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Not sure if this is just me, but Google Search results are getting less and less relevant for my queries and at the same time, provide more and more spammy site

Not sure if this is just me, but Google Search results are getting less and less relevant for my queries and at the same time, provide more and more spammy sites as results. Finding a useful site on page 2 and beyond? Good luck! I've switched to DDG half a year ago or so and haven't looked back much. I only once in a while use the !g bang and almost always come back disappointed. Sure, there are also some spam results on DDG (and probably there are going to be many more once it gains more relevance to be spammed) but for now and my searches i exclusively use DDG on my private computers as well as at work... So, to summarize, i think the relevancy of Google as a search engine will, imho, continue to drop and also the perceived "truthiness" of statements found thereon as well. To add, i also don't necessarily think of this as a "Google" problem - the same people that will believe in a statement gathered from a quick search will also believe in the same thing when they see it in a Facebook post, Whatsapp chainmail or whatever....

kowdermeister 9y ago
I should report my null result, however it's completely boring, uninteresting. I always find what I look for pretty fast.
johndoe489 9y ago
Even putting politics & world events aside, Google Search doesn't seem to get better. For me the biggest disappointment is when they turned off the ability to search for "an exact match within quotes", as well as the ability to use +plus and -minus to refine results. (EDIT: could be wrong about that, I thought it was disabled at some point) But the most dumbfounding is the fact that you still get several year old results whenever you search for a bug, hardware/driver issue, or even simple programming questions related to a not too old framework or API. Every time I have to go into the advanced options to restrict the results to one year, or one month.. you'd think they would make recent activity the default and then let the user know they can "search older results".
- muxator 9y ago
  Really? Naively, I was still continuing to put my "queries in quotes" and using + and - to refine my search. When did it stopped being supported?
  - johndoe489 9y ago
    My bad. I could swear it was removed at some point but I can't find articles. A quick test reveals maybe the change is that you can't do an exact "ascii" search, ie. google searches for an exact sequence of words, but the casing may be different , there-may-be-dashes and so on.
    - redtuesday 9y ago
      To use the plus sign like behaviour you now need to use quotes (since 2011). Instead of: mars +landings +failures you now have to do: mars “landings” “failures” Source: https://searchengineland.com/google-sunsets-search-operator-98189 https://searchengineland.com/google-sunsets-search-operator-...
  - brians 9y ago
    When Google Plus was big. 2011? Quotes still work, and also have an effect like +
- wonderous 9y ago
  Appears you’re wrong about which of the search operators are currently supported by Google: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 The + operator was retired when Google+ was launched, because + was needed as a searchable character rather than an operator.
- brazzledazzle 9y ago
  There's been so many times that old results have saved my bacon. I like that they give me everything and allow me to make the decision to narrow it down as needed. Sure, it can be annoying when you're searching for results that are relevant for recent versions of software or libraries but even in those situations old results can be great because they lead to solutions that are still applicable or relevant GitHub issues that lead you where you want to go. That said, it would be nice if it wasn't buried and was exposed as a slider but I'll take what they're giving.
amelius 9y ago
If I type "GitHub" in DDG, then the first result is the Wikipedia page, the second is some ad, and the third is the actual GitHub website. Seems in the wrong order if you ask me. Anyway, I also use DDG, but I always end up using "!g". At least this gives DDG some metrics on how well they are doing.
- smsm42 9y ago
  Typed "github" right now - github.com is the first one. First non-github result is 8th (git-scm.com). Not sure what's the difference.
  - amelius 9y ago
    Did you try on mobile? (I did)
    - rangibaby 9y ago
      Yes. My first result it Github.com with a blurb about the site and the Github logo. Wiki article is 3rd.
    - tombrossman 9y ago
      Desktop with an ad blocker (which is my typical use case) returns their official site first, then Wikipedia, etc... . https://i.imgur.com/c8THJcm.png https://i.imgur.com/c8THJcm.png
  - grkvlt 9y ago
    Just for comparison I did this search on Google (UK site, logged in with my work account) as well, the first page of 'github' results are listed. It seems their are much more relevant and useful than the DDG results... 1. a clearly marked relevant ad at the top, for the circleci github plugin 2. an infobox at the right with details of the company, their web address, a link to their twitter account, and some related search queries 3. (first full-width result) link to github.com and summary text 4. a sub-search box to continue searching only on github.com 5. a short two-column list of six links to github.com sub sections 6. a link to the github twitter account and three square boxes across the page with its most recent tweets 7. the github wikipedia page 8. github youtube channel 9. github app for slack 10. github linkedin profile 11. github facebook page
blattimwind 9y ago
> Not sure if this is just me, but Google Search results are getting less and less relevant for my queries and at the same time, provide more and more spammy sites as results. Personally I noticed that a few years back there was always talk of changes to Googles' algorithms to de-rank automatically generated SEO/ad pages, yet this exact kind of site dominate search results in many topics. This makes Google virtually useless for them. On the other hand, sometimes Google still manages to dig up some information that I'd never expected to find. For example, sometimes when searching a part number Google will direct you to a page that doesn't even mention that number, yet is still about the same part (under a different label) or mentions it - rather impressive. However, most of the time the majority of search results are useless sites that just have endless lists of everything to get traffic and show ads. Google also became notoriously bad in discerning (or rather susceptible to manipulation?) which page(s) are "official" (which should rank very high for certain terms) and which are not.
- pault 9y ago
  It's so frustrating trying to evaluate SaaS products for a particular domain when all of the search results are affiliate listicles and sneaky first party marketing.
Kiro 9y ago
Why would DDG be any better? It's just Bing wrapped in incognito.
- sacheendra 9y ago
