DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries • Hacker News Board

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#151

Post by anfilt » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

quesera wrote: post #143

dimator wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must be in the minority here, but even after trying ddg exclusively, I find myself doing !g all the time, to the point where I just switched back. I do many technical searches throughout the day, and ddg falls short basically every time. Google is always closer to the mark with my search intent , with for example, deep links to stack overflow answers that ddg misses.

I've read so many people say this, but it does not match my experience at all. I use DDG 100% of the time, and maybe retry on another search engine a couple times per month. There's clearly some difference, but I don't know what it is: - Search topic (my searches are mostly tech-related, but other family members are also happy on DDG) - Query style (I may be a bit literal/keyword-inclined, but others are more convers…

I honestly find it interesting people have trouble with duckduckgo. Although, the one thing I have found lacking is their exact phrase search. For exact queries I end up having to add !g the query. Otherwise, I find myself rarely needing to use google.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#152

Post by FalconSensei » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #74

yabones wrote: post #33

I've used DDG full-time for over two years now. I honestly don't miss Google. Every time I use !g I'm reminded just how bad it's gotten. Between the SEO spam and ads I find myself scrolling at least halfway down the page to find anything even remotely relevant. I can't say that DDG always has the 'best' results, but at least they seem appropriate to what I'm searching for. One thing I do wish DDG has is webmaster too…

!g is some sort of brilliant marketing. Me: "I don't see what I expected. I'll try Google." Me two seconds later 9 out of 10 times: "Oh, Google also sucks for this query. Oh well."

That is brilliant indeed. Although I don't understand why I would use '!g' instead of just 'g'+tab/whitespace, as that would use google as the browser search engine - if you manually added 'g' as google's keyword, or if you used google enough that when you type 'g' it interprets as possible google

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#153

Post by quantumofalpha » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #149

Something I'd like to know as a user is how I can help improve search results on DDG

Use Bing every now and then, the underlying web search engine of DDG. They will track your clicks, unlike DDG, but those clicks are vital for training their ranking system.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#154

Post by Tijdreiziger » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

radium3d wrote: post #47

mrweasel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same. I am a little annoyed that I can’t pay for ad-free Youtube without also buying YouTube Music, which I didn’t need. Content costs money, and if I don’t want ads, I need to pay the difference. I where a little surprised to see Linus Tech Tips break down they income and showing that Youtube Premium as significant source of revenue.

As a music listener I love YouTube music app, it's great being able to listen to almost anything I want in high quality any time.

When I tried it, I couldn't deal with it auto-generating a 'related' playlist whenever I played anything. (I pay for YT Premium, so if I could use YT Music then I wouldn't have to pay for Spotify.) How did you deal with that problem?

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#155

Post by esturk » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:11 PM UTC

DDG really needs to clean out their ! Shortcuts. Some of them simply doesn't work or out right banned like r/the_donald.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#156

Post by XargonEnder » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

Merman_Mike wrote: post #138

rkalla wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is both horrifying and tantalizing

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#157

Post by XargonEnder » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

esturk wrote: post #155

DDG really needs to clean out their ! Shortcuts. Some of them simply doesn't work or out right banned like r/the_donald.

Can you tell us more or perhaps provide a link?

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#158

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:38 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #107

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you specify what sites to be put in a container? What I want to be able to do is anytime I click on my bookmark link, it'll open it up in a new container. I haven't figured out a way to do this without some manual process.

The official "Multi-Account Containers" extension does that. Honestly I don't understand why it's not built-in, because as you mention without it it's hard not to "leak" outside of the containers. With it you can associate domains with containers and tell Firefox to always open them in a container. It will also automatically un-containerize if you follow a link to a third party domain. Basically how I expect containe…

Holy crap thank you so much for this! This was the primary thing I complained about for containers and why I never bothered to use them. I completely agree this should've been integrated with it and it makes no sense to me why. Containers as it is are pretty tedious.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#159

Post by Marsymars » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #40

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 DDG as well but I went further and told Firefox to use a dedicated container for google domains. I also did it because they made Youtube really annoying to use when you're not logged in, so I made a burner account but it's only active inside this container and they can't track me around the web (at least, not with that).

The Enhancer for YouTube extension cuts down on the annoying things when not logged in. I was able to move to YouTube to temporary containers using the EfYT extension to set my preferences.

Re: DuckDuckGo Reaches 100M Daily Search Queries

#160

Post by quesera » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

anfilt wrote: post #151

quesera wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read so many people say this, but it does not match my experience at all. I use DDG 100% of the time, and maybe retry on another search engine a couple times per month. There's clearly some difference, but I don't know what it is: - Search topic (my searches are mostly tech-related, but other family members are also happy on DDG) - Query style (I may be a bit literal/keyword-inclined, but others are more convers…

I honestly find it interesting people have trouble with duckduckgo. Although, the one thing I have found lacking is their exact phrase search. For exact queries I end up having to add !g the query. Otherwise, I find myself rarely needing to use google.

Exact phrases, even when quoted?