DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries • Hacker News Board

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#131

Post by AdamSC1 » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

mdaniel wrote: post #120

ravedave5 wrote: post #10

I've been switched to DDG for about 4 months now. I am loving the Ads I get in youtube now that google doesn't know what I am interested in they have noting to do with anything I care about. It's wonderful. DDG still has a way to go for really technical queries. I just can't get the same results about this error or that in Java. Until then I'm 100% DDG for personal and 100% google for work.

Out of curiosity, do you use the "Send Feedback" in the bottom-right(!) corner of the results page to let them know? I have almost zero belief it does anything, but without even attempting to provide feedback I don't think it's reasonable to expect any change

As the person who just read through feedback today, I can assure you that each piece of feedback sent is received, read and logged by real humans who care and more importantly deeply appreciate the fact that users take time to send feedback :)

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#132

Post by barbacoa » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #87

Unlike Google, DDG doesn't filter out StormFront and other similar sites (Bing also doesn't, apparenty). I think that is good because tech companies shouldn't impose politics on very basic tech like search indexes. I wonder how long it will last though.

There is a whole list of right wing news sites google will not link to without explicitly include the site name in the query.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#133

Post by AdamSC1 » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 8:35 PM UTC

himujjal wrote: post #73

time0ut wrote: post #12

Ddg is so good at this point I forget I’m not using Google. I only have to drop in a !g a couple times a month at most. I am actually surprised it is only 100M per day. I think it would be much bigger if there was actual fair competition.

specially for local results. thats where DDG is not upto the mark. Google has an advantage there. BTW, I DDGed for the last 2 years and never been happier. They have improved tremendously

When you come across these, be sure to use the "Send Feedback" button in the bottom right. User feedback is an important part of improving in a non-tracking environment.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#134

Post by AdamSC1 » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

TekMol wrote: post #11

To the webmasters here on HN: Do you see this reflected in higher user numbers coming from DuckDuckGo over time? I run a website too. Let me check the stats... So according to Google Analytics over the last 30 days, 0.7% of my visitors came from DDG. Not bad. That is more then half of Bing, from which 1.2% of my visitors come. Over time, the DuckDuckGo trend does not look as exponential as in their chart though. More…

If users are using the DuckDuckGo mobile app or extension its baked in tracker blocker does block a lot of analytics tools so there is likely a large level of under reporting especially on the mobile side.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#135

Post by ignoramous » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 8:40 PM UTC

sneeuwpopsneeuw wrote: post #113

ravedave5 wrote: post #10

I've been switched to DDG for about 4 months now. I am loving the Ads I get in youtube now that google doesn't know what I am interested in they have noting to do with anything I care about. It's wonderful. DDG still has a way to go for really technical queries. I just can't get the same results about this error or that in Java. Until then I'm 100% DDG for personal and 100% google for work.

I have been using DDG for roughly 2 years now and I always search for things technical or non-technical there first. If it does not give any result or when I know it's very technical I simply add !g to the end (but you can add it anywhere) and it automatically searches the same thing in Google. Some examples of things I personally thing DDG could improve / is different then Google: - DDG gives the feeling they prefer…

> Example search for "A apple a day keps the", Google corrects AN and KEEPS but DuckDuckGo only corrects KEEPS.

Not just spell check but Google understands natural language queries, too, better than duck.com.

Ex A:

https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/search?q=the%20movie%20wher...

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=the%20movie%20where%20...

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#136

Post by mrlala » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

To everyone saying they want to completely move away from google.. To me one of the biggest things is the convenience of random sites that I can create an account with one click linked to my google account.

People seem to really really underestimate the power of that.

Like during this last year of craziness, my kids both have google accounts on chrome so when we find new random websites for learning that I want them to have accounts with, they have all had google click to signin. I probably wouldn't have even bothered with various places if they didn't have that. For my kids being able to visit 5+ sites regularly and the worst that happens is they have to re-login by clicking 'login with google' cannot be understated.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#137

Post by mdaniel » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 8:47 PM UTC

AdamSC1 wrote: post #131

mdaniel wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, do you use the "Send Feedback" in the bottom-right(!) corner of the results page to let them know? I have almost zero belief it does anything, but without even attempting to provide feedback I don't think it's reasonable to expect any change

As the person who just read through feedback today, I can assure you that each piece of feedback sent is received, read and logged by real humans who care and more importantly deeply appreciate the fact that users take time to send feedback :)

Foremost, thank you for your service! I really, really want DDG to be successful and I'm glad to know the feedback doesn't /dev/null. If I might be so bold as to suggest that hiding the "Send Feedback" in the bottom right is a very opaque location for what is arguably a vital interaction DDG has with its users.

While I have an insider: I see a lot of mentions in the threads about folks who use "!g" or "!sp" -- are those counted as votes of suboptimal DDG results? I could see it going either way: it's a bad metric for those users who just default to doing it, but it's a good metric for searches that end in the frustration of a series of bad DDG results

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#138

Post by Merman_Mike » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

rkalla wrote: post #88

randomstring wrote: post #84

I would estimate that greater than 90% of that traffic is bot traffic. Having run two web search engines in the past: search.netscape.com (pre-google) and blekko.com. Robots accounted for > 80% of traffic at Netscape (around 3M searches/day in 2000 IIRC) and definitely more than 80% at blekko. Maybe 90% or more. Some traffic is obviously bot traffic (single source IP, common patterns, obvious bot useragents) and then…

This is a fascinating trend - how could you even launch a search service today where that portion of your processing time is going to be spent powering bots (ad agencies?) and not addressing human queries. Wonder what a human-centric 'search' experience will look like in 2025... no more search bar, pre-emptive article fetch based on whatever some ML algorithm decides for you?

This reminds me of someone saying that eventually Amazon will just start sending you things and charging you for them with no intervention on your end.

It'll just happen to be what you needed at the right time.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#139

Post by accented » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

Airyleech wrote: post #22

ravedave5 wrote: post #10

I've been switched to DDG for about 4 months now. I am loving the Ads I get in youtube now that google doesn't know what I am interested in they have noting to do with anything I care about. It's wonderful. DDG still has a way to go for really technical queries. I just can't get the same results about this error or that in Java. Until then I'm 100% DDG for personal and 100% google for work.

I use ublock origin, I don't get ads on youtube.

I use unlock origin, I didnt eve know there were ads on YouTube.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#140

Post by TobTobXX » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

sneeuwpopsneeuw wrote: post #113

ravedave5 wrote: post #10

I've been switched to DDG for about 4 months now. I am loving the Ads I get in youtube now that google doesn't know what I am interested in they have noting to do with anything I care about. It's wonderful. DDG still has a way to go for really technical queries. I just can't get the same results about this error or that in Java. Until then I'm 100% DDG for personal and 100% google for work.

I have been using DDG for roughly 2 years now and I always search for things technical or non-technical there first. If it does not give any result or when I know it's very technical I simply add !g to the end (but you can add it anywhere) and it automatically searches the same thing in Google. Some examples of things I personally thing DDG could improve / is different then Google: - DDG gives the feeling they prefer…

> - indexing Youtube and other videos. It takes up to 2 days before new youtube videos show up if you search for a video. Example a mcdonalds burned down in my city a few weeks ago so I searched for videos and photos. It did not find any videos only photos and articles. Google found a few videos including once on a dutch news website.

If I know that I am searching a YouTube video, I usually search directly on youtube.com. I use Firefox search keywords for this, I just type "yt Rick Astley Never" in my top bar and instantly see the results. Pretty sure Chromium et al. should have something similar...