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> I'm getting a feeling that some day in future, DDG is going to become as big as Google, if not supersede it. Well, no, they don't even have their own search

> I'm getting a feeling that some day in future, DDG is going to become as big as Google, if not supersede it. Well, no, they don't even have their own search engine. > a search engine's results are only as accurate as the number of users who search and contribute to it That makes no sense. Anyway, we don't use DDG because its results are shitty.

cptskippy 10y ago
> Well, no, they don't even have their own search engine. Really? I've never heard this, do you have anymore information about it?
- jmathai 10y ago
  It's sort of a meta search engine that utilizes other search indexes. Here's a post from the founder. https://duck.co/forum/comment/27893 https://duck.co/forum/comment/27893 Edit, that's about 5 years old. The current page on Wikipedia provides a more recent explanation. "DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "about 50" sources,[42] including Yahoo! Search BOSS; Wikipedia; Wolfram Alpha; Bing; its own Web crawler, the DuckDuckBot; and others." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Overview
  - Bedon292 10y ago
    They actually say hundreds of sources now on https://duck.co/help/results/sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources and specifically call out Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex for search results.
  - low_battery 10y ago
    It is a meta search engine. Note that they never mention the share breakdown of these "sources". What percentage of queries DDG itself answer? Probably very few.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Meta-search is a type of search engine that goes way back. They avoid the cost of maintaining a full, search service by sending the query to all kinds of other search engines, running some analysis on their results, and presenting a condensed form to the user optionally with value adds. DuckDuckGo's value add is privacy. Here's some others to give you an idea for what they do: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/10-meta-search-engines-reviewed-and-compared.html http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/10-meta-search-engine...
  - low_battery 10y ago
    Basically DDG is at the mercy of their sources, they can proxy the results for now to the actual search engines, but what happens if lets say Bing and Yandex requires them to pass some extra stuff or cut the query hose otherwise? Will DDG use its own index? Please.. They have no resources to build an actual half decent search engine.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      I agree. Being effective and independent will cost money. There some potential for a company that charges monthly or annually to provide search services to other companies with privacy. There's lots of search, like marketing or competitive intelligence, where companies would prefer that the terms don't go through a surveillance company. Initial results might do as DuckDuckGo is doing now with them incrementally building their own database as funds came in. Not sure how marketable it is, though. Google is pretty dominant. Most companies already running their stuff through it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- PrivacyGirl 10y ago
  I think DuckDuckGo mainly uses Yahoo. There was an article recently that said they've got a major new partnership with Yahoo and now use mostly the Yahoo search results and advertising. I'll see if I can find it. Here. I just found the link to one of the blogs I follow for search. Looks like DuckDuckGo is increasing its use of Yahoo for a big partnership: http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2016/12/13/duckduckgo-makes-search-enhancements-by-leveraging-yahoo-partnership/ http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2016/12/13/duckduckgo-makes-se...
- PrivacyGirl 10y ago
  Here is information on a search engine blog I follow about a big relationship upgrade with Yahoo. Maybe this will bring good improvements: http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2016/12/13/duckduckgo-makes-search-enhancements-by-leveraging-yahoo-partnership/ http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2016/12/13/duckduckgo-makes-se...
RaitoBezarius 10y ago
While I understand your point, please. > Anyway, we don't use DDG because its results are shitty. These kind of comments are a bit unnecessary, especially on Hacker News, I believe.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Why? The topic is whether or not to use a search engine. This one delivers bad results compared to major ones. Frustratingly bad if you use it enough. I expected such a reply.
  - wjd2030 10y ago
    Shitty based upon what? I would say they could improve, always room for improvement but DDG handles most of my searches with ease.
  - RaitoBezarius 10y ago
    There is always a way to show that a search engine is bad with constructive feedback rather than just replying it's "shitty". At least, the OP could have elaborated on why does he thinks this way so that everyone could understand why DDG's results are "shitty". Unfortunately, no one can know what the OP thinks. As a result, it is hurting the work of others without any feedback so that they can improve themselves (i.e. DDG team) and serves little purpose (no explanations on the why) except expressing a frustration. At least, that's my opinion. Let's be elegant in how do we relate to others. Feel free to disagree with me, but I think this kind of behavior is what creates a more toxic environment in our fields.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      Alright. I even agree for most comments albeit less for this one. Let's try it your way so the feedback is specific, constructive, inclusive to audiences unfamiliar with grading search, and not profane. Here's my similar experience using the DuckDuckGo, search service after being a long-time user of the Google, search service. 