  I think it could be because a lot of people trying to fool (SEO) google search, but not so many are doing it for bing.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    That could be the case, yes.
- collyw 9y ago
  Can you elaborate on that some more? I thought it was a custom Perl application.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    > DuckDuckGo emphasizes returning the best results, rather than the most results, and generates those results from over 400 individual sources, including key crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, and other search engines like Bing, Yahoo!, Yandex, and Yummly. So basically they don't have their own crawler but aggregate results, mostly from Bing which is (or was) clear from comparing search results. However, a sibling comment claims they run their own spider now so my info may be outdated (quote from Wikipedia).
- sveme 9y ago
  No, they use their own crawler for quite some time already. Spiced up with bing results, if I recall it correctly.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    Source?
    - 9y ago
akira2501 9y ago
> but Google Search results are getting less and less relevant for my queries and at the same time, provide more and more spammy sites as results. I'm getting many sites that are missing one or more of my keywords listed above sites that do have all of them. I get this odd feeling an AI is trying really hard to draw inferences from my search patterns and is failing horribly to understand what it is I am asking for most of the time.
- zipperhead 9y ago
  I've noticed this as well - I find I have to quote words more often to force the search in the right direction.
  - zeep 9y ago
    Same for me... if only they would bring back the + operator, it would make this a little less painful...
    - pault 9y ago
      At what point does google admit g+ has failed and stop crippling their primary search tool to accommodate it? I know "you are the product" etc, but if the tool becomes frustrating to use and someone else can provide a better user experience, it's going to cut into those ad dollars.
  - SerLava 9y ago
    When that doesn't work, I type the desired word three times after the search e.g. "Old books for sale old old old" -if, say, all the results are dominated by new books due to "books for sale" being so strongly attached to those websites. If that doesn't work I type "BING" and don't return for a while. If Google's algorithm doesn't keep track of frustrated searches for BING I will eat my hat.
    - visarga 9y ago
      Good one. I will use it too. When I can't find what I want in Google, I'll search "bing" and click the first link.
loudandskittish 9y ago
Was going to comment the same thing. Lately, if I, say, search for four words, the top result will only contain one of those four words. Almost feels like being back in 1996.
- beefield 9y ago
  This is one of my pet htes with google at the moment. They helpfully tell which of the search terms are missing in each result, and every time I see that "missing" tag, I am starting to draft an email in my mind: "Dear Google AI. Why do you think I wrote that word into my query? Best Regards, Beefield." (Second one is that there is no way to make specific queries to return results only in a certain language (and even adding words in a specific language does not help because it tries to translate them), but you need to change the settings for the whole google search)
  - missblit 9y ago
    > (Second one is that there is no way to make specific queries to return results only in a certain language It's a little hidden away but advanced search can do this. For example: https://www.google.com/search?as_q=猫&lr=lang_en https://www.google.com/search?as_q=猫&lr=lang_en
    - beefield 9y ago
      Thanks. Wonder how I have missed that.
  - scholia 9y ago
    You could try the Verbatim setting, which is under Tools | All results.
icc97 9y ago
Personally I find the opposite, I always start with DDG, but sometimes it doesn't find what I'm searching for. Typically though the fallback with !g does work. However for me that's fine, it removes most of my use of Google search. But also the !g search is less personalised than the regular google search so you'll get less of the search bubble. Even better is to always do the !g searches in a private browsing tab or use the Firefox containers addon to keep the tracking cookies separate. Then you're even less likely to get search bubble results.
- collyw 9y ago
  I am the same. The fact is Google knows a fair bit about my searches and knows when I type Django that I mean the web framework (not the film). Duck Duck Go needs extra term in the search to know that I am looking for the software and not the film.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    I just put this to the test by entering "Django" into DDG and the search results page literally alternates between Django, the framework, and Django, the film name: Each odd result is about the framework, each even result is about movies of that name.
    - icc97 9y ago
      I compared this to "!g Django", and you get the entire first page is nothing but Django software. This is using a private browsing session.
      - bigbugbag 9y ago
        Actually if you look closely there are a few Tarantino's movie django in the rows of thumbnails from google images. Other than those I can confirm that google is bad at providing relevant results for this keyword, and instead only focus on one possible meaning.
  - johndoe489 9y ago
mirimir 9y ago
> To add, i also don't necessarily think of this as a "Google" problem - the same people that will believe in a statement gathered from a quick search will also believe in the same thing when they see it in a Facebook post, Whatsapp chainmail or whatever.... Yes! It's foolish to simply trust what you read. And that's especially so for contentious issues. Every source is biased, intentionally or not. And expecting Google to do the heavy lifting, and just trust what they give you, is just as foolish.
vog 9y ago
> I've switched to DDG half a year ago or so and haven't looked back much Same for me. I specially like their approach to technical documentation. Search for some web development stuff and DuckDuckGo shows you the MDN site while Google points to some outdated (and low quality and spammy) w3schools site. Ask a question that is answered on StackOverflow? DuckDuckGo points you to StackOverflow, and even shows relevant parts of the answer. While Google points to some spam sites that are a bad rip-off of the StackOverflow content.
- falcolas 9y ago
  Oh, w3schools. I hate that they are always near the top of Google searches for anything even remotely web related, when what I really want is the official spec or MDN. Just tried it right now - the top three search results for "html canvas" are all w3schools on google. They're still the top in DDG, but there's only one entry as opposed to three. Bing also only has one, but they also steal the "here's your answer" type card text from w3schools. Congratulations on your SEO, but f' you for polluting search results.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Irritating that you have to do it, but: html canvas -site:w3schools.com Probably returns what you wanted.
