

#110

Post by jghrng »

GhotiFish wrote: post #108
greghinch wrote: post #64

I like DDG in theory a lot, and have switched my default search to it, but admittedly still end up going back to Google a lot, as DDG often doesn't bring up what I'm looking for, whereas it'll be the first result on Google.

I have a few bookmark keywords I use for searching so ohgodhelpme will search stackoverflow for ohgodhelpme g will search duckduckgo go will search google. I have noticed that as well, I gradually migrated from typing in "g whatever" to "go whatever" Kind of depressing actually. Because I do like DDG.

I did exactly the same and I unfortunately also really got used to the "go" prefix by now.
Post reply on HN