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DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

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Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#31

Post by moepstar »

Ugh, i just thought something was wrong with me, my queries or something in the last few days - the results have kinda turned to bleep..

My results have been looking like the code for Google Ads had some error and was stuck in a loop - resulting in page after page of advertisements :(

Example: roborock s8 disassembly (variants tried: roborock s8 teardown)

Same goes for Youtube - not a single disassembly video / teardown could be found, only reviews with cringy thumbnails..

This is after a number of years of using DDG and considering "good enough" most of the time, i seldomly had to result to !g - and like 50% of the time i had was to find other interesting content to augment what i had found so far...

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#32

Post by user3939382 »

dharmab wrote: post #21
suprjami wrote: post #15

Is there a decent search engine which still has filtering like this?

Kagi. See: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/search-operators.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/filtering-results.html

I've been a big advocate of them, but they broke their promise to grandfather in users on original plans, they doubled their prices, and have everyone counting the number of searches they make. Until they get a reasonable unlimited price plan I wouldn't use them.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#33

Post by atxbcp »

ploxiln wrote: post #13
JasonFruit wrote: post #6

Things like this seem so arbitrarily hostile to intelligent people who just want to find what they're looking for in an efficient way. Why does this keep happening? Who benefits from these developments?

There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results. Companies can't help but cater to the 10x bigger market. They probably spend money less carefully too, so are more valuable to advertisers. I don't attribute any malice to this kind of thing. I just expect that if a project or product is trying to be more eas…

> There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results

but then they could disable them by default, and users can enable them in the settings ? Removing them entirely just makes the product worse.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#34

Post by bredren »

12907835202 wrote: post #14
hk1337 wrote: post #9

Looks like they just rewrote the markdown file and the exclusion looks is still there in the additions? Maybe it was reworded, or an attempt to reword it, because of this issue: https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo-help-pages/issues/1...

It looks like it never worked and the docs were wrong or out of date. How few people were using duckduckgo with these filters for it not to be noticed until now? Stranger still that the author noticed the change to the docs but not that it didn't work previously

In long search routines or deep research I often use quotes to find pages with specific language.

DDG has been my default engine for years now, but by the time I am searching at this level I often have added a !g along the way and am working in Google at that point.

Frankly, these changes don’t alarm me much because I am presuming most Q&A I’m going to be doing going forward will be in chatgpt or a similar service.

In the last few weeks, I’ve taken more and more questions, sometimes spanning a wide but related context to chat gpt.

There are no keyword-stuffed greyhat websites and long serps to dig through with varying formats, styles and recency.

It is just information. And while I am keenly aware chatgpt will spit back complete BS, I have found this problem is not bigger than the problems I face for information seeking via DDG or Google.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#35

Post by Crespyl »

justinclift wrote: post #24
Buildstarted wrote: post #2

It seems duckduckgo removed all the operators like -, +, and, intitle, inurl and others

Seems to have been a while ago. Was swearing at it only a few days ago due to stupid results it was showing, while completely ignoring the "-" sign. Search term: solar panel array concrete flat -roof -roofs Notice how the majority of results still include either "roof" or "roofs" in it? Fucking useless. :( :( :( Had to switch to Kagi, which at least seems to honour the negative signs.

I'm not keen on paying for search, but this kind of behavior is exactly the marketing Kagi needs to sway me over.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#36

Post by p-e-w »

JasonFruit wrote: post #6

Things like this seem so arbitrarily hostile to intelligent people who just want to find what they're looking for in an efficient way. Why does this keep happening? Who benefits from these developments?

The same people who use such features are also on average

- more likely to use ad blockers.

- more likely to critically evaluate any advertising/propaganda they encounter.

- more likely to use VPNs and other technology that makes them more difficult to track.

- more likely to be "power users" of the service, thus consuming more resources than the average user.

Many more points like these apply, but the bottom line is that the ROI for such users, from the service provider's point of view, is terrible, so alienating them makes perfect business sense. And since competition has almost disappeared from the technology industry, there are no unintended consequences to be expected in most cases.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#38

Post by remram »

dharmab wrote: post #21
suprjami wrote: post #15

Is there a decent search engine which still has filtering like this?

Kagi. See: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/search-operators.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/filtering-results.html

$5/mo for 200 searches, $25/mo for unlimited? Loading more pages count as new search?

Does anyone actually pay that? It looks like something a real search engine would post on April 1st.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#39

Post by Fabricio20 »

dharmab wrote: post #21
suprjami wrote: post #15

Is there a decent search engine which still has filtering like this?

Kagi. See: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/search-operators.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/filtering-results.html

200 searches per month at $5? Holy christ I might do that in a single day! I guess this pricing isn't meant to countries outside of the US.
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