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It defies my experience to claim that DDG can have equivalent search quality to Google. For one thing Google search results include my own emails and docs, whi

It defies my experience to claim that DDG can have equivalent search quality to Google. For one thing Google search results include my own emails and docs, which DDG doesn't produce. I find that Google's personalization is key to quality, not counter to it. As an example search for "good espresso open now". The DDG results are entirely useless.

fooker 10y ago
Meh result from Google for me. Sitting in Mumbai, India and the first result is : https://www.tripadvisor.in/Restaurant_Review-g45399-d2219937-Reviews-Espresso_West-West_Yellowstone_Montana.html https://www.tripadvisor.in/Restaurant_Review-g45399-d2219937...
anthony_romeo 10y ago
Generally yes. I default to DDG, but I when I don't find what I want I often just add the '!g' to the search. The only issue I have with Google search (aside from privacy concerns and the like) is the frequency to which the results don't actually contain any of the search terms I use. This functionality is fine for general use, but when I'm actually looking for something very specific the guesses Google makes often makes the search results less helpful than nothing at all.
- tyleraldrich 10y ago
  Do you have any examples of queries which google doesn't return any results with the search terms used? I can't even remember the last time this has happened to me so I'm curious.
  - anthony_romeo 10y ago
    I mean, it's usually very very specific things. Yesterday I was looking at a summary query of earning records for a client by the IRS. The form had tons of abbreviations for columns with no explanation as to what they mean. I basically searched for multiple variations of the column names, and I eventually found what I needed, but often I'd open a result on the first page, ctrl-f one of my search terms, and find no results.
- dispose13432 10y ago
  >Generally yes. I default to DDG, but I when I don't find what I want I often just add the '!g' to the search. What's the advantage of that over just going to google.com?
  - anthony_romeo 10y ago
    Well, most of the time I don't need to go to Google. But with '!g' the search defaults to encrypted mode (which you can do anyway at encrypted.google.com). Honestly, I mostly use ddg because the bang syntax is extremely helpful. Like if I want to search hacker news posts, I just add !hn or !hackernews to the search. They also have bang searches for documentation of many languages, like !java
    - Freak_NL 10y ago
      You can also make DuckDuckGo the default search engine in Firefox' location bar. That way anything that is not a URL is treated as a search query. I particularly like !wen for Wikipedia and !wikt for Wiktionary.
      - wallacoloo 10y ago
        > That way anything that is not a URL is treated as a search query. And if your search query does look like a URL, you can just add the !ddg bang to it & you'll be sent to DuckDuckGo instead of having your browser try to navigate to the URL! (At least, that's the only semi-legitimate use for !ddg that I can find - when else could it be used?) Btw, you can also just use !w for Wikipedia.
        Freak_NL 10y ago
        > Btw, you can also just use !w for Wikipedia. Yeah, but there is one caveat; !w will send you to the Wikipedia language matching the region DuckDuckGo is currently set at. So if you just did a search with the regional limiter set to The Netherlands, !w will send you to the Dutch Wikipedia. This is not usually what you would want for non-regional information. Without the region set it does take you to the English Wikipedia. !wen is always the English Wikipedia.

fooker 10y ago

Meh result from Google for me. Sitting in Mumbai, India and the first result is : https://www.tripadvisor.in/Restaurant_Review-g45399-d2219937-Reviews-Espresso_West-West_Yellowstone_Montana.html https://www.tripadvisor.in/Restaurant_Review-g45399-d2219937...

anthony_romeo 10y ago

Generally yes. I default to DDG, but I when I don't find what I want I often just add the '!g' to the search. The only issue I have with Google search (aside from privacy concerns and the like) is the frequency to which the results don't actually contain any of the search terms I use. This functionality is fine for general use, but when I'm actually looking for something very specific the guesses Google makes often makes the search results less helpful than nothing at all.

tyleraldrich 10y ago
Do you have any examples of queries which google doesn't return any results with the search terms used? I can't even remember the last time this has happened to me so I'm curious.
- anthony_romeo 10y ago
  I mean, it's usually very very specific things. Yesterday I was looking at a summary query of earning records for a client by the IRS. The form had tons of abbreviations for columns with no explanation as to what they mean. I basically searched for multiple variations of the column names, and I eventually found what I needed, but often I'd open a result on the first page, ctrl-f one of my search terms, and find no results.
dispose13432 10y ago
>Generally yes. I default to DDG, but I when I don't find what I want I often just add the '!g' to the search. What's the advantage of that over just going to google.com?
- anthony_romeo 10y ago
  Well, most of the time I don't need to go to Google. But with '!g' the search defaults to encrypted mode (which you can do anyway at encrypted.google.com). Honestly, I mostly use ddg because the bang syntax is extremely helpful. Like if I want to search hacker news posts, I just add !hn or !hackernews to the search. They also have bang searches for documentation of many languages, like !java
  - Freak_NL 10y ago
    You can also make DuckDuckGo the default search engine in Firefox' location bar. That way anything that is not a URL is treated as a search query. I particularly like !wen for Wikipedia and !wikt for Wiktionary.
    - wallacoloo 10y ago
      > That way anything that is not a URL is treated as a search query. And if your search query does look like a URL, you can just add the !ddg bang to it & you'll be sent to DuckDuckGo instead of having your browser try to navigate to the URL! (At least, that's the only semi-legitimate use for !ddg that I can find - when else could it be used?) Btw, you can also just use !w for Wikipedia.
      - Freak_NL 10y ago
        > Btw, you can also just use !w for Wikipedia. Yeah, but there is one caveat; !w will send you to the Wikipedia language matching the region DuckDuckGo is currently set at. So if you just did a search with the regional limiter set to The Netherlands, !w will send you to the Dutch Wikipedia. This is not usually what you would want for non-regional information. Without the region set it does take you to the English Wikipedia. !wen is always the English Wikipedia.