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> In fact, search advertisers buy search ads by bidding on keywords, not people. It makes intuitive sense, too. If you search for ‘car’, you are more likely to
by stephengillie 8y ago
> In fact, search advertisers buy search ads by bidding on keywords, not people. It makes intuitive sense, too. If you search for ‘car’, you are more likely to respond to a car ad than something you searched for last week.
This keyword-based advertising is our primary business model.
The rest of the post is a rant about user tracking.
- utopcell 8y agoIndeed.
- andy_ppp 8y agoRant seems extremely strong - how about we go with well thought through set of opinions that the CEO of Duck Duck Go is rigorously applying to his product. I personally found his argument so persuasive I intend to set everything to DuckDuckGo again now.
- cbluth 8y agoYeah, I'm convinced now, too
- thelittleone 8y agoI made the switch to DDG about 12 months ago for all devices. It has been an entirely positive experience.
- isaiahg 8y agoBeen full DDG almost as long and now I can't go back. It gives me much better results than google does.
- Nebbers 8y agoWent to try it for a week to see if it was viable. Haven't looked back and have never needed to go to Google's search engine for a year now. Best feature is by far the Stack Overflow 'instant answers'!
- the_duke 8y agoI have it as my primary search engine now too, but I find myself constantly using !g because the results suck.
- hiccuphippo 8y agoTry !s instead of !g for startpage. Same results, less tracking.
- rovr138 8y agoSimilar results. Sometimes the Google bubble helps. But I agree. I check on DuckDuckGo, if I can't find what I'm looking for, most of the time, adding !s finds it. If not, I go back and switching to !g.
- enriquto 8y ago> I have it as my primary search engine now too, but I find myself constantly using !g because the results suck. It's the opposite for me. I use primarily google, but when the results suck (which is quite often), I switch to duckduckgo to obtain a sensible search.
- smbullet 8y agoSame. I use Firefox for Android which is helpful if you have searches you know for a fact DDG won't be able to figure because Firefox let's you select a different search engine instead from the bottom. I do this for sports and location specific searches.
- weaksauce 8y agoIt’s usually good enough for me 90-95% and if I need something that google does better I’ll just use !sp as a proxy to those results. !g is a last resort.
- technimad 8y agoWhen I moved to DDG, it took me more than a week to tune my searches for it. I was completely trained to the google interpreter and ddg works different. Now I use slightly different phrases, or ordering and it is great. I only use !g for very specific technical searches, like obscure errors.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- utopcell 8y agoQuora is not a forum for product placement. The CEO ad was not answering the question.
- avip 8y agoQuora is a good place for product placement and is commonly used as such. In fact, I believe that’s Quora’s revenue generation model...
- utopcell 8y agoHang on, do you think Quora is being paid to allow such answers, or that they allow them because controversial answers are popular ?
- yeutterg 8y agoWhether or not companies are paying Quora, it's common for startup founders to answer questions there. Sometimes the posts are blatant ads that don't really answer the question, or they add nothing that was not already answered. But sometimes they do answer the question and provide value, while also subtly pointing to a product. I think the latter is acceptable, and I do it occasionally myself. (Example: https://www.quora.com/What-kinds-of-lights-are-best-to-combat-Seasonal-Affective-disorder https://www.quora.com/What-kinds-of-lights-are-best-to-comba...) Consider this: founders have the strongest conviction for solving a given problem. They often created a product because they saw a gap in the market, and they tend to be domain experts. So, they are highly qualified to answer questions within their area of expertise. If a post provides value and just so happens to offer a relevant solution with financial strings attached, I have absolutely no problem with it. I might even end up purchasing it, because by searching or asking questions on Quora, I am looking for a solution myself.
- utopcell 8y agoAgreed.
- 8y ago
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoI can’t get over ther branding. I know this is a terrible reason for not switching but I can’t stand their name or logo. If they were named something more modern and less annoying I’d consider. Call me shallow but branding is important if I’m going to use it every day.
- BonesJustice 8y agoIt’s a duck with a bow tie. It’s adorable. Are you not human?
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoI guess I am not. Something about a duck in a bow tie doesn’t sit well with me.
- amelius 8y agoIt looks like Disney's original version of Donald Duck. Knowing how Disney influenced copyright law doesn't help in liking the character.
- new_guy 8y agoBranding is easily the hardest part of a new project. Code is easy. Names are hard!
- andyidsinga 8y agoit isn't the reason I don't DDG (or is it?) ..but I had a similar reaction to the branding.
- barbecue_sauce 8y agoHow about something more like CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet?