1. I type search terms in text form into Google in an attempt to get a list of results that meet my needs. It virtually always gives me high-quality results I need in top few hits. High-quality means the results help me find what I'm looking for or better understand what my search terms describe. I do this into DuckDuckGo, it often provides low-quality results. Low-quality means the results were not relevant to the text I typed in, they were barely relevant to the text I typed in, or they were relevant but had less utility than results from Google. 2. I do exploratory search with Google by typing in words I think are related to the topic I'm trying to understand. It often gives me high-quality results in the top. If I do it with DuckDuckGo, it gives me low-quality results about as often as high-quality results. I see few patterns in the input that would let me accurately gauge whether inserting specific terms into DuckDuckGo instead of Google would produce as many relevant results I could utilize. This makes me unable to know if use of DuckDuckGo will have as high utility for the time and effort invested vs using Google's service. So, as I default on privacy, I had to try inputting the search terms into DuckDuckGo first with expectation it would often not meet my goals, mentally track what it succeed or failed on, and slowly gain instincts on what search terms to skip DuckDuckGo on in favor of Google to be more time-effective. As a Google user, I didn't have this problem that forced me to profile the search engine to gauge when it was capable of performing a search with high-quality results. That, in detail, is why I had a poor, user experience with the search service provided by DuckDuckGo. Of course, explained constructively & in detail, it just looks like I think readers on Hacker News are idiots. Even my grandmother knows what a "shitty," "terrible," or "bad" search engine is. Such terms are how laypeople universally describe search functionality that fails to turn their queries into actionable information. They also short-hand what's common knowledge to save time. Describing your search experience in detail to such people will even sound condescending. So, instead I just usually say it's a a hit and miss search engine with result being them nodding their head in understanding. The other commenter apparently thought so, too, condensing it to one word and I still knew what it meant.
cryoshon 10y ago
sure, the results are shitty, but you don't support big brother by using it... which is its primary appeal, afaik.
- bwilliams18 10y ago
  And I could just not use a computer, then I wouldn't be supporting big brother either....not supporting big brother is not an excuse to have shitty results, at least for most people.
leandot 10y ago
Actually I recently switched to DDG and the results are quite ok, especially programming/tech stuff. When not finding your stuff there is "g!". Fine for me so far.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  This is exactly what I do and recommend. You use the private engine by default to see if it gets results. If not, switch over to one like Google. You loose the time it takes to do one search at worst. Like you, I find it often gets me good results on programming or tech topics. Among other things.
mibbiting 10y ago
And after 10 years or so of trying, you'd expect the results to be far better, and more people to use it. I think the search engine space is very ripe for a startup, but duckduckgo isn't it IMHO.
- carlivar 10y ago
  > after 10 years or so of trying, you'd expect the results to be far better Would you? Most search engines' growth, including Google, was fueled by advertising revenue. Obviously that part of the equation isn't really an option for DDG. I wonder if they would be better off as a non-profit, like Wikipedia. I would donate to them.
- hedora 10y ago
  At its peak, Yahoo!'s results were quantifibly better than Google's for over a year, but no one noticed/cared. Google search has been "good enough" for years, and so has the competition. Multiple companies have burnt billions proving that search relevance will not convert users on its own. If you want to crush Google, you need some compelling reason for people to switch (voice? privacy?), or you need to maintain good relevance until Google screws up badly enough. Maybe they will fire half the search team during an economic downturn in the 2020's, for example. At that point, you can use cash reserves to poach most of the top 10% of the remaining team. The problem with long games like this is that you might screw up or lose focus before Google does. This happened at Yahoo. Switching industry sectors, Microsoft had tons of negative press about 8, 8.1 and then 10's force upgrade/privacy debacle. With a mediocre or better hardware launch, Apple probably would have cleaned up. Instead, Apple's MacOS lines happened to falter in the same years as Windows did. Now, Windows devices are earning lukewarm to positive comparisons against Apple devices.
wjd2030 10y ago
>Well, no, they don't even have their own search engine. This is false, as has already been pointed out. If by 'shitty' you mean it has areas for improvement then yes I agree; as does your tact.
- williamle8300 10y ago
  Haha. Burn ward!
mnm1 10y ago
The results are extremely shitty indeed, especially for tech and programming related topics. I tried DDG for months and I found myself running every search twice, normally and once with !g appended. That's beyond shitty.
- PrivacyGirl 10y ago
  That's not true. DuckDuckGo is good, though I prefer StartPage because it provides actual Google search results in privacy. But calling DDG shitty just isn't fair.

