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Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

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Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#21

Post by NathanKP »

Just for everyone's notification Bookflavor is currently not delivering any book results. I am aware of this. Unfortunately it is because this post received considerably more attention than I originally expected and the API usage limits of 2000 requests per hour have been reached.

Edit: The service is back now. I'm working on a better caching solution to lower the number of hits on the API.

Edit #2: Okay, I have a more permanent solution. Bookflavor now serializes and caches API responses locally, then hits the cache and unserializes them if possible rather than hitting the Amazon API. Hopefully it won't exceed the limits this hour. Another advantage is that hitting the local disk cache is much faster than communicating with Amazon's servers.

Thanks for helping me load test Bookflavor everyone!

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#22

Post by johanhil »

util wrote: post #18

"I prefer to uses dashes rather than %20 as it looks cleaner and is more easily understood by the non-technically versed visitor." Isn't "+" the standard alternative, also pretty readable?

Yes, + is definitely more common. Do non-technically versed visitors know and/or care about the different parts of a URL?

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#24

Post by faboo »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #17
burgerbrain wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically I generally search error strings, and expect to get relevant links to archived mailing lists.

Gotcha. I would love to do more with 0-click there. Does anyone know of any good/great listings or search engines for error strings?

I occasionally use http://www.errorhelp.com/ - it's a database of error messages and (hopefully) their fixes.

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#25

Post by pmjordan »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #5
burgerbrain wrote: post #3

I really wish I could do this, but Duck Duck Go really just seems subpar when it comes to anything I actually still use a search engine for these days (technical searches). A better solution for my use case is to 1) avoid search engines where possible (far easier than you might initially think) and 2) just use googlesharing with ssl to provide myself with some anonymity while using google.

That's curious because I really have been working hard to get it much better for technical searches, and I often get the opposite report (that it's better for those with integrated SO , less content farms, other zero-click & goodies). I guess it varies by specific type though. In any case, I'd really appreciate specific examples so I can improve!

I often search for Cocoa Touch and Cocoa class names to get at Apple's reference docs. XCode has them available offline, but this actually takes much longer than googling, and the doc viewer doesn't seem to support tabs.

DDG does fine for some of these (e.g. UIView), while some don't even list in the top 20-30 (e.g. UITableViewController). Google isn't 100% reliable for this either (Apple recently changed their URLs which probably cost them PageRank juice) but it's near enough. DDG is unusable for this specific pattern. I don't know if fixing it would adversely affect other searches, though.

A "!" bang syntax would be fine by me, if that helps. (that's option-shift-K on QWERTY I think)

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#26

Post by jacquesm »

thebooktocome wrote: post #20
epi0Bauqu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples as to math searches, the more the better :)

There are two major problems I've found. 1. Poor interpretation: "distribution of compact support" brings up nothing very useful in DDG -- a bunch of linkfarms, it looks like -- but in Google the third result for me is a relevant .pdf from Oregon State. 2. Users attempting to ad-hoc convert math notation into ascii: Google understands "l 2 space", but DDG thinks I mean "l2space" which is some sort of gallery in I don…

I think this actually homes in on one of the bigger issues with setting up a competing search engine, you have to be equal to or better than the incumbent all the time, and that is really hard.

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#27

Post by jesusabdullah »

I love DDG. I will point out one thing, though: Searching for LaTeX stuff works better in The Google atm.

For example, compare these results for something I looked into recently:

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=latex+flipbook

http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&site=...

(Oh, if only I wanted fetish gear...)

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#28

Post by SageRaven »

As much as I love DDG, I personally find it a hard pill to swallow knowing that it's not truly an independent search engine and just an API relay of Google's stuff. I do take comfort that Google isn't getting data from 90% of my online searches, but it would be awesome to know that DDG was truly its own entity and won't be cut off for some reason in the future, like we've seen with Scroogle (which, I believe, was mostly due to API changes, not ToS violations).

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#29

Post by jessriedel »

thebooktocome wrote: post #20
epi0Bauqu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples as to math searches, the more the better :)

There are two major problems I've found. 1. Poor interpretation: "distribution of compact support" brings up nothing very useful in DDG -- a bunch of linkfarms, it looks like -- but in Google the third result for me is a relevant .pdf from Oregon State. 2. Users attempting to ad-hoc convert math notation into ascii: Google understands "l 2 space", but DDG thinks I mean "l2space" which is some sort of gallery in I don…

The use of familiar everyday terms for technical mathematical objects makes this difficult ("net", "space", "compact", etc.). Since most pages are either all about math or have nothing to do with math, I wonder if there's an easy way to tag the former pages, which would then be used as an advanced filter available when searching. ("Is this a math search?")

Re: Why I Switched to Duck Duck Go Permanently

#30

Post by streety »

SageRaven wrote: post #28

As much as I love DDG, I personally find it a hard pill to swallow knowing that it's not truly an independent search engine and just an API relay of Google's stuff. I do take comfort that Google isn't getting data from 90% of my online searches, but it would be awesome to know that DDG was truly its own entity and won't be cut off for some reason in the future, like we've seen with Scroogle (which, I believe, was mos…

My understanding is that duckduckgo uses Bing rather than google (mentioned in the comments at http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go-arc...). Although that doesn't alter the validity of your concern.
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