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DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

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Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#61

Post by elbigbad »

kennywinker wrote: post #44
p-e-w wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same people who use such features are also on average - more likely to use ad blockers. - more likely to critically evaluate any advertising/propaganda they encounter. - more likely to use VPNs and other technology that makes them more difficult to track. - more likely to be "power users" of the service, thus consuming more resources than the average user. Many more points like these apply, but the bottom line is…

You forgot - more likely to recommend your service to friends and family when they ask their power user friend which service to use. A move like that is shortsighted at best, not good business sense.

It is very, very, exceedingly rare where I am put into a conversation to recommend a search engine. I can recall about twice ever. While it’s true both times I did recommend DDG, my trusted recommendation to friends/family can’t be worth it to them alone.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#62

Post by brucethemoose2 »

midoridensha wrote: post #49
kennywinker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot - more likely to recommend your service to friends and family when they ask their power user friend which service to use. A move like that is shortsighted at best, not good business sense.

I think this one is really overrated. My family never asks my input on what to use; they always buy Apple stuff, inkjet printers with expensive ink subscription services, etc. If I try to talk to them about, for instance, getting a laser printer instead, it goes nowhere. Heck, just getting them to use Facebook Messenger to talk to me since I'm living on another continent is almost too much apparently. In my experienc…

People are just stubborn and creatures of habit, and they dont want to expend energy on a change that is difficult and unimportant. That is the crux of it.

I have family that wont tolerate any changes on their smartphone, wont create or use an email account and such... they arent even very old. But it kinda reinforces your point: they dont really take power user advice either, especially if it conflicts with something they already know.

Also, I think computers used to be more enigmatic to the non techy, but now they are very accessible. People dont feel like they need help.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#63

Post by Svip »

hedora wrote: post #27

I’ve also noticed that “”’s stopped working as expected there recently. Sample query: “lowes pet bedding”. The quotation marks do something; they remove some results from tractor supply and home depot. However, many results don’t contain the word “lowes” or “bedding”. For example: https://animalcare.lacounty.gov/licensing/ And, none contain the exact phrase. Google does the expected thing (return one result). Annoyin…

The quotation marks work for me:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=%22lowes+pet+bedding%22&atb...

I notice in your HN post, you're using fancy quotation marks; I assume you're not using the same while searching DDG.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#64

Post by xyst »

For what it’s worth: I have been using Ecosia as my preferred search engine. Basically it just forwards requests to Bing in exchange for ad revenue which is used to plant trees.

Have been able to use the advanced keywords and operators to filter results with Ecosia

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/advanced-search-ke... https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/advanced-search-op...

Sometimes the search results can be irrelevant especially for programming queries. But in those cases I just fallback to G

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#65

Post by AnthonyMouse »

explorer83 wrote: post #53
hedora wrote: post #27

I’ve also noticed that “”’s stopped working as expected there recently. Sample query: “lowes pet bedding”. The quotation marks do something; they remove some results from tractor supply and home depot. However, many results don’t contain the word “lowes” or “bedding”. For example: https://animalcare.lacounty.gov/licensing/ And, none contain the exact phrase. Google does the expected thing (return one result). Annoyin…

Yeah I feel all search engines have had declining quality for some time now. Not sure if it's unintended consequence of fighting bots. Or unintended consequence of trying to remove some content from the results. I'm assuming it's unintentional.

It's hard to see how removing the ability for the user to be more specific could be a result of fighting bots. That shouldn't have to add anything spammy to the search results, it should only remove things that would otherwise be there.

I have to assume it's something along the lines of, they found that a lot of people would put things in quotes when they didn't actually want an exact match, and so changed what it did to better serve the wider audience. But there is no excuse for doing this without replacing it with some other way to specify exact match for the people who know how to RTFM.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#67

Post by p-e-w »

midoridensha wrote: post #55
p-e-w wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no meaningful competition, so reputation doesn't matter. Those people already left Google to use DDG. Where are they going to go now? Some random individual's hobby search engine with a crappy index? Some shady startup's Bing wrapper that promotes a crypto scam? There is no real competition in search (and in social media, and in email, and in operating systems, and in browsers, ...). Companies can do whateve…

>There is no real competition in search (and in social media, and in email, and in operating systems, and in browsers, ...). This is factually untrue. There's plenty of competition in social media and OSes, and Firefox still exists. For social media, there's Diaspora (yeah, I know, no one uses it), and for OSes you've got to be kidding: there's dozens of Linux distros out there or you can easily roll your own with va…

Firefox is near the lowest market share in its history, and declining further.

Linux accounts for somewhere between 0.5% and 3% of the desktop OS market, depending on who you ask.

Mastodon, Diaspora, Lemmy etc. are niche products used by far fewer than 1% of people.

That's not competition. That's "some geeks built some stuff and a couple of people use it occasionally". If there were just two car manufacturers, and one of them had 98% market share and the other 2%, I doubt you'd call that market "competitive". Competition doesn't simply mean "other stuff exists".

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#68

Post by palata »

user3939382 wrote: post #32
dharmab wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi. See: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/search-operators.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/filtering-results.html

I've been a big advocate of them, but they broke their promise to grandfather in users on original plans, they doubled their prices, and have everyone counting the number of searches they make. Until they get a reasonable unlimited price plan I wouldn't use them.

I guess you can't have it all. Either you are the product, or you pay for it.

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#69

Post by mardifoufs »

This might be related to the bing API. I'm pretty sure Bing hiked their API access prices, effective may 1st 2023. Custom search is way more expensive than regular search too.

But I'd think duckduckgo wouldn't really be affected by public pricing, and that they have some sort of huge discounts and contracts that would protect them against this. If they pay anything that is, since I thought ddg generated revenue from using bing. Though Ecosia seems to have the same issue so who knows.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3688574/microsoft-more...

Source on the price increases, seems like the API is now 3x to 10x more expensive (I used the MS docs directly but the article shows the previous rates too).

Re: DuckDuckGo removed the ability to filter search results

#70

Post by DanHulton »

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why.

It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may affect potential advertisers and their opinions of the service.

For example, you can block a whole site from your search results - and it's an easy-to-find button directly in the search results, not hidden deep within some settings or done via a manually-installed extension. They already deprioritize a whole lot of "junk" sites -- for example I very rarely see the kinds of technical results that are just reposts of Stack Overflow but laden down with their own ads, and if I do see them I can nuke the site from orbit, never to be seen again.

They are working out the kinks with the pricing scheme currently, but I've always found the plans fair and very transparent. If you are interested in good search and potentially giving the industry a bit of a hint that search is important enough to pay for, and all this advertiser-prioritized bullshit is unacceptable, I can wholeheartedly endorse them.

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