cptskippy 10y ago

> Well, no, they don't even have their own search engine. Really? I've never heard this, do you have anymore information about it?

jmathai 10y ago
It's sort of a meta search engine that utilizes other search indexes. Here's a post from the founder. https://duck.co/forum/comment/27893 https://duck.co/forum/comment/27893 Edit, that's about 5 years old. The current page on Wikipedia provides a more recent explanation. "DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "about 50" sources,[42] including Yahoo! Search BOSS; Wikipedia; Wolfram Alpha; Bing; its own Web crawler, the DuckDuckBot; and others." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Overview
- Bedon292 10y ago
  They actually say hundreds of sources now on https://duck.co/help/results/sources https://duck.co/help/results/sources and specifically call out Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex for search results.
- low_battery 10y ago
  It is a meta search engine. Note that they never mention the share breakdown of these "sources". What percentage of queries DDG itself answer? Probably very few.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
Meta-search is a type of search engine that goes way back. They avoid the cost of maintaining a full, search service by sending the query to all kinds of other search engines, running some analysis on their results, and presenting a condensed form to the user optionally with value adds. DuckDuckGo's value add is privacy. Here's some others to give you an idea for what they do: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/10-meta-search-engines-reviewed-and-compared.html http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/10-meta-search-engine...
- low_battery 10y ago
  Basically DDG is at the mercy of their sources, they can proxy the results for now to the actual search engines, but what happens if lets say Bing and Yandex requires them to pass some extra stuff or cut the query hose otherwise? Will DDG use its own index? Please.. They have no resources to build an actual half decent search engine.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    I agree. Being effective and independent will cost money. There some potential for a company that charges monthly or annually to provide search services to other companies with privacy. There's lots of search, like marketing or competitive intelligence, where companies would prefer that the terms don't go through a surveillance company. Initial results might do as DuckDuckGo is doing now with them incrementally building their own database as funds came in. Not sure how marketable it is, though. Google is pretty dominant. Most companies already running their stuff through it.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
PrivacyGirl 10y ago
I think DuckDuckGo mainly uses Yahoo. There was an article recently that said they've got a major new partnership with Yahoo and now use mostly the Yahoo search results and advertising. I'll see if I can find it. Here. I just found the link to one of the blogs I follow for search. Looks like DuckDuckGo is increasing its use of Yahoo for a big partnership: http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2016/12/13/duckduckgo-makes-search-enhancements-by-leveraging-yahoo-partnership/ http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2016/12/13/duckduckgo-makes-se...
PrivacyGirl 10y ago
Here is information on a search engine blog I follow about a big relationship upgrade with Yahoo. Maybe this will bring good improvements: http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2016/12/13/duckduckgo-makes-search-enhancements-by-leveraging-yahoo-partnership/ http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2016/12/13/duckduckgo-makes-se...

