Searching for “notepad” on DuckDuckGo yields zero results • Hacker News Board

Re: Searching for “notepad” on DuckDuckGo yields zero results

#41

Post by WeylandYutani » Wed, Sep 06, 2023, 12:23 AM UTC

toastercat wrote: post #36

Unrelated to this issue, but I get peeved when HN commenters rave how DuckDuckGo results are far superior to Google's, and yet the other day I entered "DuckDNS" on DDG, and it was nowhere to be scene in the top 3 pages. Meanwhile on Google and Brave Search, it is the first result.

If DDG was actually good people would be using it. "It's not Google" doesn't cut it.

Re: Searching for “notepad” on DuckDuckGo yields zero results

#42

Post by intelVISA » Wed, Sep 06, 2023, 1:47 AM UTC

Gerard0 wrote: post #34

yegg wrote: post #25

Hi all (CEO & Founder, DuckDuckGo here). Looks like something may have broken in a release that went out today -- it is triggering a JS error. We're looking into it now and should have it resolved soon. UPDATE: this should be fixed now.

Hello! Why has DDG gotten so worse lately? I thought it was just me but I keep reading the same experience on HN. There is no way you don't know about this? Asking as a long time user and at a time even DDG evangelist. Cheers!

The mighty yegg does not answer such questions.

But if you must know: it's talent exodus coupled with deteriorated market share.

Re: Searching for “notepad” on DuckDuckGo yields zero results

#43

Post by salawat » Wed, Sep 06, 2023, 5:41 AM UTC

Gerard0 wrote: post #34

yegg wrote: post #25

Hi all (CEO & Founder, DuckDuckGo here). Looks like something may have broken in a release that went out today -- it is triggering a JS error. We're looking into it now and should have it resolved soon. UPDATE: this should be fixed now.

Hello! Why has DDG gotten so worse lately? I thought it was just me but I keep reading the same experience on HN. There is no way you don't know about this? Asking as a long time user and at a time even DDG evangelist. Cheers!

Probably because they've been piggybacking off other's search indexes for a while, and the Western World seems downright opposed to actually providing an accurate index of the actual content of the Internet.

There's only so much you can do when your primary index builder's search indexes are probably more accurately reconstituted from https://www.lumendatabase.org/lumendatabase

than their live index.

But hey, that's the price of innovation, right? Can't denormalize access to frigging anything. Have to maintain the info asymmetry.

Re: Searching for “notepad” on DuckDuckGo yields zero results

#44

Post by inferiorhuman » Wed, Sep 06, 2023, 5:44 AM UTC

yegg wrote: post #25

Hi all (CEO & Founder, DuckDuckGo here). Looks like something may have broken in a release that went out today -- it is triggering a JS error. We're looking into it now and should have it resolved soon. UPDATE: this should be fixed now.

Why doesn't DDG return consistent results?

If I search for something, I'll get a list of results, potentially even a featured wikipedia entry or whatnot on the right. If I click on one of the top ranked links and realize it's not what I want, the results page is completely different when I return to it via the back button. e.g. just now I wanted to go back and click on that featured wikipedia link but it's gone now.

FWIW this is the sort of behavior that means I just append '!g' to most queries.