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoBetter.
- yellowapple 8y agoI've been using it for years (how many years I can't quite recall, but at least 4 or 5). Haven't looked back. If I really need Google results, I can always stick "!g " in front of the search.
- weaksauce 8y agoYou can stick !g or any of those at almost every place in the query. In fact, if it is at the end you can omit the space.
- yellowapple 8y agoYep. I always forget that, though, so I stick to the beginning as a force of habit.
- icotyl 8y agoI made the switch on all my devices about 6 weeks ago. I lasted 5 weeks. At least for quickly finding relevant programming documentation, I didn't think the results were on par with Google.
- gmueckl 8y agoIf you still want to support DuckDuckGo, you might want to use a browser that lets you prefix search quesies with a one or two letter combo for the search engine to use. Chrome and Vivaldi have this feature and I think Firefox does as well, although I exclusively use its search bar instead, so I am not completely sure.
- Secretmapper 8y agoYou can use the g! prefix and it will go to Google. I found DDG plenty good enough for my use case, and in the rare case I can't find it there I just use g! and bam.
- djsumdog 8y agoI often use the other ones to go directly to the search I want: !imdb, !w (wikipedia), !rt (rotten tomatoes), etc.
- tobr 8y agoI thought “g!” as opposed to “!g” was a typo, but TIL both ways work equally fine! Thanks!
- Mountain_Skies 8y agoBang commands are such a wonderful feature on DDG. Not just for searching other engines when the DDG results aren't what I'm looking for but also for ecommerce sites. The frontpage of most sites are extremely heavyweight and you have to go through a ton of garbage just to get to a search box. Being able to add !homedepot to a DDG search and have it send me to the search results page at Home Depot and not the DDG spidering of the site is pretty nifty feature. I do most of my searches of shopping sites that way now.
- dpcan 8y agoI think there's a problem with this model however. When the highest bidder wins, consumers and advertisers can lose, big. I understand how DDG has to say this is the best and smartest way to do things because they have to live with their promise of not creeping on their visitors - so they can't use the same analytics that someone like Google has. It's just marketing. But the ads that go to the top should be the most valuable, not necessarily go to the buyer with the deepest pockets. I suppose you could say "car" ads cost $x per click, and then let all advertisers rotate, but that's not helpful either. You could measure which one gets clicked the most and have it move to the top, but that can be gamed. If you had any way of knowing how long someone spends on the advertised websites, or base it off of social media reviews or allow consumers with verified accounts to rate ads, that might work better. I don't know, I just can't trust an ad format where I know the top click just spends the most money.
- jimmy1 8y ago> I don't know, I just can't trust an ad format where I know the top click just spends the most money. Why? That's exactly how it works every where else: Radio, TV, Billboards. If two people want the same spot, the person who ponies up more money gets the spot.
- Ibethewalrus 8y agoAnd that’s how Bing served malware
- jimmy1 8y agoAnd that's how your local newspaper serves you telephone numbers to ambulance chasers and medicare fraudsters.
- clubm8 8y ago>But the ads that go to the top should be the most valuable, not necessarily go to the buyer with the deepest pockets. It is my understanding that similar to Google, the first couple of links might be ads, but the rest are organic. I just did a search for a movie I like - To the right is an infobox with a blurb from Wikipedia + links to rotten tomatoes and IMDB. Under it is an amazon ad to buy a copy. The top 5 links are IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, a definition of the word, and a trailer. Seems pretty unobtrusive and on point to me. If I wanted to buy a blu-ray of the movie I'd probably click that ad.
- AznHisoka 8y agoHas he never heard of retargeting? That model is essentially bidding on people. And I wouldnt be surprised if retargeting will become the most popular form or advertising targeting.
- bkanber 8y agoHe makes the distinction later on in the article. "Google is not a search company, they're an advertising company." Google has their display network all across the internet, DDG does not. Retargeting is a popular model for advertising companies, where the retargeting follows you around the internet. Retargeting is much less valuable if you are just a search company.
- aylmao 8y ago> The rest of the post is a rant about user tracking. Almost. There's also: > "The only other way we’ve found so far, which currently accounts for a much smaller portion of our revenue, is non-tracking affiliate partnerships with Amazon and eBay. > "When you visit those sites through DuckDuckGo, including when using !bangs, and subsequently make a purchase, we receive a small commission. This mechanism operates anonymously and there is no personally identifiable information exchanged between us and Amazon or eBay.
- Technetium_Hat 8y agothat is a clever strategy -- there's a reason so many blogspam websites use it.