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I've been using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for almost a year now. I still need to resort to !g for about 1/3 of my queries, which is less than it us
by TheCoreh 8y ago
I've been using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for almost a year now. I still need to resort to !g for about 1/3 of my queries, which is less than it used to be, so the quality is definitely improving.
One weird thing that I noticed is that every so often when I'm in a Google SERP (e.g. in a friend's phone) and I'm not fully satisfied with the results, I add in !g, only to realize that makes no sense. So I wonder if there's a subset of queries that DDG produces better results for, or if Google's search quality is declining.
If anyone from DDG is reading this: Please add the ability to (voluntarily) personalize search results via a cookie, just like you do for the interface theme. Something like "Programming Language: JavaScript". That way ambiguous queries (e.g "array reverse") can be associated with the specific context without having to type it every time (e.g. "array reverse js")
- utopcell 8y agoDDG cannot provide personalized results, because the service they are using to get results (from Bing) does not provide that feature.
- TheCoreh 8y agoThat's not necessarily true. They could use a classifier to figure out the subject of the query (e.g. programming, cooking, travel) and then modify the query sent to Bing or whatever backend they use. Bonus points if they actually expose this on the UI, in a way that allows you to remove the personalization "array reverse [JavaScript x]" "camping sites [Near Lake Tahoe x]"
- greglindahl 8y agoThat's what blekko did with slashtags, and you have to have your own index to do a good job of evaluating those queries.
- mcintyre1994 8y agoThey already do something like this because if you search "array reverse" or any programming question then you get a Q/A tab with stackoverflow almost always at the top.
- utopcell 8y agoThat's not personalization, that's query classification. Of course Bing already does this. What is the personal, private information they could be monitoring for, that would allow them to rewrite better than Bing ?
- TheCoreh 8y agoThey wouldn't be monitoring. You'd explicitly tell them what personalizations you want, and that would be stored in your machine via a cookie that you can delete at will (just like the color scheme/font) It could either be a power user setting hidden away (like color scheme currently is), or it could be exposed on the SERP interface via a prompt: "Set JavaScript as your default programming language?" "Set vegan as your default diet?" etc
- nielsbot 8y agoDDG is not a standalone service?
- utopcell 8y agoNo. These are Bing results.
- touristtam 8y agoI do agree with the comment on needing a way to specify a topic, however, in my experience of 4-5 years on DDG, I have nothing but grief with Google search. It tries too much to guess what I am looking for on the internet and ends up being unhelpful and frustrating.