    - nastajus 9y ago
      There was a way to remove results from Google 5 years ago that worked and I've used before, but now you need to use a chrome plugin apparently this says. Post comments afterwards are still a few years old but may still apply today https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/35786/is-there-a-new-way-to-remove-sites-from-google-search-results https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/35786/is-there-a...
  - twsted 9y ago
    This is because we are lazy and we use a search even if we could go straight to a specific site eg MDN, Stack Overflow, Wikipedia.
agumonkey 9y ago
I use ddg, and I dont like the results for anything not one dimensional. Now I can agree that google results are less appealing to me but still way above the pack.
tluyben2 9y ago
> Not sure if this is just me, It is not, many people are saying this. Personally I find other search engines (DDG included) quite impossible to use, the results just are not what I was looking for, while Google is an always first page hit. Engines like Bing just give me straight up crap which isn't even related to (seemingly ofcourse; it somehow did find a relation obviously) what I am searching for. I use web search almost exclusively for compile issues, coding searches and whitepaper searches. I would like to use something else but it would be very inefficient for the work I do at this moment. What I noticed as well (and is sommewhat related); I work in China a lot and my colleagues there have no (real; they have it when they need to but they don't use it like we do) access to Google and, when solving hardware/software problems they are far less efficient than us. Thye have an advantage (I find) that they memorize a lot more than we do, but when we just need to solve something that they did not encounter before, Google always delivers while Baidu, Bing etc do not even get close.
- ordu 9y ago
  It is interesting, because does not match to my experience. Can you give an example of your search query that does not work well enough on DDG?
  - amorphid 9y ago
    My username => amorphid I want 'amorphid', not 'amorphis'.
    - alsetmusic 9y ago
      I just searched with quotes around the word and it worked.
    - chappi42 9y ago
      +amorphid works. More tips under "duckduckgo search syntax". This said, I think google is more accurate. But duckduckgo works well enough and is my default search engine now (Google lost me with THE ONE GOOGLE aggregation since quite a while ago)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
it's not just you, I have been having a similar experience. In fact I see goggle often turning up results in those answer boxes that come from unqualified sources. What's worse, when you click through them you get video autoplay ads.
KKKKkkkk1 9y ago
Google Search actually works really well for me, and I think it's been getting better over time. Just this week, a colleague asked me why the following code does not work: void foo() { cout << "global\n"; } struct Foo { void foo(int i) { cout << "method " << i << "\n"; } void bar() { foo(); // <-- compiler error here } }; Even a few years ago, answering an arcane question like this, where it is not clear what keywords you need to search for, would take you hours of googling. Most people would just not bother. But in this case, it took me literally 30 s to find an answer on Stack Overflow.
- lol768 9y ago
  > Google Search actually works really well for me, and I think it's been getting better over years. Just this week, a colleague asked me why the following code does not work: I feel like you've posted this comment mid-thoughtstream. How is the compiler error relevant to Google Search? Edit: > Even a few years ago, answering an arcane question like this, where it is not clear what keywords you need to search for, would take you hours of googling. Most people would just not bother. But in this case, it took me literally 30 s to find an answer on Stack Overflow. Makes a bit more sense now you've edited that in. Yeah, I'd totally agree. I've noticed it can help you find films based on description ("film with adam sandler and kate beckinsale") or code syntax ("c++ io operator") using terms that aren't really at all obviously connected to what you're trying to find out.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Google search does tend to still do well for areas where they see there's no money to be squeezed. There's a stark difference if you try to search for something where Google can net a big cut of the outcome. Try searching for "vegas hotels". Once upon a time, google returned a healthy mix of results that directly benefited them, and ones that didn't. Here's the portion of the page (yellow rectangle) that now appears to be presented to actually help visitors, and not directly pay Google: https://imgur.com/a/hAFas https://imgur.com/a/hAFas On my PC, you have to scroll down 2 pages to see that.
  - waqf 9y ago
lph 9y ago
I've switched to Bing, which was a step I wouldn't have even entertained five years ago. Google needs to get back to its minimalist beginnings. It's really apparent that the advertising department has taken over while the search department atrophies. In retrospect, I think the turning point was when they murdered Labs and Reader.
vermontdevil 9y ago
Not you. It’s getting frustrating to see less quality info being brought up first when I search for something. Its to the point I just go to a certain few sites directly to search within these sites instead of Google.
bobajeff 9y ago
I have the same experience I feel like Google is becoming less and less useful for finding things. There have been several times where I tried to find things I've come across before and Google was no help. However it's still the best search engine hands down. There is no way a search engine like DDG could provide better results. If Bing can't do it there is no way DDG can. It would like it if there was a comparable alternative to Google but there really isn't. I think it would be cool if some system or protocol (eg. IMAP, RSS, OStatus) came along to provide a way to create a user programmable search engine, that's decentralized but comparable to Google.
- visarga 9y ago
  Why do you think there is no open and free search engine? I don't think it's because of hosting costs, because a distributed search engine could be run with local hardware.
  - bobajeff 9y ago
    A search engine is many things in a giant package. Most wholesale search companies have a database text/images and algorithm data that is in the terabytes if not more. They also have many servers for fast and efficient processing of queries and giving results. This database could be made freely available (see CommonCrawl) but without a datacenter big enough to store and run queries on it, it's meaningless as a "open" search engine. A distributed search engine runs into all of the scalability and quality of service problems that researchers of Peer-to-Peer Information Retrieval have been trying to solve since the early days of the internet.
elorant 9y ago
