I love DDG but it seems to load more slowly then google (obviously, google takes 20 ms, DDG can take up to 5 seconds).
Yes, the search results load much slower than Google. Parts of the site load and then the remaining come one at at a time.
The 50 Best Websites of 2011
41–50 of 106 posts
Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
And what's more, a site which for the most part remained a one-man show taking on one of the most difficult to penetrate markets and actually suceeding in surviving, getting noticed and loved. If that's not an achievement, I don't know what is.
Why do you think the search engine market is so hard to penetrate?
Firstly it requires a decent amount of initial work and investment. While DDG does use the BOSS API, its still a lot of work to get it working right especially since DDG integrates not just that but other engines too.
A search engine starting from scratch is a huge task, which is not made easier with the brand recognition the big guys get. Since search is such a fundamental concept to the use of the web, many people think of it as a start point to the internet. This is where its hard to get early adopters because only people specially interested in new SE's would try the new kid, everyone else uses the comforting familiarity of Google.
And lastly, the leaders in the search space are some really big names. Names which have gone onto become verbs. To go head on against such competition is commendable if you're not in the vertical market. What is even tougher when the media calls you a *-killer and in the initial days you can't live upto the false hype that is created (see Cuil).
Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011
#43I've heard a lot of about duckduckgo on here and on reddit. Are there actual compelling reasons to use this service over google? Is the only reason their privacy policy? I saw a commenter on the linked site state that duckduckgo is great for programming, what does this mean?
These are the things I use daily that I find the most useful:
Lots of nice zero-click goodies: * StackOverflow integration: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=remove+directory+symlink (can also search directly with !so) * IP Address: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ip * Common symbol tables: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ascii+table http://duckduckgo.com/?q=html+entities * Wolfram Alpha integration: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=d%28cos%28x^2%29%2F%28e^x%29%29+dx
Disambiguation (great for software with a common word/term as a name), e.g. homebrew: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=homebrew
Favicons in the results. This lets me easily focus in on the sites that I think will be most useful.
Direct search of many programming references with bang-syntax: * Ruby: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!ruby+IO * JQuery: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!jquery+fadeIn * Clojure: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!clojure+deref
There are many more goodies I keep discovering (one nice surprise the other day was that searching for "Community" (a TV show) gave me the air date of the next episode). The best feature of DDG is the extensive integration with domain-specific information sources or search tools that often give me the information I'm looking for with no clicks at all.
Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011
#44How many of you are using it as your default search engine? I am. I don't think it's as good as Google, but I think it's good enough, some things are useful, like the quick links, and at least the user interface is cleaner, there is no stupid auto-complete etc.
I do for now, but its match failures (especially on computers-related stuff) is making me consider switching back to google more every day. Match results really are much lower quality than on google. > there is no stupid auto-complete That's really something I don't care about, since I never search directly from the site, always from my browser.
Same here. I have it set as my primary search engine for months how but recently noticed that I am more often than not already add the !s or !g to get Google results instead when entering my terms in the address bar.
One of my biggest gripes is probably that it will only display one result per domain unless you restrict a search solely to that domain. And it often shows not the most relevant or logical result for a query for a website. I should make notes on that and send them in.
Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011
#45How many of you are using it as your default search engine? I am. I don't think it's as good as Google, but I think it's good enough, some things are useful, like the quick links, and at least the user interface is cleaner, there is no stupid auto-complete etc.
I do. What I like about it is the ability to use j, k (just like in Vim!) to navigate and that results are displayed on a single page. English searches are good enough to replace Google (at least for me), but I still use Google for other languages.
Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011
#46Congrats to DDG but wow Time has the worst navigation I've ever seen for a collection.
Where am I currently in that list? Where is the entire list? How do I start over? Go to the end? Why does it do full page reloads for every click?
Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because that would be spam. Edit: voting me down for refusing to submit the same article to HN, linked through my own blog? Wow.
According to the guidelines: "If you're submitting a link, put it in the url field. If you want to add initial commentary on the link, write a blog post about it and submit that instead." I think a blog post along the lines of "Several regular HN members made it into Time Magazine's Top 50" in follow up to a single link to DDG making it in fits within the guidelines, but to each their own. All I'm saying is that, thi…
timr isn't the submitter of this story. He's a commenter.
PG was specifically referring to submitters, submitting links.
Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011
#48Nothing but respect for Gabriel!
Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011
#49Congrats to DDG but wow Time has the worst navigation I've ever seen for a collection. Where am I currently in that list? Where is the entire list? How do I start over? Go to the end? Why does it do full page reloads for every click?
Then you haven't seen many list features on major publications' websites. Not that there are many worse, just that this system is extremely common.
There is a tiny bit of logic behind the thinking that some users prefer lists this way (the less techy you are, the more likely you're not a particularly quick browser, so these don't slow you down much, and having them on seperate pages cuts it into bitesize chunks), but the main reason is simply advertising, page views equal banner impressions.
Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because that would be spam. Edit: voting me down for refusing to submit the same article to HN, linked through my own blog? Wow.
According to the guidelines: "If you're submitting a link, put it in the url field. If you want to add initial commentary on the link, write a blog post about it and submit that instead." I think a blog post along the lines of "Several regular HN members made it into Time Magazine's Top 50" in follow up to a single link to DDG making it in fits within the guidelines, but to each their own. All I'm saying is that, thi…
...so following your perception of that quote, you expect every relevant comment on HN to instead be submitted as a blog post?
i do not think it means what you think it means.