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I've been using DuckDuckGo for several years, but sadly their search doesn't really help for technical topics. I let them have first crack at the answer, and t

I've been using DuckDuckGo for several years, but sadly their search doesn't really help for technical topics. I let them have first crack at the answer, and then usually have to add !g to let google have the next crack. The underlying problem is what they do when a search contains multiple words - 3 or more especially. DDG starts ignoring some of the words, but usually that is what matters. For example search for [usb type c resistor] and the DDG results treat the "resistor" part of the search as a small amount of what is being searched, with many results not that directly useful. As a human we know that [usb type c] is very common, and adding the [resistor] part is actually the meat of the query. Google gets that and gives better results, although they aren't miles apart. The pattern is the user adds more terms to make the search more specific, while DDG then seems to use them to make the search more general. For technical stuff you really did want the specific! That aside DDG has been slowly but surely getting better over the years.

_zekiel 11y ago
This is why we need help! :) Really, though, even if we had 100,000 employees, having a great Instant Answer for hyper-niche searches requires esoteric knowledge and expertise that can best be achieved from a community. Not to mention, it can happen faster. Bitcoin conversions were possible on DuckDuckGo before Google bc our community rallied behind it. The people most passionate about a topic are most likely to create a great answer for it. I can't imagine what my version of a color-code IA would look like. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cmyk%280.12%2C+0%2C+0%2C+0%29&ia=answer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cmyk%280.12%2C+0%2C+0%2C+0%29&ia=a... Finally, thanks for the feedback (and for going into specific detail) and for the kind words. It's great to hear that you're seeing noticeable improvement.
- dhimes 11y ago
  Well, as another datum, my search for an awk solution gave me exactly what I needed with your new feature (TFA). I did that before I saw this thread or had heard anything about the feature.
  - _zekiel 11y ago
    Thanks! As the community grows, I run into more and more IAs that I didn't know were live. This one really felt supernatural when I was searching for a genuine answer in a moment of confusion: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=12pm+noon+or+midnight%3F&ia=answer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=12pm+noon+or+midnight%3F&ia=answer
- stingraycharles 11y ago
  I realize I sound extremelh harsh in my reply, but honestly, "where's the patch" is not good enough an answer for a for-profit business. Search is an incredibly competitive market, and you need to figure out a vertical to get complete momentum in and expand from there. Programmers are an incredibly easy audience to target because "we" understand each other, but asking people to contribute to developing your core product is not a sustainable way to survive in a market like this. If, however, you do have another realistic plan for world domination, and this is just an easy way to respond to the developer community, I completely understand. :)
  - ZoF 11y ago
    > asking people to contribute to developing your core product is not a sustainable way to survive in a market like this. Prove it. Seriously.
    - mixedCase 11y ago
      Sure, give me the funding.
- bliti 11y ago
  What kind of help do you accept? Genuinely interested.
  - _zekiel 11y ago
    The project and community are "large" relative to most open source projects but "most" open source projects have fewer than 10 contributors. To get to the scale of, say, Mozilla or FreeBSD, it will require community governance, so any help with driving the technologies and/or people/processes forward. If you're an interested contributor, then you are a potential owner in the project. The community is at the wheel here -- we're just paying for gas.
    - bliti 11y ago
      Does DDG allow building things on top of it? Like API access to search queries, for example. I'm very much into building things for fun and DDG is my choice engine (on mobile and desktop).
      - tagawa 11y ago
        Yes, there's an API available for many of the instant answers: https://duckduckgo.com/api https://duckduckgo.com/api Not all though, because of syndication restrictions from the original data providers.
        bliti 11y ago
        Cool, thanks! I'm going to play with it if ya'll dont mind. :)
- superobserver 11y ago
  Just a quick suggestion: since Pantone colors are more "mainstream" outside of programming circles, do you think you can integrate that with the color-code IA? (Example usage case: Hey programmer Jim, can you make this part of the interface more like a pantone 537 U? kthx)
  - tagawa 11y ago
    That's a good idea. I've filed it as a feature request: https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies/issues/2829 https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies/issues/2... Thanks
hardwaresofton 11y ago