My guess is that you live in US. I live in Greece, and trying anything but Google for localized results is pretty much useless. The same goes for many European countries. That's why Google's share in Europe is above 90%. There's practically no alternative.
- hrktb 9y ago
  Seconded. That’s also the very reason I switched to ddg: getting non local, non trending results in Google is a PITA. It’s a constant fight against the AI that tries to steer the results towards what 90% of the people in that country are looking for.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Actually there are alternatives, qwant[1] is one example, framabee is another[2] [1]: https://www.qwant.com/ https://www.qwant.com/ [2]: https://framabee.org/ https://framabee.org/
bobcostas55 9y ago
The most obvious change I have noticed is that they are far more aggressive about dropping terms from the query. I don't this has ever produced a useful result for me, I always have to go back to the search and add quotes around the dropped term.
- userbinator 9y ago
  ...and the most irritating part is that it's almost always omitting the term that is most important because it's the one that reduces the number of results the most, under the (ridiculously flawed) assumption that more results are better; and in that case, why not go the whole hog and make everything "suggestion"-based? People are searching for what they want, and specifying terms to get that. To make an analogy, it'd be like going into a pet shop, looking for a specific breed of dog, and the owner trying to convince you to buy cats instead. "But you were just looking for a pet, right? What's the difference?" A pretty idiotic situation.
qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago
It is. Seems like the first few pages are tailored to sales over anything else.
userbinator 9y ago
Try searching for things like part numbers and datasheets for obscure electronic components, along with schematics and service manuals. That's one area where Google's search results used to be far better than now. I've almost become accustomed to always putting my queries in quotes, just because it would otherwise mean completely useless results. The other thing that's gotten worse results is... adult content, especially when searching for very specific terms; and even with "SafeSearch" off, which is supposed to mean no filtering. To add insult to injury, repeating minor variations of a query, combing through "all" the results (or as many as Google is willing to show you), and in general trying to extract what you're actually looking for also tends to get you blocked with a CAPTCHA or just completely banned for a while.
- scholia 9y ago
  It's quite amusing to compare Google search results with and without the word PORN.
- clarry 9y ago
  > To add insult to injury, repeating minor variations of a query, combing through "all" the results (or as many as Google is willing to show you), Oh yeah. When Google proudly proclaims that there are about sixty quintillion results. And the thing you want isn't on the front page, but you know it's there somewhere if it was ever indexed. You start combing through the results. 25 pages in, no more results.
eighthnate 9y ago
It's due to alphabet altering their "algorithm" to favor established companies and sources ( aka fight "fake news" and clean up the "interwebs" ). Google stopped being a faithful reflection of the internet. It's why now, any coooking and recipe searches now brings up nytimes links first rather than those that people clicked/linked/sourced. It's not just google search. It's the entire alphabet ecosystem. Google news, youtube, etc all are getting worse. Google news was "cleansed" and now just peppers everyone with nytimes and wapo articles. If you have the time, waybackmachine and see how different googlenews is now compared to just a couple of years ago. And youtube trending is just awful as well. It doesn't reflect what people are watching. It's just a advertising platform for established news channels and late night shows. It's the direction the internet is going. From user directed (bottom-up ) system to a moderator driven ( top-down ) system. The government and establishment media has put so much pressure on social media/internet companies that they finally have given in. Essentially, the age-old tactic of blaming someone of aiding the enemy ( aka russians/fake news/propaganda ) and "we must protect the children" was used to intimidate and cow tech companies.
jazoom 9y ago
I tried using DDG yesterday and found they don't show the dates of articles in search results. That's a big omission IMO.
forapurpose 9y ago
> I only once in a while use the !g bang Use the !s bang instead, which uses Startpage. Startpage is Google results but with user confidentiality, IIUC.
EpicEng 9y ago
Google still provides the best results for me, almost always hit 1 or 2. I tried DDG and it was just too consistently wrong.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Google always provides the "best results for you", this is called the filter bubble. DDG just provides the best results. I'm not interested the best results for you, I'm not even interested in the best results for me. I have no use for dictionary that removes the words I don't like, I want both sides of the coin.
  - EpicEng 9y ago
    I have no idea what you mean by this. I type something into google and I get a relevant result, exactly what I was looking for. I search DDG and... Sometimes I get what I'm looking for, other times I'm hunting through pages of results and eventually give up hope. In what way is DDG better here exactly? I'm not buying it.
samwalton 9y ago
Try google image searching for the following terms: "american inventors" "european people art" "white couple" "white man and white woman" "european history people" "white woman with children"
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Not following? Did American inventors and get Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, Alexander Bell and a bunch of others.
  - jacksmith21006 9y ago
    Was curious and tried the others and still not following. Can you explain what is wrong with the results?
hdhzy 9y ago
> I only once in a while use the !g bang and almost always come back disappointed. Ha! My exact experience shows the same. I'm not finding something using DDG and think "well google will find it, surely", use !g and bam! I've got the same irrelevant results. The correct approach is to adjust the query but it's hard to fight the habit of trusting that Google knows better...
touristtam 9y ago
I've used DDG since 2012 and I rarely go back to Google for text searches. The event that made me search (no pun intended) for an alternative was the key word limit in place to filter out the result. It seems that Google ranking engine doesn't promote links based on certain type of content, and that makes it difficult to use in one of my previous work environment.
bigbugbag 9y ago
> Not sure if this is just me, but Google Search results are getting less and less relevant for my queries and at the same time, provide more and more spammy sites as results. This had been going on for over 15 years now, I remember a time where you could have over a dozen pages of relevant results then focus was put on first page and it was over.

