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0 pointsRenaud4y ago0 comments

>DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible

I would like someone to make some objective research on that.

My experience is the reverse, so I strongly suspect our reticence is just one of changing our habit more than an real thing.

I switched to DDG years ago and it took a few weeks to wean out the tendency to compare searches, usually brought on by the fear of missing out something.

I very rarely have to resort to a !g search and usually if I can't find it on DDG, I won't easily find it on google either.

I don't feel like missing out on anything and I always find what I need (and if I don't, I can't find it in other searches either).

Other platforms have some strength in some area, like Bing and Google have more tools for image searches, and it's possible that one of these is better than the others at some specific domain, like research papers or patent searches.

But after switching to DDG, all these options are still available and -at least in my case- 99%+ of my needs are met with it.

0 comments

11 comments · 5 top-level

xyzzyz4y ago· 5 in thread

There is not much interesting stuff on the internet these days outside closed FB etc, so search is just not as important as it used to be.

irrational4y ago

I don’t use Facebook at all and I’ve never had any problem finding interesting stuff on the Internet (quite the opposite - there is too much stuff and not enough time). What interesting stuff is only available on Facebook?

peakaboo4y ago

That's a sad statement. I never even had Facebook and I love the Internet.

jobigoud4y ago

I think it's opposite. There is as much good stuff as before but it's drowned in crap, and that's exactly why search engines are so important.

smsm424y ago

You must be kidding. There are worlds of interesting stuff outside FB, in fact if FB ceased to exist this very moment, the amount of interesting stuff around would not diminish by even a thousandth of a percent. If you think interesting stuff is only on FB, maybe this is the time to try and broaden your horizons and actively look outside of it.

sokoloff4y ago

Ironic for this debate to be happening here (publicly indexed, searchable)

stinos4y ago· 1 in thread

Having used DDG for almost a decade now, I indeed doubt any objective research would come up showing the results are never up to par or even better than Google's (or other search engines for that matter). Of course I'm also not going to compare DDG results with others when DDG immediately finds what I need so never really checked that myself actually..

Still, no matter how much I like and promote DDG, I'm definitely not in the 'I always find what I need' camp. I don't know why but DDG is simply bad in some aspects. Sometimes it can be circumvented by altering search terms, but other times I have the impression after all those years its crawling or database is still lacking. I encounter this almost daily, most recent example: searching for 'preamp for hypex' Google and Bing (in private search windows) immediately turn up posts from audio forums I expect to have these topics. DDG just doesn't have those probably, because instead it automatically "Includes results for amplifier hypex" (which I find extremely annoying in any case, and makes no sense in this case since the word 'preamp' is key) and after forcing it to quote each term instead then it still doesn't come up with the expected results.

smsm424y ago

As somebody who worked on search engines in the past, I think there are contradictory requirements from different people. Some people only vaguely know what they want, and want the search engine to be smart and give them as broad field as possible, and if it doesn't, they call it "dumb". Some people need very precise thing in a sea of similarly looking things, and they need the engine to be strict, up to following the exact word order and keeping "filler" words in (looking for "to be or not to be" with common words filter on might be hard :) and so on. And if the engine is not strict enough, they call it "full of junk". It's very hard to find the right balance between the two, especially if you don't build per-user profiles. I'm not saying there aren't solutions but it's a very tricky business with a lot of failure modes.

estaseuropano4y ago

I can't add research but perspective: I search in English, German, French and sometimes other languages. For EN DDG is hit and miss, I'd say 1/2 times it gives me the result that I'm looking for. For DE and FR the result quality is often much lower.

This means at least about half the time I end up with a !g I'm my DDG search.

I don't think bing will be a useful competitor in the long term, but a company that focuses on non-English national/linguistic markets, especially those with own character sets can compete in that area, innovate and hopefully also branch out on the EN market (see Yandex - RU; Yahoo - JP; various CN players).

craftinator4y ago

I've found it's very dependent on what I'm searching for. DDG results tend to match my search patterns better, but it often seems they are missing pages with all the correct keywords that google returns. I suspect it just comes down to Google having crawled more pages, and having had more resources to invest in optimizing result hierarchies.

happymellon4y ago

I'm sure it is fine for English (American). I'll try it again, but as someone who is English (British) it was awful, and never could get UK localised searches correct.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

11 comments · 5 top-level

xyzzyz4y ago· 5 in thread

There is not much interesting stuff on the internet these days outside closed FB etc, so search is just not as important as it used to be.

irrational4y ago

peakaboo4y ago

That's a sad statement. I never even had Facebook and I love the Internet.

jobigoud4y ago

I think it's opposite. There is as much good stuff as before but it's drowned in crap, and that's exactly why search engines are so important.

smsm424y ago

sokoloff4y ago

Ironic for this debate to be happening here (publicly indexed, searchable)

stinos4y ago· 1 in thread

smsm424y ago

estaseuropano4y ago

This means at least about half the time I end up with a !g I'm my DDG search.

craftinator4y ago

happymellon4y ago

I'm sure it is fine for English (American). I'll try it again, but as someone who is English (British) it was awful, and never could get UK localised searches correct.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse