I've had a very different experience. In most queries, I see better or equal results in DDG compared to Google, especially since DDG digs up less SEO heavy pages. But occasionally for certain queries, Google returns better results then DDG. I use the !g clause perhaps once a day.
Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
121–130 of 167 posts
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#122- "python remove from list": Google has the Python docs on the first page. DDG does not. - "site:news.ycombinator.com rms_returns duckduckgo": At first the DDG results looked better but multiple results had no mention of "rms_returns" at all. - "archlinux dmesg audit": Both nice. - "lange nacht der museen berlin": Wow, unexpectedly relevant results on DDG, did they improve their local results? I think I should indeed…
For your first query, DDG returns StackOverflow link which I think could be even more important for those searching about how to remove an item from python list.
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#123I have used it as a default for at least 2 years. I'd estimate drop back to Google for 20-25% of specific "subject matter" searches, mostly around technology. Probably a bit less than that for general searches. Most of the time I run the same search on Google the results are very similar for the top hits. But Google does seem to produce helpful results that are not exactly what I searched for more often. DDG also ske…
DDG skews very heavily towards your country setting indeed, and the default is indeed the USA, but Google is even worse. On DDG the locale selector is a switch displayed on every search results page. For Google, you have to use a VPN for the same effect. I'm a Dutchman living in Germany speaking English at home and at work, so I switch between languages quite a lot: Dutch when I want to know local things (e.g. Europe…
This. At least DDG gives you the option (prominently) to quickly and easily "nationalise" a query, if you want to, and doesn't try to impose its guess on you.
I've often found it annoyingly hard to get Google products back to a language I understand while traveling (no, the "append `&hl=en` to the URL" trick doesn't always work...)
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#124DDG's search results seem consistently terrible whenever I try to use it for an extended period of time. It's fine for really basic searches, but anything more specialized or niche is terrible (considering my interests, that's all of my searches). I mostly use Startpage nowadays instead, which seems to give me good enough results most of the time.
These sorts of posts make me feel a bit stupid - I use search engines other than DDG less than once a week. Are my searches so banal and obvious? Do I not encounter tricky technical problems?
However, in the rare cases that I do switch to Startpage (!s), I get "better" results only sometimes. Conversely, on Google I miss the bangs, the capability to scroll through the results using up/down cursor key (and enter to go to a result), the simple way to specify country specific results (I don't care about Moscow, Idaho and its 23000 inhabitants very much, sorry).
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#125DDG's search results seem consistently terrible whenever I try to use it for an extended period of time. It's fine for really basic searches, but anything more specialized or niche is terrible (considering my interests, that's all of my searches). I mostly use Startpage nowadays instead, which seems to give me good enough results most of the time.
As an example of this that can be demonstrated right now (and potential insight into why this is the case), search for "HTTPS tutorial" in DuckDuckGo[1].
This search is expected to return results that provide a tutorial on the implementation or usage of the HTTPS protocol. The first three results seem decent enough, then things get weird. What follows on the first two pages or so are (in order) tutorials for: Ubuntu, PARCC, HTTP (relevant), VPN, React, R (language), Windows 10, Shiny (related to R?), Matplotlib, scratch.mit, AutoHotKey, Quickbooks, Node.js, Java, Python and Kubernetes. As far as returning results for HTTPS tutorials DuckDuckGo has seemingly not done very well. Many of these results are related to software so one would expect these sites to have well-executed SEO. It looks to me like DuckDuckGo has confused the "https://" in the URL for an indicator of content related to HTTPS. But does Google's search algorithm do any better?
Try the same search in Google[2] and it seems to have similar problems: if you go several pages deep the results still do not acknowledge that "https" is missing from the actual content of the result. But the fact that Google is used more frequently has allowed relevant results to bubble up to the top because people click on them. Only one result on the first page does not pertain to HTTP, HTTPS or SSL. Google's advantage seems to disappear after the first page and that makes sense because anything beyond the first page of Google search is rarely clicked.
I don't see DuckDuckGo's problem as being one of how it searches but rather its lack of usage. Maybe if we use it and talk it up to people we can work our way towards a powerful search engine that respects privacy. I could put up my own search engine and try to do better but I would be a decade behind DuckDuckGo's name recognition and that much farther from solving the actual problem.
1. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=https+tutorial&t=ffab&atb=v144-1&i...
2. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=https+t...
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#126- "python remove from list": Google has the Python docs on the first page. DDG does not. - "site:news.ycombinator.com rms_returns duckduckgo": At first the DDG results looked better but multiple results had no mention of "rms_returns" at all. - "archlinux dmesg audit": Both nice. - "lange nacht der museen berlin": Wow, unexpectedly relevant results on DDG, did they improve their local results? I think I should indeed…
Thanks for providing examples, I'm always baffled by those that claim that Google results are so much better.
- "python remove from list": DDG returns the stack overflow answer (mentioning `del`). If I wanted the docs, I'd put in the !py3 bang, which uses the python 3 documentation search.
- "site:news.ycombinator.com rms_returns duckduckgo": yeah, DDG is fuzzing the search terms annoyingly, though I've heard that complaint about google as well? I've had more luck adding a plus, "site:news.ycombinator.com +rms_returns duckduckgo"
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#127It’s still my default but results are becoming noticeably worse. For instance, I used to be able to search for uncommon names and have them surface; now DDG seems to try really hard to assume I meant some dictionary word (frankly, a search engine clearly ignoring your actual search term becomes useless really quickly). A critical feature though is that “g!” to Google will never return AMP pages; as long as that’s tru…
> DDG seems to try really hard to assume I meant some dictionary word (frankly, a search engine clearly ignoring your actual search term becomes useless really quickly)
I wonder whether that's due to users using mobile more and more, where typos are much more frequent. It is very annoying indeed, and coaxing it with quotes and/or plusses doesn't seem to yield consistent results.
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#128I've been using DDG for a year on my desktop, 6 mo. on phone and laptop, 1 mo. at work. I don't get the people that are claiming worse results from DDG than google - the only thing I can think is that we write our searches differently. But that seems a long shot.
I've never noticed an issue with it except for things where Google has a specific app for the results, like Google Maps, flights, or reviews. Yelp and Apple Maps are no contest for Google Maps. I can type !g but that's not intuitive to most users. I'm also not sure I get as much benefit since I'm using Google for those things anyway.
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#129Is the moral basis enough to use an inferior product? So just because Google is "bad" does it make ok to use an inferior product? How does that help me as an end user? OP's only argument (Google is bad so use DDG) is not really convincing tbh
I guess it depends on someone's morals.
If a company does something you disagree with, but you still support them, because it's inconvenient not to it means you are ok with it.
Sorry for getting politics into it, but I see people complaining about current situation, but also don't want to move their assess to protest, because it is inconvenient to do so. Well duh, if you don't want to put an effort, because it would inconvenience you, then you deserve what you are getting.
Re: Let's start using DuckDuckGo more often
#130I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year now. I must admit, when doing research, I often g! the search as well to see what I'm missing out on, especially with images. I also don't know why they don't offer a year parameter for the advance time search. It's a pretty good engine nonetheless. I use wikipedia a lot, so w! proves useful.
And, btw, !wxx, where xx is the two letter ISO language code (!wde, !wes, !wla...).