kowdermeister 9y ago

I should report my null result, however it's completely boring, uninteresting. I always find what I look for pretty fast.

johndoe489 9y ago

Even putting politics & world events aside, Google Search doesn't seem to get better. For me the biggest disappointment is when they turned off the ability to search for "an exact match within quotes", as well as the ability to use +plus and -minus to refine results. (EDIT: could be wrong about that, I thought it was disabled at some point) But the most dumbfounding is the fact that you still get several year old results whenever you search for a bug, hardware/driver issue, or even simple programming questions related to a not too old framework or API. Every time I have to go into the advanced options to restrict the results to one year, or one month.. you'd think they would make recent activity the default and then let the user know they can "search older results".

muxator 9y ago
Really? Naively, I was still continuing to put my "queries in quotes" and using + and - to refine my search. When did it stopped being supported?
- johndoe489 9y ago
  My bad. I could swear it was removed at some point but I can't find articles. A quick test reveals maybe the change is that you can't do an exact "ascii" search, ie. google searches for an exact sequence of words, but the casing may be different , there-may-be-dashes and so on.
  - redtuesday 9y ago
    To use the plus sign like behaviour you now need to use quotes (since 2011). Instead of: mars +landings +failures you now have to do: mars “landings” “failures” Source: https://searchengineland.com/google-sunsets-search-operator-98189 https://searchengineland.com/google-sunsets-search-operator-...
- brians 9y ago
  When Google Plus was big. 2011? Quotes still work, and also have an effect like +
wonderous 9y ago
Appears you’re wrong about which of the search operators are currently supported by Google: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 The + operator was retired when Google+ was launched, because + was needed as a searchable character rather than an operator.
brazzledazzle 9y ago
There's been so many times that old results have saved my bacon. I like that they give me everything and allow me to make the decision to narrow it down as needed. Sure, it can be annoying when you're searching for results that are relevant for recent versions of software or libraries but even in those situations old results can be great because they lead to solutions that are still applicable or relevant GitHub issues that lead you where you want to go. That said, it would be nice if it wasn't buried and was exposed as a slider but I'll take what they're giving.

amelius 9y ago

If I type "GitHub" in DDG, then the first result is the Wikipedia page, the second is some ad, and the third is the actual GitHub website. Seems in the wrong order if you ask me. Anyway, I also use DDG, but I always end up using "!g". At least this gives DDG some metrics on how well they are doing.

smsm42 9y ago
Typed "github" right now - github.com is the first one. First non-github result is 8th (git-scm.com). Not sure what's the difference.
- amelius 9y ago
  Did you try on mobile? (I did)
  - rangibaby 9y ago
    Yes. My first result it Github.com with a blurb about the site and the Github logo. Wiki article is 3rd.
  - tombrossman 9y ago
    Desktop with an ad blocker (which is my typical use case) returns their official site first, then Wikipedia, etc... . https://i.imgur.com/c8THJcm.png https://i.imgur.com/c8THJcm.png
- grkvlt 9y ago
  Just for comparison I did this search on Google (UK site, logged in with my work account) as well, the first page of 'github' results are listed. It seems their are much more relevant and useful than the DDG results... 1. a clearly marked relevant ad at the top, for the circleci github plugin 2. an infobox at the right with details of the company, their web address, a link to their twitter account, and some related search queries 3. (first full-width result) link to github.com and summary text 4. a sub-search box to continue searching only on github.com 5. a short two-column list of six links to github.com sub sections 6. a link to the github twitter account and three square boxes across the page with its most recent tweets 7. the github wikipedia page 8. github youtube channel 9. github app for slack 10. github linkedin profile 11. github facebook page

blattimwind 9y ago

> Not sure if this is just me, but Google Search results are getting less and less relevant for my queries and at the same time, provide more and more spammy sites as results. Personally I noticed that a few years back there was always talk of changes to Googles' algorithms to de-rank automatically generated SEO/ad pages, yet this exact kind of site dominate search results in many topics. This makes Google virtually useless for them. On the other hand, sometimes Google still manages to dig up some information that I'd never expected to find. For example, sometimes when searching a part number Google will direct you to a page that doesn't even mention that number, yet is still about the same part (under a different label) or mentions it - rather impressive. However, most of the time the majority of search results are useless sites that just have endless lists of everything to get traffic and show ads. Google also became notoriously bad in discerning (or rather susceptible to manipulation?) which page(s) are "official" (which should rank very high for certain terms) and which are not.

pault 9y ago
It's so frustrating trying to evaluate SaaS products for a particular domain when all of the search results are affiliate listicles and sneaky first party marketing.

