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We can do better than DuckDuckGo

drewdevault.com

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Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#291

Post by edgyquant »

Shared404 wrote: post #290
edgyquant wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from this a big reason to build this is it seems a lot simpler than writing a giant web crawler ala google and thus is a good target for an open source solution. Which is the biggest problem with duck duck go.

Do you have thoughts on implementing the distributed search? I'm thinking about playing around with this in my spare time, but that part seems the hardest to do.

I would think everyone would run their own “crawler” but maybe you could use a ledger and delegate sites to different workers. If you’re whitelisting sites you could maybe only crawl a link or two deep.

It’d take a lot of cycles while small but if you get a network growing you could even have sub-networks with their own whitelist additions (and every user has a blacklist.)

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#292

Post by 8bitsrule »

For all it's charms, DDG seems to be tailored to answering the kinds of questions that are most likely to be asked. IME, it's not well-suited to detailed dives into a narrow (likely unpopular) topic.

If the first page doesn't satisfy, just prefix the search terms with '!b ' and Bing usually nails it.

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#293

Post by anaganisk »

andreareina wrote: post #262
Kiro wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their own crawler is only used to fetch things for the widgets, not the search index.

Ahh, that does seem like a more correct reading of the page. Do we have a source that's unambiguous? Seems strange to have a bot that's able to parse pages for their instant answers but then not use those same results for regular search.

They literally user Bing api for search results which is well known

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#294

Post by ElijahLynn »

> DuckDuckGo is not a search engine. It’s more aptly described as a search engine frontend. They do handle features like bangs and instant answers internally, but their actual search results come from third-parties like Bing. They don’t operate a crawler for their search results, and are not independent.

I didn't know this. I tried to use DDG for a while after I switched to Brave, but the results were just not very good and completely missing results I was looking for at times. This would explain it if it was coming from Bing.

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#295

Post by efournie »

chris_f wrote: post #232
krick wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, all of these are quite DDG-friendly searches. It is my default engine and, yes, some results do suck quite consistently. I'm a bit lazy right now to remember all the problems it has, but some of the most obvious are looking up for news on recent events (especially something small, stuff that doesn't appear in reuters and these sorts of media) and trying to find out some basic stuff about local shops and such (o…

> Yeah, all of these are quite DDG-friendly searches... This is exactly correct. Excluding poor local search results (which is understandable bc of the privacy aspect), Bing/DDG has trouble with long tale search query relevance (5+ word queries), and also finding results from small or obscure sites. The later is simply because Bing's organic index is not as large as Googles. Bing/DDG's organic results are still very…

Compared to Google, Bing has a huge problem with paid search results, at least in some non english languages.

My mother wanted to access Amazon last week and typed "my amazon account" in french in the windows search, which searched for those terms in Bing. One of the first (paid) results was a scam site triggering alarm sound, fake virus notifications and asking her to call a scam hotline.

At least DDG filters out the ads but the problem in this case is Bing's OS integration.

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#296

Post by JProthero »

3np wrote: post #284
jimnotgym wrote: post #207

> The search results suck Do they really though, for normal people that is?. Some of my searches today below, can't remember the exact terms I used. Mix of DDG and Google. 1) Walt Whitman, I wanted a basic overview of his work to satisfy some idle curiosity. DDG gave me his wikipedia page. Bingo 2) EAN-13 check digit. First result wikipedia telling me how to calculate it. I see it is simple and I have a long list in…

They do. Something fundamentally changed at some point during the past couple of years. It used to be that DDG was the best for verbatim search (meaning I want to only have results were the exact words I search for are included). Now, even with quotes, I routinely get a whole first page of results where my terms are not included anywhere. Google generally respect the quotes.

I have noticed the same problem with DuckDuckGo searches recently.

I hope that a verbatim search function will be restored in the future; I think it's an essential basic tool for a search engine, and without it the user can be left with the impression that the engine either doesn't understand what it is being asked to do, or that it is wilfully disregarding instructions because it thinks — often wrongly — that it has a better idea of what the user is searching for than the user does.

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#297

Post by henry_bone »

ddevault wrote: post #255
lukestateson wrote: post #246

Drew in his blog post talking about DuckDuckGo privacy issues, but his commercial startup Sourcehut does not offer the Privacy basics: 1. Account deletion 2. GDPR data request 3. Option to unsubscribe from emails So right now his blog reminds me one famous US politician Twitter account. Never fix your own problems, just blame others more often.

I normally would not reply to someone who equates my blog posts with the ravings of a megalomaniacal fachist, but I will at least clarify for the benefit of onlookers that all three of these points are false. I handle account deletion and GDPR requests all the time, and every email you get from sr.ht (1) is not a marketing email and (2) can be trivially unsubsribed from, with the exception of payment notifications -…

Trump is not a fascist. He's not far-right. Mere nationalist tendencies do not make one a fascist.

From wikipedia:-

"Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before spreading to other European countries. Opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, fascism is placed on the far right within the traditional left–right spectrum."

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#298

Post by hysan »

nessex wrote: post #289
kringdom89 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that anyone who claims that Duckduckgo "Just works" only do english search. I usually do "english" / "mother tongue" searchs all day. Everytime, I need to remember to toggle the regional button otherwise I get attrocious results. Whereas google simply understand that if I'm searching using the english language it should prioritize english results while if I'm searching in another language it should prioriti…

I really wish Google would prioritize English results for English searches consistently. I'm living in Japan as a native English speaker, and have my OS, browser and logged in Google account all configured for English only. Despite that, Google search results always prioritize Japanese language content. Every now and then (though not consistently) it gives me a yellow popup asking if I'd like English results instead,…

Was going to post the exact same thing. This was my experience while living in Japan too. To me, the takeaway is that you simply cannot catch everyone with your defaults. Google and DDG have made different prioritization defaults and the result of that is what we see in anecdotes in this thread.

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#299

Post by sightmost »

jimnotgym wrote: post #207

> The search results suck Do they really though, for normal people that is?. Some of my searches today below, can't remember the exact terms I used. Mix of DDG and Google. 1) Walt Whitman, I wanted a basic overview of his work to satisfy some idle curiosity. DDG gave me his wikipedia page. Bingo 2) EAN-13 check digit. First result wikipedia telling me how to calculate it. I see it is simple and I have a long list in…

I am typing this from India. DDG never provides satisfactory results for anything country specific. As an example, point 6 above is a failure. I used to have DDG as my default, but my workflow got so convoluted that I would search first on DDG, see that the results as not good, open google and search again. It is so frustrating that I switched back to Google even when I didn't want to.

Edit: typos.

Re: We can do better than DuckDuckGo

#300

Post by zbrozek »

mr_toad wrote: post #248
carom wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest habit I had to break moving from Google to DDG was phrasing everything as a question. If anyone is thinking of making the switch, you can always redirect your searches to Google by throwing a g! in the query.

> phrasing everything as a question. I wonder if this is generational or cultural? Personally, I dislike trying to interface with a machine using natural language, because I know it can’t really understand me, and I’d rather read and interpret the results for myself than have an algorithm pick the “best”. I actually find speaking to machines (e.g. automated phone systems, Siri etc) using natural language quite embarr…

I also hate talking to machines, minus some exceptional circumstances. I find it especially annoying when phone menu systems insist that I talk to them. Some of them don't even respond to mashing zero.
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