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Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

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Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#111

Post by Pwnguinz »

tzz wrote: post #37

How does DDG work? Do they have their own algorithm to rank the web pages? What makes their algorithm better?

Behind the scenes, DDG uses Yandex and Bing to power its search results. It also does its own crawling (however, I'm not sure to what extent).

Their algorithm isn't necessarily better, but if you were to just give it a try, you'll notice their 'Instant Answers' section at the top of a search that usually gets you exactly what you want without having to click on a single result (much like how certain search queries on Google will return you an instant answer).

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#112

Post by [deleted] »

edj wrote: post #110
tosseraccount wrote: post #11

Duck duck is barely usable ... but they don't spy on you. The !g and !b commands make it my first choice. If the results aren't getting what you want, try the search on google or bing. IF you don't mind Sergy Brin or Bill Gates tracking you. I still think there's room for a search engine that supports boolean(ish?) operations like AND, OR , NOT and NEAR. Providing links directly to the source and not a redirect to th…

Duck duck is barely usable ... but they don't spy on you. The !g and !b commands make it my first choice. I keep leaving DDG for the not-always-super-relevant results, and I keep coming back for the privacy, clean interface, and !bang syntax. I love that using it means my searches are private by default. But the real killer feature is !bang. I find that it's faster to do a Google image search using DDG with "!gi" tha…

[deleted]

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#113

Post by cpncrunch »

josteink wrote: post #97
tosseraccount wrote: post #11

Duck duck is barely usable ... but they don't spy on you. The !g and !b commands make it my first choice. If the results aren't getting what you want, try the search on google or bing. IF you don't mind Sergy Brin or Bill Gates tracking you. I still think there's room for a search engine that supports boolean(ish?) operations like AND, OR , NOT and NEAR. Providing links directly to the source and not a redirect to th…

Duck duck is barely usable On the contrary, I find Google barely usable these days, with everything covered in layers and layers of horrible bloat, random UX mess of the week and constant pestering about G+. DDG is nice and clean, has features Google is (still) lacking and just gets me the results. I may resort to other search-engines (like Google) once a week or so, but at this point, there's no way I'm going back t…

Google's interface seems to have improved recently, now that they have removed the duplicate left-hand column and put the options on top.

As for search results: I tried DDG again last week, and was shocked by the poor quality of results compared to google, bing or yandex. Search for "html table tag" and you'll see no w3schools or MDN results. Instead a lot of other, crappier sites. Google, yandex and bing all show w3schools and MDN near the top, so DDG must be filtering these results (which is ironic, given that they say they don't put you in a "filter bubble").

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#114

Post by howeyc »

simias wrote: post #90
jmsduran wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applaud what DDG is doing. I've been using it as my default search engine for roughly 2 years. Yes, there are some areas for improvement, especially when it comes to complex technical queries. But for the majority of everyday things, DDG is excellent, and returns less advertisement bloat within its results than Google/Bing. Plus ducks are my favorite animal, so launching DDG as I begin the work day is a joy!

I try to switch to ddg roughly every 6 months. I usually switch back within the hour. One example I can remember: I was working on some linux V4L2 code and wanted to get more informations on the "buf_queue". By mistake I searched for "vbuf_queue". Google's results: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=vbuf_queue It only shows 3 results where I am (and 0 a few months ago when the problem occured) which makes it prett…

"Mr. Babage if I were to feed wrong inputs to that calculation machine will it still produce correct outputs?"

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#115

Post by sroerick »

bduerst wrote: post #107
hdevalence wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that one can be concerned about privacy enough to choose to use a service which does not log queries, without thinking that this choice makes them immune to surveillance by state actors.

Does DDG not log queries? You would think they would, in order to make the service better.

Donttrack.us Dontbubble.us

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#117

Post by skizm »

josteink wrote: post #97
tosseraccount wrote: post #11

Duck duck is barely usable ... but they don't spy on you. The !g and !b commands make it my first choice. If the results aren't getting what you want, try the search on google or bing. IF you don't mind Sergy Brin or Bill Gates tracking you. I still think there's room for a search engine that supports boolean(ish?) operations like AND, OR , NOT and NEAR. Providing links directly to the source and not a redirect to th…

Duck duck is barely usable On the contrary, I find Google barely usable these days, with everything covered in layers and layers of horrible bloat, random UX mess of the week and constant pestering about G+. DDG is nice and clean, has features Google is (still) lacking and just gets me the results. I may resort to other search-engines (like Google) once a week or so, but at this point, there's no way I'm going back t…

Google + Adblock is your friend. All results are now relevant :D

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#118

Post by pbhjpbhj »

hahainternet wrote: post #92
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a serious go at DDG 3 times now - last month I tried it but I ended up just using !g for every search and so went back to Google. The thing I use most often, and major frustration with Google, is limiting the search by time period : I wish the additional tools would be sticky. I did blind search engine testing and Google came out on top. That said Google is frustrating me more and more, especially now you ne…

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/1734130?hl=en might be useful for you.

Link is to "verbatim mode" which is basically "Google classic" where all the words entered are required to be on the page in the order entered - kinda like a single set of quotes around the full query.

Not exactly what I'm after but might be useful, thanks.

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#120

Post by moya »

mrfusion wrote: post #80

I've actually been turning to reddit for a lot of my searches. Yes, you read that right, reddit. I found that a lot of times when I was looking for general advice from other people (recent examples: how to treat dandruff, how to start a garden) I actually get really well thought out answers from real people who have done the same things. And I know they're not trying to sell me anything or just get page views. Doing…

Same here. I've been using reddit primarily as a search engine for the last two years. It's a good supplement to filter out the bs.
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