Kiro 9y ago

Why would DDG be any better? It's just Bing wrapped in incognito.

sacheendra 9y ago
I think it could be because a lot of people trying to fool (SEO) google search, but not so many are doing it for bing.
- Kiro 9y ago
  That could be the case, yes.
collyw 9y ago
Can you elaborate on that some more? I thought it was a custom Perl application.
- Kiro 9y ago
  > DuckDuckGo emphasizes returning the best results, rather than the most results, and generates those results from over 400 individual sources, including key crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, and other search engines like Bing, Yahoo!, Yandex, and Yummly. So basically they don't have their own crawler but aggregate results, mostly from Bing which is (or was) clear from comparing search results. However, a sibling comment claims they run their own spider now so my info may be outdated (quote from Wikipedia).
sveme 9y ago
No, they use their own crawler for quite some time already. Spiced up with bing results, if I recall it correctly.
- Kiro 9y ago
  Source?
  - 9y ago

akira2501 9y ago

> but Google Search results are getting less and less relevant for my queries and at the same time, provide more and more spammy sites as results. I'm getting many sites that are missing one or more of my keywords listed above sites that do have all of them. I get this odd feeling an AI is trying really hard to draw inferences from my search patterns and is failing horribly to understand what it is I am asking for most of the time.

zipperhead 9y ago
I've noticed this as well - I find I have to quote words more often to force the search in the right direction.
- zeep 9y ago
  Same for me... if only they would bring back the + operator, it would make this a little less painful...
  - pault 9y ago
    At what point does google admit g+ has failed and stop crippling their primary search tool to accommodate it? I know "you are the product" etc, but if the tool becomes frustrating to use and someone else can provide a better user experience, it's going to cut into those ad dollars.
- SerLava 9y ago
  When that doesn't work, I type the desired word three times after the search e.g. "Old books for sale old old old" -if, say, all the results are dominated by new books due to "books for sale" being so strongly attached to those websites. If that doesn't work I type "BING" and don't return for a while. If Google's algorithm doesn't keep track of frustrated searches for BING I will eat my hat.
  - visarga 9y ago
    Good one. I will use it too. When I can't find what I want in Google, I'll search "bing" and click the first link.

loudandskittish 9y ago

Was going to comment the same thing. Lately, if I, say, search for four words, the top result will only contain one of those four words. Almost feels like being back in 1996.

beefield 9y ago
This is one of my pet htes with google at the moment. They helpfully tell which of the search terms are missing in each result, and every time I see that "missing" tag, I am starting to draft an email in my mind: "Dear Google AI. Why do you think I wrote that word into my query? Best Regards, Beefield." (Second one is that there is no way to make specific queries to return results only in a certain language (and even adding words in a specific language does not help because it tries to translate them), but you need to change the settings for the whole google search)
- missblit 9y ago
  > (Second one is that there is no way to make specific queries to return results only in a certain language It's a little hidden away but advanced search can do this. For example: https://www.google.com/search?as_q=猫&lr=lang_en https://www.google.com/search?as_q=猫&lr=lang_en
  - beefield 9y ago
    Thanks. Wonder how I have missed that.
- scholia 9y ago
  You could try the Verbatim setting, which is under Tools | All results.

icc97 9y ago

Personally I find the opposite, I always start with DDG, but sometimes it doesn't find what I'm searching for. Typically though the fallback with !g does work. However for me that's fine, it removes most of my use of Google search. But also the !g search is less personalised than the regular google search so you'll get less of the search bubble. Even better is to always do the !g searches in a private browsing tab or use the Firefox containers addon to keep the tracking cookies separate. Then you're even less likely to get search bubble results.

collyw 9y ago
I am the same. The fact is Google knows a fair bit about my searches and knows when I type Django that I mean the web framework (not the film). Duck Duck Go needs extra term in the search to know that I am looking for the software and not the film.
- majewsky 9y ago
  I just put this to the test by entering "Django" into DDG and the search results page literally alternates between Django, the framework, and Django, the film name: Each odd result is about the framework, each even result is about movies of that name.
  - icc97 9y ago
    I compared this to "!g Django", and you get the entire first page is nothing but Django software. This is using a private browsing session.
    - bigbugbag 9y ago
      Actually if you look closely there are a few Tarantino's movie django in the rows of thumbnails from google images. Other than those I can confirm that google is bad at providing relevant results for this keyword, and instead only focus on one possible meaning.
- johndoe489 9y ago

mirimir 9y ago

> To add, i also don't necessarily think of this as a "Google" problem - the same people that will believe in a statement gathered from a quick search will also believe in the same thing when they see it in a Facebook post, Whatsapp chainmail or whatever.... Yes! It's foolish to simply trust what you read. And that's especially so for contentious issues. Every source is biased, intentionally or not. And expecting Google to do the heavy lifting, and just trust what they give you, is just as foolish.

vog 9y ago

> I've switched to DDG half a year ago or so and haven't looked back much Same for me. I specially like their approach to technical documentation. Search for some web development stuff and DuckDuckGo shows you the MDN site while Google points to some outdated (and low quality and spammy) w3schools site. Ask a question that is answered on StackOverflow? DuckDuckGo points you to StackOverflow, and even shows relevant parts of the answer. While Google points to some spam sites that are a bad rip-off of the StackOverflow content.

falcolas 9y ago
Oh, w3schools. I hate that they are always near the top of Google searches for anything even remotely web related, when what I really want is the official spec or MDN. Just tried it right now - the top three search results for "html canvas" are all w3schools on google. They're still the top in DDG, but there's only one entry as opposed to three. Bing also only has one, but they also steal the "here's your answer" type card text from w3schools. Congratulations on your SEO, but f' you for polluting search results.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Irritating that you have to do it, but: html canvas -site:w3schools.com Probably returns what you wanted.
  - nastajus 9y ago
    There was a way to remove results from Google 5 years ago that worked and I've used before, but now you need to use a chrome plugin apparently this says. Post comments afterwards are still a few years old but may still apply today https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/35786/is-there-a-new-way-to-remove-sites-from-google-search-results https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/35786/is-there-a...
- twsted 9y ago
  This is because we are lazy and we use a search even if we could go straight to a specific site eg MDN, Stack Overflow, Wikipedia.