RaitoBezarius 10y ago

While I understand your point, please. > Anyway, we don't use DDG because its results are shitty. These kind of comments are a bit unnecessary, especially on Hacker News, I believe.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
Why? The topic is whether or not to use a search engine. This one delivers bad results compared to major ones. Frustratingly bad if you use it enough. I expected such a reply.
- wjd2030 10y ago
  Shitty based upon what? I would say they could improve, always room for improvement but DDG handles most of my searches with ease.
- RaitoBezarius 10y ago
  There is always a way to show that a search engine is bad with constructive feedback rather than just replying it's "shitty". At least, the OP could have elaborated on why does he thinks this way so that everyone could understand why DDG's results are "shitty". Unfortunately, no one can know what the OP thinks. As a result, it is hurting the work of others without any feedback so that they can improve themselves (i.e. DDG team) and serves little purpose (no explanations on the why) except expressing a frustration. At least, that's my opinion. Let's be elegant in how do we relate to others. Feel free to disagree with me, but I think this kind of behavior is what creates a more toxic environment in our fields.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Alright. I even agree for most comments albeit less for this one. Let's try it your way so the feedback is specific, constructive, inclusive to audiences unfamiliar with grading search, and not profane. Here's my similar experience using the DuckDuckGo, search service after being a long-time user of the Google, search service. 1. I type search terms in text form into Google in an attempt to get a list of results that meet my needs. It virtually always gives me high-quality results I need in top few hits. High-quality means the results help me find what I'm looking for or better understand what my search terms describe. I do this into DuckDuckGo, it often provides low-quality results. Low-quality means the results were not relevant to the text I typed in, they were barely relevant to the text I typed in, or they were relevant but had less utility than results from Google. 2. I do exploratory search with Google by typing in words I think are related to the topic I'm trying to understand. It often gives me high-quality results in the top. If I do it with DuckDuckGo, it gives me low-quality results about as often as high-quality results. I see few patterns in the input that would let me accurately gauge whether inserting specific terms into DuckDuckGo instead of Google would produce as many relevant results I could utilize. This makes me unable to know if use of DuckDuckGo will have as high utility for the time and effort invested vs using Google's service. So, as I default on privacy, I had to try inputting the search terms into DuckDuckGo first with expectation it would often not meet my goals, mentally track what it succeed or failed on, and slowly gain instincts on what search terms to skip DuckDuckGo on in favor of Google to be more time-effective. As a Google user, I didn't have this problem that forced me to profile the search engine to gauge when it was capable of performing a search with high-quality results. That, in detail, is why I had a poor, user experience with the search service provided by DuckDuckGo. Of course, explained constructively & in detail, it just looks like I think readers on Hacker News are idiots. Even my grandmother knows what a "shitty," "terrible," or "bad" search engine is. Such terms are how laypeople universally describe search functionality that fails to turn their queries into actionable information. They also short-hand what's common knowledge to save time. Describing your search experience in detail to such people will even sound condescending. So, instead I just usually say it's a a hit and miss search engine with result being them nodding their head in understanding. The other commenter apparently thought so, too, condensing it to one word and I still knew what it meant.

cryoshon 10y ago

sure, the results are shitty, but you don't support big brother by using it... which is its primary appeal, afaik.

bwilliams18 10y ago
And I could just not use a computer, then I wouldn't be supporting big brother either....not supporting big brother is not an excuse to have shitty results, at least for most people.

leandot 10y ago

Actually I recently switched to DDG and the results are quite ok, especially programming/tech stuff. When not finding your stuff there is "g!". Fine for me so far.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
This is exactly what I do and recommend. You use the private engine by default to see if it gets results. If not, switch over to one like Google. You loose the time it takes to do one search at worst. Like you, I find it often gets me good results on programming or tech topics. Among other things.

mibbiting 10y ago

And after 10 years or so of trying, you'd expect the results to be far better, and more people to use it. I think the search engine space is very ripe for a startup, but duckduckgo isn't it IMHO.

carlivar 10y ago
> after 10 years or so of trying, you'd expect the results to be far better Would you? Most search engines' growth, including Google, was fueled by advertising revenue. Obviously that part of the equation isn't really an option for DDG. I wonder if they would be better off as a non-profit, like Wikipedia. I would donate to them.
hedora 10y ago
At its peak, Yahoo!'s results were quantifibly better than Google's for over a year, but no one noticed/cared. Google search has been "good enough" for years, and so has the competition. Multiple companies have burnt billions proving that search relevance will not convert users on its own. If you want to crush Google, you need some compelling reason for people to switch (voice? privacy?), or you need to maintain good relevance until Google screws up badly enough. Maybe they will fire half the search team during an economic downturn in the 2020's, for example. At that point, you can use cash reserves to poach most of the top 10% of the remaining team. The problem with long games like this is that you might screw up or lose focus before Google does. This happened at Yahoo. Switching industry sectors, Microsoft had tons of negative press about 8, 8.1 and then 10's force upgrade/privacy debacle. With a mediocre or better hardware launch, Apple probably would have cleaned up. Instead, Apple's MacOS lines happened to falter in the same years as Windows did. Now, Windows devices are earning lukewarm to positive comparisons against Apple devices.

wjd2030 10y ago

>Well, no, they don't even have their own search engine. This is false, as has already been pointed out. If by 'shitty' you mean it has areas for improvement then yes I agree; as does your tact.

williamle8300 10y ago
Haha. Burn ward!

mnm1 10y ago

The results are extremely shitty indeed, especially for tech and programming related topics. I tried DDG for months and I found myself running every search twice, normally and once with !g appended. That's beyond shitty.

PrivacyGirl 10y ago
That's not true. DuckDuckGo is good, though I prefer StartPage because it provides actual Google search results in privacy. But calling DDG shitty just isn't fair.