[deleted]
4 Weeks with DuckDuckGo
41–50 of 127 posts
Re: 4 Weeks with DuckDuckGo
#42These are good points, though I think ddg really shines in it's focus on the query, and not trying to be too clever.
Google tends to put too much weight on regional proximity and browser language settings, sacrificing the relevance to the query. I guess their approach works for a majority of people and queries, but there are so many times it just feels wrong.
E.g. on a simple query : http://imgur.com/ezKUm (I am located in France, so french results come first. the two windows are in incognito mode for fairness, it's worse when logged in)
Re: 4 Weeks with DuckDuckGo
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google has gone so far over the line with ads it's ridiculous. I didn't even realize it until recently when I disabled my ad blocker for a moment. I'm amazed Googlers can look at that every day at work and not feel like their company has lost it's way. Just checked it now with ad blocker off on my 13" macbook air screen. The organic results are barely above the fold... barely. Offensive.
Care to post a screenshot? I just disabled AdBlock and looks legitimately the same.
Here we go.
Original - http://imgur.com/AGM7I
Ad-blocked - http://imgur.com/Sj7pe
This is from my laptop screen. The first non-ad result is barely visible on the top fold of the page.
Thanks to that key word goes to zach from a comment in this thread. The results are pretty astonishing. I'm disappointed on barely how little visual difference exist between an ad and a legitimate result.
Re: 4 Weeks with DuckDuckGo
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't use AdBlock and I haven't consciously noticed an ad in a long time. In fact, I'm having a hard time finding queries with an ad at the top at all.
My reliable go-to query for maximum ads is [electric heaters].
[Credut cards]
To be fair though, most people asking queries like this actually do want ads!
Re: 4 Weeks with DuckDuckGo
#45Back in 1998/9 I was Director of IT of a tech company in the valley. IT, as always, was resposible for deploying all corp machines with the std image.
I was following what was happening in the valley at the time - and everyone used Yahoo!.
I went through and replaced all browser homes with the new and scrappy Google.com as the main search page.
I deployed this on all new machines as well, and I educated users on why this new, minimal site was better.
They ALL started using Google from that point on (~400 employees)
---
This is the same thing that needs to happen here.
Get an IT manager to set the default page to DDG and educate the users.
(CAVEAT! -- users are far more informed now than then, back then people hardly understood the internet's potential, let alone WTF a search co was -- so telling the avg user "google is bad, DDG good" will be more challenging than then...)
Re: 4 Weeks with DuckDuckGo
#46I love DuckDuckGo, even if a good half of my searches end up beginning with !g. Love the bang syntax for site-specific searching. I have set up my browser before to do this, but now it's far more convenient to just set my browser's default engine to DDG and !bang syntax search.
Google has provided this for years with the "site:" feature (e.g. search for "lists site:python.org"). In addition, Google uses its own results, since as the article correctly mentions "most site’s internal search engines suck".
> Google has provided this for years with the "site:" feature
Which is something completely different, and is also something present in DuckDuckGo.
Re: 4 Weeks with DuckDuckGo
#47I was discussing this with a colleague recently and I figured I'd mention it on HN the next time DuckDuckGo came up. I feel somewhat silly saying this, but DuckDuckGo is not that great of a name. I love the engine, and have gotten some great results from the few times I have used it, but I really, really wish it were not named DuckDuckGo. It seems tacky to me and it's hard to say. There's a support article that encou…
Really? You're not going to use the product because of its naming.
I understand possible apprehension at bragging about it and proselytizing, but whatever.
I do think it's hard to sell to non-techies, though.
Re: 4 Weeks with DuckDuckGo
#48I was discussing this with a colleague recently and I figured I'd mention it on HN the next time DuckDuckGo came up. I feel somewhat silly saying this, but DuckDuckGo is not that great of a name. I love the engine, and have gotten some great results from the few times I have used it, but I really, really wish it were not named DuckDuckGo. It seems tacky to me and it's hard to say. There's a support article that encou…
Name it something more professional like Google or Yahoo or Bing.
Re: 4 Weeks with DuckDuckGo
#49The fact that DuckDuckGo is even being compared to Google shows how much they have accomplished already ... it also shows that domain names do not matter AT ALL.
to be fair, i think HN is pretty much the only place that the comparison is being made, and most of the support comes from DDG's support for 'hackers' and because a lot of people here really don't like google and microsoft.
Re: 4 Weeks with DuckDuckGo
#50I love DuckDuckGo, even if a good half of my searches end up beginning with !g. Love the bang syntax for site-specific searching. I have set up my browser before to do this, but now it's far more convenient to just set my browser's default engine to DDG and !bang syntax search.
Google has provided this for years with the "site:" feature (e.g. search for "lists site:python.org"). In addition, Google uses its own results, since as the article correctly mentions "most site’s internal search engines suck".
"site:" query in Google searches Google index and filters results by domain name, while DDG actually delegates to the actual site and uses the site's search engine, which very rarely is of an acceptable quality.