agumonkey 9y ago

I use ddg, and I dont like the results for anything not one dimensional. Now I can agree that google results are less appealing to me but still way above the pack.

tluyben2 9y ago

> Not sure if this is just me, It is not, many people are saying this. Personally I find other search engines (DDG included) quite impossible to use, the results just are not what I was looking for, while Google is an always first page hit. Engines like Bing just give me straight up crap which isn't even related to (seemingly ofcourse; it somehow did find a relation obviously) what I am searching for. I use web search almost exclusively for compile issues, coding searches and whitepaper searches. I would like to use something else but it would be very inefficient for the work I do at this moment. What I noticed as well (and is sommewhat related); I work in China a lot and my colleagues there have no (real; they have it when they need to but they don't use it like we do) access to Google and, when solving hardware/software problems they are far less efficient than us. Thye have an advantage (I find) that they memorize a lot more than we do, but when we just need to solve something that they did not encounter before, Google always delivers while Baidu, Bing etc do not even get close.

ordu 9y ago
It is interesting, because does not match to my experience. Can you give an example of your search query that does not work well enough on DDG?
- amorphid 9y ago
  My username => amorphid I want 'amorphid', not 'amorphis'.
  - alsetmusic 9y ago
    I just searched with quotes around the word and it worked.
  - chappi42 9y ago
    +amorphid works. More tips under "duckduckgo search syntax". This said, I think google is more accurate. But duckduckgo works well enough and is my default search engine now (Google lost me with THE ONE GOOGLE aggregation since quite a while ago)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mrhappyunhappy 9y ago

it's not just you, I have been having a similar experience. In fact I see goggle often turning up results in those answer boxes that come from unqualified sources. What's worse, when you click through them you get video autoplay ads.

KKKKkkkk1 9y ago

Google Search actually works really well for me, and I think it's been getting better over time. Just this week, a colleague asked me why the following code does not work: void foo() { cout << "global\n"; } struct Foo { void foo(int i) { cout << "method " << i << "\n"; } void bar() { foo(); // <-- compiler error here } }; Even a few years ago, answering an arcane question like this, where it is not clear what keywords you need to search for, would take you hours of googling. Most people would just not bother. But in this case, it took me literally 30 s to find an answer on Stack Overflow.

lol768 9y ago
> Google Search actually works really well for me, and I think it's been getting better over years. Just this week, a colleague asked me why the following code does not work: I feel like you've posted this comment mid-thoughtstream. How is the compiler error relevant to Google Search? Edit: > Even a few years ago, answering an arcane question like this, where it is not clear what keywords you need to search for, would take you hours of googling. Most people would just not bother. But in this case, it took me literally 30 s to find an answer on Stack Overflow. Makes a bit more sense now you've edited that in. Yeah, I'd totally agree. I've noticed it can help you find films based on description ("film with adam sandler and kate beckinsale") or code syntax ("c++ io operator") using terms that aren't really at all obviously connected to what you're trying to find out.
tyingq 9y ago
Google search does tend to still do well for areas where they see there's no money to be squeezed. There's a stark difference if you try to search for something where Google can net a big cut of the outcome. Try searching for "vegas hotels". Once upon a time, google returned a healthy mix of results that directly benefited them, and ones that didn't. Here's the portion of the page (yellow rectangle) that now appears to be presented to actually help visitors, and not directly pay Google: https://imgur.com/a/hAFas https://imgur.com/a/hAFas On my PC, you have to scroll down 2 pages to see that.
- waqf 9y ago

lph 9y ago

I've switched to Bing, which was a step I wouldn't have even entertained five years ago. Google needs to get back to its minimalist beginnings. It's really apparent that the advertising department has taken over while the search department atrophies. In retrospect, I think the turning point was when they murdered Labs and Reader.

vermontdevil 9y ago

Not you. It’s getting frustrating to see less quality info being brought up first when I search for something. Its to the point I just go to a certain few sites directly to search within these sites instead of Google.

bobajeff 9y ago

I have the same experience I feel like Google is becoming less and less useful for finding things. There have been several times where I tried to find things I've come across before and Google was no help. However it's still the best search engine hands down. There is no way a search engine like DDG could provide better results. If Bing can't do it there is no way DDG can. It would like it if there was a comparable alternative to Google but there really isn't. I think it would be cool if some system or protocol (eg. IMAP, RSS, OStatus) came along to provide a way to create a user programmable search engine, that's decentralized but comparable to Google.

visarga 9y ago
Why do you think there is no open and free search engine? I don't think it's because of hosting costs, because a distributed search engine could be run with local hardware.
- bobajeff 9y ago
  A search engine is many things in a giant package. Most wholesale search companies have a database text/images and algorithm data that is in the terabytes if not more. They also have many servers for fast and efficient processing of queries and giving results. This database could be made freely available (see CommonCrawl) but without a datacenter big enough to store and run queries on it, it's meaningless as a "open" search engine. A distributed search engine runs into all of the scalability and quality of service problems that researchers of Peer-to-Peer Information Retrieval have been trying to solve since the early days of the internet.

elorant 9y ago

My guess is that you live in US. I live in Greece, and trying anything but Google for localized results is pretty much useless. The same goes for many European countries. That's why Google's share in Europe is above 90%. There's practically no alternative.

