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Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

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Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#221

Post by dredmorbius »

crassus wrote: post #75
zacinbusiness wrote: post #7

I've been a happy DDG user for about 3 years now. I initially started not because of privacy, but because I think the home page and search results are much cleaner and more minimalist. And I've told myself that if Google ever produces a search result that I couldn't find just as easily with DuckDuckGo then I will switch back. So far that hasn't happened. Now I use DuckDuckGo as my home page and it's my only search en…

Google doodles are distracting. I don't need to see a clever flash game commemorating something-or-other every time I open a new tab when I'm working, thanks.

The Summer Olympics games were really, really annoying.

I don't recall many doodle since, as I'm not using Google much and rarely from the homepage even then.

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#223

Post by nzp »

cpncrunch wrote: post #113
josteink wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duck duck is barely usable On the contrary, I find Google barely usable these days, with everything covered in layers and layers of horrible bloat, random UX mess of the week and constant pestering about G+. DDG is nice and clean, has features Google is (still) lacking and just gets me the results. I may resort to other search-engines (like Google) once a week or so, but at this point, there's no way I'm going back t…

Google's interface seems to have improved recently, now that they have removed the duplicate left-hand column and put the options on top. As for search results: I tried DDG again last week, and was shocked by the poor quality of results compared to google, bing or yandex. Search for "html table tag" and you'll see no w3schools or MDN results. Instead a lot of other, crappier sites. Google, yandex and bing all show w3…

My experience with exactly these and related terms has been almost opposite. Lately I needed to look up info on HTML and CSS a lot and not only am I constantly getting MDN results at the top, I usually get a snippet from the MDN page in the "instant answer" (or whatever it's called) box. Before searching for this stuff on DDG I never even realized how good of a resource MDN is (not that I actually needed much info on web related specs in the past).

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#225

Post by dangayle »

kbenson wrote: post #194
patmcguire wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't fight the SEO feedback cycle. W3 schools was linked to by some people, so it shows up on Google, so it gets linked to by more people...

Some people? By internet standards, w3schools is ancient , and has been linked by many people over the years. Here[1], I present you their main page from close to 14 years ago. The copyright notice says 1999-2000, and I think I first visited it in 1999, but I could be mistaken. That's a long time for links to accrue. [1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20000815210025/http://www.w3schoo...

Also, look at the exact match keyword text links and their site structure. They were SEO'd before there was such a thing

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#226

Post by iqster »

jonalmeida wrote: post #154
iqster wrote: post #40

I have lots of respect for the founder. One of his blog posts motivated me to buy my own rack + datacenter class equipment. So much fun!!

Link? I need motivation.

Here ya go:

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/12/duckduckgo-used-...

Tip from experience: Really think about logistics before diving in. Racks (even quarter racks) are heavy!! Data center equipment is also noisy. You eventually also hit limits on household electric circuits. It is fun though :)

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#227

Post by cpncrunch »

zapu wrote: post #203
cpncrunch wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that? (and please don't say you read it on w3fools) In my own experience, w3schools is the quickest way of getting the information I want, which I guess is why it is at the top of google. I know it isn't cool to like w3schools, but then I'm not a cool programmer.

There is now the Mozilla Developer Network which provides much better information. It does not top google results, though. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ta...

That is MDN, which is what I was talking about. MDN is one of the sites that is filtered out by duckduckgo for some strange reason.

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#228

Post by cpncrunch »

nzp wrote: post #223
cpncrunch wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's interface seems to have improved recently, now that they have removed the duplicate left-hand column and put the options on top. As for search results: I tried DDG again last week, and was shocked by the poor quality of results compared to google, bing or yandex. Search for "html table tag" and you'll see no w3schools or MDN results. Instead a lot of other, crappier sites. Google, yandex and bing all show w3…

My experience with exactly these and related terms has been almost opposite. Lately I needed to look up info on HTML and CSS a lot and not only am I constantly getting MDN results at the top, I usually get a snippet from the MDN page in the "instant answer" (or whatever it's called) box. Before searching for this stuff on DDG I never even realized how good of a resource MDN is (not that I actually needed much info on…

Try logging out of your DDG account (if you have one), and searching for "html table tag" (without quotes) and you'll see what I mean. MDN is nowhere to be found. If you see it, then DDG must be showing us different results for some reason.

I find MDN and w3schools about equal, although I do find w3schools is a bit better laid out and quicker to get the info I'm looking for. MDN certainly isn't perfect...I just had a quick look for some html5 stuff (MediaElementAudioSourceNode) and the page is missing on MDN. I find that w3.org is the only place that has full specs for all the html5 stuff, but it's pretty difficult to navigate.

Re: Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor

#229

Post by brightsize »

yekim wrote: post #145
donut2d wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my experience with DDG as well. For everyday searches, it does a fine search. But it fails pretty miserably with complex technical queries which is probably 95% of what I use web search for. For that reason, after trying DDG for about a year (for the second time) I switched to startpage.com.

Thx for the info on startpage.com. Never heard of it till this thread on HN. Just made it my homepage and added it to my tool bar. I switched to DDG a couple years ago after becoming concerned about privacy. Unfortunately, DDG has never quite cut it for me in terms of search results. I do a TON of technology related searches, particularly wrt very obscure programming related technologies, especially related to embedd…

I use ixquick.com myself, which is, if I understand correctly, developed and run by the same company that runs startpage. Both are hardcore about privacy. https://ixquick.com/eng/what-makes-ixquick-special.html
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