DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year • Hacker News Board

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#131

Post by AdamSC1 » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 2:12 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #43

I'm trying to use DuckDuckGo, but for now the local search results are really, really poor. I can't blame them much though, because Yahoo and Bing suck as well. But then Bing's index is in fact the only competition Google has and DuckDuckGo cannot improve as long as they depend on Bing. One favorite example that I've been using for feedback is when I'm searching for "restaurante" (the Romanian word for "restaurants")…

Hi Bad_user

Thanks for the detailed feedback - have you tried toggle on regional settings and language selection from the settings menu? These are a big help in regards to local results outside the US and especially in cases where the word may be a common term.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#132

Post by AdamSC1 » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 2:14 PM UTC

JayNeely wrote: post #125

I started using DDG this year. I've found the main thing that drives me back to Google (and frequently) is searching for anything where freshness of results matters; that's where I'm seeing the biggest difference in quality of results.

Hey Jay,

This is something actively being worked on that we hope to have an update for in 2016.

We also recently released a new "News Instant Answer" that pulls in fresh relevant content on popular news topics. Have you come across that in your searches? And, are there any specific topics where you are looking for more freshness and currently aren't getting it?

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#133

Post by AdamSC1 » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 2:16 PM UTC

XJOKOLAT wrote: post #32

Good to see them progressing. I made the switch a year ago having found their results had improved greatly to the point of "good enough". Before that I agree there was a problem. For maybe 2-3% of the time I'll need to revert to google et al, but I see that as a fair price/compromise for even a small taste of privacy ... which is like tasting the purest of waters. DDG is my default.

Thanks XJOKOLAT,

We recently released a new feedback tool in the bottom right of the search results page. For that 2-3% of time you feel the need to revert, please consider taking the time to let us know why our results didn't work out for you so we can drill down on improving them!

Thanks for your continued support!

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#134

Post by AdamSC1 » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 2:18 PM UTC

takee wrote: post #63

Has anyone considered that the slightly longer and forgettable name DuckDuckGo might have something to do with the low mainstream presence? I think they should rebrand and market with duckgo or maybe just duck.com if at all practically possible.

We recently commented about this on a Reddit thread too (https://www.reddit.com/comments/3vtxib/duckduckgo_search_lik...)

We do have a short domain "http://ddg.gg" although it is worth noting that duck.com is owned by Google and points to their main search engine. So it's not really an option for us.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#135

Post by auno » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 2:22 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #90

bsbechtel wrote: post #55

Most of the comments here are complaining that, while people like the idea of DDG, the search results are poor. Two comments regarding that: 1) the only way DDG is going to improve search results is by you using it regularly. Using it regularly drives not only revenue, allowing them to hire additional developers, but it also drives feedback to help DDG improve search results. 2) I suspect that the difference in searc…

> the only way DDG is going to improve search results is by you using it regularly. For what company or product is that not the case? Unfortunately, most people (myself included) aren't interested in integrating inferior products into our lives with the hope that "one day" they might be as good. I decided to default to DDG last year to see how it was, and because my online privacy is worth something. I found the resu…

> most people (myself included) aren't interested in integrating inferior products into our lives

Sure search results are the most important aspect of a search engine, but it's not the only one. Saying simply that it's an inferior product is very one-dimensional. It might be inferior in one aspect (I too experienced this just after the switch, but not as much anymore), but it's vastly superior in another. As long as the main functionality is good enough, privacy evidently does seem to matter enough to outweigh the shortcomings for a sizable minority.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#136

Post by AdamSC1 » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 2:24 PM UTC

Illniyar wrote: post #72

If I remember correctly, DDG doesn't crawl the web on their own, so considering the many comments here saying they stopped using DDG because of bad result, is there any way for them to improve on this? Are all improvements made to the actual search results caused by improved from Yahoo or Bing ?

Results are powered from hundreds of sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources and aided and refined by our community.

We recently added a feedback tool on our results page, so if you find a bad result feel free to share the feedback!

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#137

Post by djsumdog » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 2:26 PM UTC

Rainymood wrote: post #71

netcan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an unavoidable conclusion is that while people may like privacy or some other benefit/function, they are rarely willing to take a hit on the main benefit/function (search results) to get it. It think this is an important thing to learn here as it applies in many cases. Maybe everyone complains about bad behaviour of their insurance company, but that does not mean they'll take a higher premium. Some people car…

>Maybe everyone complains about bad behaviour of their insurance company, but that does not mean they'll take a higher premium Exactly. >There's something here about "consumer" psychology and choices that is hard to capture in the concrete terms economists like to formalize using. That some/most economists like to use. There is a huge field in economics (and econophysics and stuff) that focused on actual irrational b…

It's like people buying beats audio headphones.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#138

Post by AdamSC1 » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 2:26 PM UTC

sgt wrote: post #35

funkyy wrote: post #12

In all honesty, despite me knowing about DDG for reaaaaalllly long time, I still tend to forget their name. "something duck" is how non-tech people reference it. Cant you really name it something easy to remember and (ouch) Google like Duckgo? Or Ducker? Or anything else that can be pronounced by anyone within one breath?

If you google 'duck' it should be in the top 5. For me it was the 3rd one, the 1st and 2nd being wiki-type articles.

If you Google 'search engine' it's number one.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#139

Post by razakel » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 2:27 PM UTC

4lejandrito wrote: post #111

Maybe slightly off topic but wouldn't it be nice to have something like WSQL (Web Search Query Language) such as: "Select text from *.co.uk where page contains = XXXX and page.popularity > YY". We then could have different implementations as we do with SQL (mariadb, postgres...) name them Google, Duckduckgo, Bing... I did a quick search on my default search engine (DDG) and couldn't find anything related...

You're basically describing the Semantic Web.

Re: DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

#140

Post by bane » Fri, Dec 18, 2015, 2:31 PM UTC

I switched to DDG maybe about a year ago, not because of privacy concerns exactly, but because I was getting concerned that Google's results were getting less and less accurate (literal) for what I was searching for.

I think this is something that technical people tend to care about more than non-technical. I find now that I'm using DDG for very specific searches and Google for "fuzzier" things (via !g).

Google also tends to order results better than DDG, where DDG might have the result I'm looking for in its result set, the relevance ranking of the results isn't quite as good as Google.

About the only other things I search Google for are images (!gi) and if I need to constrain the date range down on the results (afaik DDG doesn't have any way to say "between these two dates" or "in the last month").