I think there are lots of ways to search for technical documentation, and I find DDG great to use when I'm looking for language documentation. I use these features very frequently !javadoc SomeJDKClass !npm some-npm-module !ruby some-stdlib-package Amongst others. There's always the extremely useful "!so" if you want to skip google and go straight to the source you were going to click on anyway.
- rogerbinns 11y ago
  I use them for python stuff, but they aren't useful when you are looking for general information such as the example I gave. DDG is also problematic for some error messages again because they start de-emphasizing/discarding some of the terms, giving more general rather than specific results. Both DDG and Google trend towards SO answers anyway - no need to even ask for it!
- ino 11y ago
  But google search is way better than stackoverflow search. And google shows similar but different enough stackoverflow answers, duckduckgo shows only one or sometimes two, many times not the one you're searching for.
blacksmith_tb 11y ago
This is very much my pattern, too. I start w/ DDG, and about a third of my searches are adequately handled, but for the rest it's !g. My main problem is the lack of a way to filter results by time - DDG has a sort:date option, but since the dates themselves aren't displayed, I can't tell if I am looking at a result for my bug etc. from 2010 or 2016.
- RodericDay 11y ago
  I don't know where this lies on the "credit-to-google-credit-to-ddg" spectrum, but you can search `!gyear bug` on DDG to get google results from your query within the last year. `!gmonth`, `!gday` also work iirc. edit: Unfortunately, something like `!dyear` doesn't work for DDG.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
agumonkey 11y ago
ddg is my google keyboardist porcelain layer: !gview to watch online documents, !gyear instead of clicking, then !wayback for archive etc etc
userbinator 11y ago
The pattern is the user adds more terms to make the search more specific, while DDG then seems to use them to make the search more general. This is the difference between OR and AND, and I'd agree that AND is usually the preferred default. Google used to be AND, which meant fun things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlewhack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlewhack could exist, but now they're doing something fuzzy which increases the number of results but often not their relevance, especially when searching for very specific things. What would make DDG really awesome is to support "exact" searching with boolean operators and quoting, i.e. the way search engines used to work... that, and searching for non-letters preferably with some sort of escaping mechanism. I'd probably switch completely to DDG if it had those features. (Just try searching for ["&&=" operator] or ["||=" operator] to see what I mean... DDG returns no results, and Google gives entirely irrelevant ones.)
- dave2000 11y ago
  It's funny isn't it. Search engines are now better but return less useful results. As a programmer I know exactly what I'm looking for and I'm telling you that in my search terms. Also, as a programmer I'm not just using the characters a-z, but also $'"#@%?!+ ++ etc. If I use them, but you don't, then you will be returning the wrong results. You don't need ai, fuzzy logic etc, just to tell me which pages contain text which matches my search string. I'd be perfectly happy just crafting a regex in json if it makes things easier for you.
  - userbinator 11y ago
    I think there's a separation between how "average users" and "advanced users" use search engines - the former seem to be wanting something that tries to read their mind while trying to make sense of their... unusual queries (just watch the average user search for something if you want to be saddened and annoyed), while the latter understand how they work --- or should work --- and want to use them as "grep the Internet". As someone I'd consider in the latter group, I don't think search engines like Google have gotten any better with all the times it's second-guessed my queries and decided I was searching for something slightly different and possibly related but not at all what I want. IMHO search engines shouldn't be anything but "grep the Internet". Leave all the fuzzy vague and unspecific understanding to the personal assistants, AI chatbots, "natural langauge search engines", and such.
rlv-dan 11y ago
You approach with first using DDG then !g is my way too. But I rarely need to use it, and when I do, I find that Google tends to serve roughly the same pages. It's annoying when DDG skips words like you say, but then I just add + in front of the word. I actually find DDG to be much better at technical/programming queries.
throwaway125 11y ago
I have noticed the same problem when adding several search terms and ddg ignoring the one that is the most important. I have found that if you quote that term it returns better results that do include that term. For your particular example if you search for 'usb type c "resistor"' you get (what I assume to be) reasonable results: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=usb+type+c+"resistor" https://duckduckgo.com/?q=usb+type+c+"resistor" Ideally duckduckgo should recognize which of the search terms are defining, but until that happens quoting should help you out.

