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Improving DuckDuckGo

duck.co

61–70 of 144 posts

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#61

Goal #1 should be high quality search results while respecting privacy. Everything else should be secondary. The biggest thing DDG could do to improve their product is make it quick and easy for users to provide feedback about bad search results. I'd be happy to report searches that Google gives better results for but they don't have a mechanism to do so. For example, search DDG for "odroid". The official domain is h…

There's a "send feedback" button in the lower-right corner that does exactly what you're describing (I think it's hidden in the sidebar in the mobile version). I'm not sure how closely they actually pay attention to the feedback, but it's still worth doing.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#62

Goal #1 should be high quality search results while respecting privacy. Everything else should be secondary. The biggest thing DDG could do to improve their product is make it quick and easy for users to provide feedback about bad search results. I'd be happy to report searches that Google gives better results for but they don't have a mechanism to do so. For example, search DDG for "odroid". The official domain is h…

As someone who mainly uses DDG when Google decides to block me for "searching too hard", one thing that would make me switch over to DDG completely is advanced search operators --- boolean expressions, exact match (no, not the stupid sort-of-exact one Google has), etc. Basically features that will let you "grep the Web" the way old search engines do, and what new search engines are even trying to forbid.

Putting the search term in quotes for an exact match seems to work fine for me, not sure about the other one though.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#63

If anyone from DDG is watching this thread, thank you for your product and your commitment to privacy. As a privacy-conscious individual, I greatly appreciate your work. Is there a way to donate? I know you already monetize your product through ads, but I use an ad-blocker (among other things) because, well, most of the internet does not operate with the same values that you do. Since you aren't making any money off…

White list their page.

unlike another in this reply thread, I do not "disagree with advertising in general" - however I disagree with much of the online advertising industry. I wrote a comprimise suggestion post sometime ago, turn adblock into fairblock and I'll see your ads without a grudge.

I think end users should have more fine grained control over what they share and see when getting served ads.

I feel some basic defaults are in order which can be sliders and checkboxes for more control, relinquish of control for more trusted sources.

I don't want to see ads about alcohol or gambling, or games that profit from it. I don't want to see ads that move if I am not hovering on them. I only want ads that are self hosted, not third party injected. (don't punt the malware liability to third party, serve it yourself and be more responsible)

things like this are important for security and privacy, and not an issue with ads, but types of ads. If certain publications run certain ads I may not purchase them, or lose faith in them, they can't punt the blame for yesterday's ads.

Some things are limited by laws for billboards and such, I don't agree with all those regualtions, but indeed this is something that is important - and with the web it's easy enough to fine grain limit certain things from appearing in front of children, or people struggling with divorce, or all kinds of things -

So we have the ability to make ads better, in some cases I would gladly share more info than google allows to be shared currently (I don't care if most web sites get the page and keywords I used to find them, it may help them help me.

I do care if third party beacons and trackers share that info with lots of other people I don't know. I should be able to control this on a site by site basis with sane defaults.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#65
i tried to change google to duckduckgo. it was not sustainable. immediately noticeable poor search results. Searching an address brings me to a subpar open map site,

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#66
post #56
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't think that the results on DDG are inferior, but I'm comfortable with the results. If I want something more personalize or near for my location(Venezuela is not available on DDG) I just go to Google directly or with !g

Search is significantly better when it can consider previous search history.

I'm more than happy with a slightly worse search in order to avoid being pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vehemently disagree with advertising in general, and go to efforts to make sure myself and my wife/kids see ads as little as possible (Pi-Hole, adblock plugins, no TV other than as a NAS screen, etc). I very much believe it is a form of malicious brainwashing. But, I very much want to reward the people who create the things I use. So I'll never whitelist any site or service, but I'll absolutely donate or make sure…

I agree with your position. I'm trying to figure out how to limit my kid from seeing any ads at all. Where can I get more information for this beyond adblock and host file manipulation?

https://www.troyhunt.com/mmm-pi-hole/

A link posted on HN a while ago. Long story short it uses a raspberry pi as a DNS server which blocks all requests for ads.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vehemently disagree with advertising in general, and go to efforts to make sure myself and my wife/kids see ads as little as possible (Pi-Hole, adblock plugins, no TV other than as a NAS screen, etc). I very much believe it is a form of malicious brainwashing. But, I very much want to reward the people who create the things I use. So I'll never whitelist any site or service, but I'll absolutely donate or make sure…

I agree with your position. I'm trying to figure out how to limit my kid from seeing any ads at all. Where can I get more information for this beyond adblock and host file manipulation?

Just make sure your kids are media savvy. If you train critical thought into them, then ads can be much less harmful. I tend to agree in general but I think the way ads infect non ad content is the danger and you can’t block that.

Let’s be honest, the kids of hacker news commenters are probably going to be fine. It’s the way ads influence the unwashed masses that becomes problematic.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#69

Goal #1 should be high quality search results while respecting privacy. Everything else should be secondary. The biggest thing DDG could do to improve their product is make it quick and easy for users to provide feedback about bad search results. I'd be happy to report searches that Google gives better results for but they don't have a mechanism to do so. For example, search DDG for "odroid". The official domain is h…

As someone who mainly uses DDG when Google decides to block me for "searching too hard", one thing that would make me switch over to DDG completely is advanced search operators --- boolean expressions, exact match (no, not the stupid sort-of-exact one Google has), etc. Basically features that will let you "grep the Web" the way old search engines do, and what new search engines are even trying to forbid.

The problem is that isn't how things are indexed, so "grep the web" is a hard problem. Grep on your machine just scans through every byte, doesn't care how long it takes, and doesn't care how much computing resources it uses (preferably, as much as it can).

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White list their page.

unlike another in this reply thread, I do not "disagree with advertising in general" - however I disagree with much of the online advertising industry. I wrote a comprimise suggestion post sometime ago, turn adblock into fairblock and I'll see your ads without a grudge. I think end users should have more fine grained control over what they share and see when getting served ads. I feel some basic defaults are in order…

We tried. There are not enough of people like you to matter.
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