hrktb 9y ago
Seconded. That’s also the very reason I switched to ddg: getting non local, non trending results in Google is a PITA. It’s a constant fight against the AI that tries to steer the results towards what 90% of the people in that country are looking for.
bigbugbag 9y ago
Actually there are alternatives, qwant[1] is one example, framabee is another[2] [1]: https://www.qwant.com/ https://www.qwant.com/ [2]: https://framabee.org/ https://framabee.org/

bobcostas55 9y ago

The most obvious change I have noticed is that they are far more aggressive about dropping terms from the query. I don't this has ever produced a useful result for me, I always have to go back to the search and add quotes around the dropped term.

userbinator 9y ago
...and the most irritating part is that it's almost always omitting the term that is most important because it's the one that reduces the number of results the most, under the (ridiculously flawed) assumption that more results are better; and in that case, why not go the whole hog and make everything "suggestion"-based? People are searching for what they want, and specifying terms to get that. To make an analogy, it'd be like going into a pet shop, looking for a specific breed of dog, and the owner trying to convince you to buy cats instead. "But you were just looking for a pet, right? What's the difference?" A pretty idiotic situation.

qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago

It is. Seems like the first few pages are tailored to sales over anything else.

userbinator 9y ago

Try searching for things like part numbers and datasheets for obscure electronic components, along with schematics and service manuals. That's one area where Google's search results used to be far better than now. I've almost become accustomed to always putting my queries in quotes, just because it would otherwise mean completely useless results. The other thing that's gotten worse results is... adult content, especially when searching for very specific terms; and even with "SafeSearch" off, which is supposed to mean no filtering. To add insult to injury, repeating minor variations of a query, combing through "all" the results (or as many as Google is willing to show you), and in general trying to extract what you're actually looking for also tends to get you blocked with a CAPTCHA or just completely banned for a while.

scholia 9y ago
It's quite amusing to compare Google search results with and without the word PORN.
clarry 9y ago
> To add insult to injury, repeating minor variations of a query, combing through "all" the results (or as many as Google is willing to show you), Oh yeah. When Google proudly proclaims that there are about sixty quintillion results. And the thing you want isn't on the front page, but you know it's there somewhere if it was ever indexed. You start combing through the results. 25 pages in, no more results.

eighthnate 9y ago

It's due to alphabet altering their "algorithm" to favor established companies and sources ( aka fight "fake news" and clean up the "interwebs" ). Google stopped being a faithful reflection of the internet. It's why now, any coooking and recipe searches now brings up nytimes links first rather than those that people clicked/linked/sourced. It's not just google search. It's the entire alphabet ecosystem. Google news, youtube, etc all are getting worse. Google news was "cleansed" and now just peppers everyone with nytimes and wapo articles. If you have the time, waybackmachine and see how different googlenews is now compared to just a couple of years ago. And youtube trending is just awful as well. It doesn't reflect what people are watching. It's just a advertising platform for established news channels and late night shows. It's the direction the internet is going. From user directed (bottom-up ) system to a moderator driven ( top-down ) system. The government and establishment media has put so much pressure on social media/internet companies that they finally have given in. Essentially, the age-old tactic of blaming someone of aiding the enemy ( aka russians/fake news/propaganda ) and "we must protect the children" was used to intimidate and cow tech companies.

jazoom 9y ago

I tried using DDG yesterday and found they don't show the dates of articles in search results. That's a big omission IMO.

forapurpose 9y ago

> I only once in a while use the !g bang Use the !s bang instead, which uses Startpage. Startpage is Google results but with user confidentiality, IIUC.

EpicEng 9y ago

Google still provides the best results for me, almost always hit 1 or 2. I tried DDG and it was just too consistently wrong.

bigbugbag 9y ago
Google always provides the "best results for you", this is called the filter bubble. DDG just provides the best results. I'm not interested the best results for you, I'm not even interested in the best results for me. I have no use for dictionary that removes the words I don't like, I want both sides of the coin.
- EpicEng 9y ago
  I have no idea what you mean by this. I type something into google and I get a relevant result, exactly what I was looking for. I search DDG and... Sometimes I get what I'm looking for, other times I'm hunting through pages of results and eventually give up hope. In what way is DDG better here exactly? I'm not buying it.

samwalton 9y ago

Try google image searching for the following terms: "american inventors" "european people art" "white couple" "white man and white woman" "european history people" "white woman with children"

jacksmith21006 9y ago
Not following? Did American inventors and get Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, Alexander Bell and a bunch of others.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Was curious and tried the others and still not following. Can you explain what is wrong with the results?

hdhzy 9y ago

> I only once in a while use the !g bang and almost always come back disappointed. Ha! My exact experience shows the same. I'm not finding something using DDG and think "well google will find it, surely", use !g and bam! I've got the same irrelevant results. The correct approach is to adjust the query but it's hard to fight the habit of trusting that Google knows better...

touristtam 9y ago

I've used DDG since 2012 and I rarely go back to Google for text searches. The event that made me search (no pun intended) for an alternative was the key word limit in place to filter out the result. It seems that Google ranking engine doesn't promote links based on certain type of content, and that makes it difficult to use in one of my previous work environment.

bigbugbag 9y ago

> Not sure if this is just me, but Google Search results are getting less and less relevant for my queries and at the same time, provide more and more spammy sites as results. This had been going on for over 15 years now, I remember a time where you could have over a dozen pages of relevant results then focus was put on first page and it was over.