_zekiel 11y ago

This is why we need help! :) Really, though, even if we had 100,000 employees, having a great Instant Answer for hyper-niche searches requires esoteric knowledge and expertise that can best be achieved from a community. Not to mention, it can happen faster. Bitcoin conversions were possible on DuckDuckGo before Google bc our community rallied behind it. The people most passionate about a topic are most likely to create a great answer for it. I can't imagine what my version of a color-code IA would look like. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cmyk%280.12%2C+0%2C+0%2C+0%29&ia=answer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cmyk%280.12%2C+0%2C+0%2C+0%29&ia=a... Finally, thanks for the feedback (and for going into specific detail) and for the kind words. It's great to hear that you're seeing noticeable improvement.

dhimes 11y ago
Well, as another datum, my search for an awk solution gave me exactly what I needed with your new feature (TFA). I did that before I saw this thread or had heard anything about the feature.
- _zekiel 11y ago
  Thanks! As the community grows, I run into more and more IAs that I didn't know were live. This one really felt supernatural when I was searching for a genuine answer in a moment of confusion: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=12pm+noon+or+midnight%3F&ia=answer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=12pm+noon+or+midnight%3F&ia=answer
stingraycharles 11y ago
I realize I sound extremelh harsh in my reply, but honestly, "where's the patch" is not good enough an answer for a for-profit business. Search is an incredibly competitive market, and you need to figure out a vertical to get complete momentum in and expand from there. Programmers are an incredibly easy audience to target because "we" understand each other, but asking people to contribute to developing your core product is not a sustainable way to survive in a market like this. If, however, you do have another realistic plan for world domination, and this is just an easy way to respond to the developer community, I completely understand. :)
- ZoF 11y ago
  > asking people to contribute to developing your core product is not a sustainable way to survive in a market like this. Prove it. Seriously.
  - mixedCase 11y ago
    Sure, give me the funding.
bliti 11y ago
What kind of help do you accept? Genuinely interested.
- _zekiel 11y ago
  The project and community are "large" relative to most open source projects but "most" open source projects have fewer than 10 contributors. To get to the scale of, say, Mozilla or FreeBSD, it will require community governance, so any help with driving the technologies and/or people/processes forward. If you're an interested contributor, then you are a potential owner in the project. The community is at the wheel here -- we're just paying for gas.
  - bliti 11y ago
    Does DDG allow building things on top of it? Like API access to search queries, for example. I'm very much into building things for fun and DDG is my choice engine (on mobile and desktop).
    - tagawa 11y ago
      Yes, there's an API available for many of the instant answers: https://duckduckgo.com/api https://duckduckgo.com/api Not all though, because of syndication restrictions from the original data providers.
      - bliti 11y ago
        Cool, thanks! I'm going to play with it if ya'll dont mind. :)
superobserver 11y ago
Just a quick suggestion: since Pantone colors are more "mainstream" outside of programming circles, do you think you can integrate that with the color-code IA? (Example usage case: Hey programmer Jim, can you make this part of the interface more like a pantone 537 U? kthx)
- tagawa 11y ago
  That's a good idea. I've filed it as a feature request: https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies/issues/2829 https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies/issues/2... Thanks

hardwaresofton 11y ago

I think there are lots of ways to search for technical documentation, and I find DDG great to use when I'm looking for language documentation. I use these features very frequently !javadoc SomeJDKClass !npm some-npm-module !ruby some-stdlib-package Amongst others. There's always the extremely useful "!so" if you want to skip google and go straight to the source you were going to click on anyway.

