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DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

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Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#51

Post by Semaphor »

questionfor wrote: post #38
chuckgreenman wrote: post #25

I think I've figured out what is happening when people tell me that DuckDuckGo's results "aren't good enough". What's really happening is that they've been trained to search a certain way to using Google and because DDG doesn't have all the historical data of your searches on their platform they can't fill in the gaps as well. After a couple days using DDG I found the right vocabulary to get good local results and wh…

Can you share what is the right vocabulary for example? I have DDG as main engine for the phone and unless it’s Wikipedia level question, I have to use g!

Don’t use natural language, use keywords and quotes. Essentially the way people searched 5-10 years ago. I rarely need !g

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#52

Post by andrepd »

anderspitman wrote: post #15

I switched over to DDG a few weeks ago. I slowly regressed to more and more !g usage, and finally switched back to GOOG a couple days ago. Then just an hour ago I searched for "google fiber stadia", because I was curious how well they work together. The main reddit result opened in an amp page (and of course reddit pressured me to install the mobile app). I went back to the results and started scrolling down. I hones…

Try using a google mirror instead, like Startpage. The google results without the spying.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#53

Post by simias »

speps wrote: post #11

It's only good enough when you're in the US, I live in the UK and DDG consistently returns non local results even though the country is set correctly, it's especially annoying given how many US cities are named after their UK counterpart.

I use DDG, I'm not in the US and I never really felt that was an issue. If I'm looking specifically for something local I'd sooner use google maps directly anyway, not just a random web search.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#54

Post by crashbunny »

Everyone is talking about the quality of results, but how much better is it in terms of tracking and sharing data?

ATM I'm using quant.com, a french company bound by European privacy laws. It has its own index and I rarely need to use google.

I have no idea who is better in terms of privacy but I'm preferring the french company over the American duckduckgo atm.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#55

Post by irrational »

magicalhippo wrote: post #37
irrational wrote: post #18

I’ve been using DDG exclusively for years. People talk about how hard it is to switch, but I’ve never had any trouble getting exactly the results I’m searching for. I sometimes wonder what makes google search results so amazing, but not enough to risk it.

Guess it depends on domain. I've changed the default in Firefox a few weeks ago and find that for "regular" searching DDG is enough that I don't go to Google. But for specialized searches I frequently reach for the Google override, and sure enough Google has significantly better results. Like searching specific, weird errors messages and such.

That’s the thing. The vast majority of my searches are development/coding related. I always find what I’m looking for in the first few returns. I sometimes wonder if I’d get even better results on google?

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#57

Post by jaggs »

hiccuphippo wrote: post #39
anderspitman wrote: post #15

I switched over to DDG a few weeks ago. I slowly regressed to more and more !g usage, and finally switched back to GOOG a couple days ago. Then just an hour ago I searched for "google fiber stadia", because I was curious how well they work together. The main reddit result opened in an amp page (and of course reddit pressured me to install the mobile app). I went back to the results and started scrolling down. I hones…

You can use !s in ddg to get google results without google.

Does that bring up Startpage results?

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#58

Post by KuiN »

motogpjimbo wrote: post #19
speps wrote: post #11

It's only good enough when you're in the US, I live in the UK and DDG consistently returns non local results even though the country is set correctly, it's especially annoying given how many US cities are named after their UK counterpart.

Also in the UK. It's noticeable that for many search terms, DDG's top autocomplete suggestion is the term you just typed, with "uk" tacked on the end of it. That suggests that many users in the UK are finding DDG's search results to be too US-centric.

This is _by far_ my biggest issue with DDG. I've been trying to use it for most of my searching and I'm fine with having to append '!g' to ~25% of my searches, it's not ideal, but whatever, I can manage.

Having to append 'uk' to 90% of searches after the first results page is full of useless American shit, for search terms that Google UK handles flawlessly, gets old, very quick.

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#59

Post by scarecrowbob »

I moved away from Chrome and Google about 6 months ago.

There are two places where I find DDG to be better:

- when I know specifically what page/site I am looking for, but don't know the address

- when I am looking for results that are heavily monetized (like, say, which pedal steel guitar amp might be suited to my project)

I still find myself using g!, especially when the first couple of results for, say, a cryptic log message or esoteric programming term aren't giving me what I want.

If I know it's a hard to search term, or a specific image result, I will just default to g!

But even if, say, 60% of the time I'm using g!, I still feel better because I feel like DDG is a less "creepy" system and using it as a default at least leaves some amount of a hole in one company's records of my activities. (admittedly, that's a goofy and questionable reason).

Re: DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

#60

Post by Waterluvian »

chuckgreenman wrote: post #25

I think I've figured out what is happening when people tell me that DuckDuckGo's results "aren't good enough". What's really happening is that they've been trained to search a certain way to using Google and because DDG doesn't have all the historical data of your searches on their platform they can't fill in the gaps as well. After a couple days using DDG I found the right vocabulary to get good local results and wh…

I've been a DDG booster for a while. Their search results are usually good enough. Except after longer use I've found two major issues that eventually forced me back to Google:

1. I can Image Search the most basic of terms and literally get "No Results Found" once or twice a day. Sometimes I'll get like... 8 photos.

2. I will weirdly get the Wikipedia link for a relevant query, but the British or Spanish or some other version often isn't even in English. And I do have "Canada" toggled on.

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