rogerbinns 11y ago
I use them for python stuff, but they aren't useful when you are looking for general information such as the example I gave. DDG is also problematic for some error messages again because they start de-emphasizing/discarding some of the terms, giving more general rather than specific results. Both DDG and Google trend towards SO answers anyway - no need to even ask for it!
ino 11y ago
But google search is way better than stackoverflow search. And google shows similar but different enough stackoverflow answers, duckduckgo shows only one or sometimes two, many times not the one you're searching for.

blacksmith_tb 11y ago

This is very much my pattern, too. I start w/ DDG, and about a third of my searches are adequately handled, but for the rest it's !g. My main problem is the lack of a way to filter results by time - DDG has a sort:date option, but since the dates themselves aren't displayed, I can't tell if I am looking at a result for my bug etc. from 2010 or 2016.

RodericDay 11y ago
I don't know where this lies on the "credit-to-google-credit-to-ddg" spectrum, but you can search `!gyear bug` on DDG to get google results from your query within the last year. `!gmonth`, `!gday` also work iirc. edit: Unfortunately, something like `!dyear` doesn't work for DDG.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

agumonkey 11y ago

ddg is my google keyboardist porcelain layer: !gview to watch online documents, !gyear instead of clicking, then !wayback for archive etc etc

userbinator 11y ago

The pattern is the user adds more terms to make the search more specific, while DDG then seems to use them to make the search more general. This is the difference between OR and AND, and I'd agree that AND is usually the preferred default. Google used to be AND, which meant fun things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlewhack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlewhack could exist, but now they're doing something fuzzy which increases the number of results but often not their relevance, especially when searching for very specific things. What would make DDG really awesome is to support "exact" searching with boolean operators and quoting, i.e. the way search engines used to work... that, and searching for non-letters preferably with some sort of escaping mechanism. I'd probably switch completely to DDG if it had those features. (Just try searching for ["&&=" operator] or ["||=" operator] to see what I mean... DDG returns no results, and Google gives entirely irrelevant ones.)

dave2000 11y ago
It's funny isn't it. Search engines are now better but return less useful results. As a programmer I know exactly what I'm looking for and I'm telling you that in my search terms. Also, as a programmer I'm not just using the characters a-z, but also $'"#@%?!+ ++ etc. If I use them, but you don't, then you will be returning the wrong results. You don't need ai, fuzzy logic etc, just to tell me which pages contain text which matches my search string. I'd be perfectly happy just crafting a regex in json if it makes things easier for you.
- userbinator 11y ago
  I think there's a separation between how "average users" and "advanced users" use search engines - the former seem to be wanting something that tries to read their mind while trying to make sense of their... unusual queries (just watch the average user search for something if you want to be saddened and annoyed), while the latter understand how they work --- or should work --- and want to use them as "grep the Internet". As someone I'd consider in the latter group, I don't think search engines like Google have gotten any better with all the times it's second-guessed my queries and decided I was searching for something slightly different and possibly related but not at all what I want. IMHO search engines shouldn't be anything but "grep the Internet". Leave all the fuzzy vague and unspecific understanding to the personal assistants, AI chatbots, "natural langauge search engines", and such.

rlv-dan 11y ago

You approach with first using DDG then !g is my way too. But I rarely need to use it, and when I do, I find that Google tends to serve roughly the same pages. It's annoying when DDG skips words like you say, but then I just add + in front of the word. I actually find DDG to be much better at technical/programming queries.

throwaway125 11y ago

I have noticed the same problem when adding several search terms and ddg ignoring the one that is the most important. I have found that if you quote that term it returns better results that do include that term. For your particular example if you search for 'usb type c "resistor"' you get (what I assume to be) reasonable results: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=usb+type+c+"resistor" https://duckduckgo.com/?q=usb+type+c+"resistor" Ideally duckduckgo should recognize which of the search terms are defining, but until that happens quoting should help you out.