6 ms·

After switching to DDG few years ago, I used google search again for the first time in a while was surprised How bad their search has become. Not because it’s n

After switching to DDG few years ago, I used google search again for the first time in a while was surprised How bad their search has become. Not because it’s not good, it’s still better than DDG at certain things, but because the results have been crowded out by so much junk. There were so many ads, snippets, did you also means, and AMP widgets that there was only room for about eight actual search results. How have they let their core product get so lost?

lettergram 7y ago
Indeed! I too was slapped with this when I did a recent Google search. I had to wade through a ton of what I’d call “story cards” - I.e. a square around some story Google wanted to highlight. I couldn’t get to the actual results until half way down the page. Luckily, DuckDuckGo has been improving and now it’s even what I recommend to non-technical people; as I never use “!g” any more.
- mattkevan 7y ago
  Really dislike those story cards. They get in the way of actual results, steal traffic from the sites the content is from and don’t deliver enough information to be useful. Not once has a story card provided what I needed.
judge2020 7y ago
Google realizes their biggest loss leader is directing customers off of their website to other websites, so the best way to turn a profit is to either keep users on the site (snippets, calculators[0], amp) or to send them to other sites for a price via ads. 0: https://goo.gl/search/right+rectangular+pyramid+calc:+find+A https://goo.gl/search/right+rectangular+pyramid+calc:+find+A
- jostmey 7y ago
  Except that people will stop using google if it can’t help them find useful information. Google’s leadership seems to not understand or not care about how the internet works
  - mromanuk 7y ago
    It depends. Most people, only want the answer to the “question” they typed. And if that is answered in a widget, cloaking the original content, they don’t care. That’s what google realized.
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      So, Google better get the right answer every time. Because when they were only pointing to a larger knowledge base, people understood that they should search a bit for their answer, but if they show it on a Google frame, it better be correct. Funny thing is that I moved to DDG because Google couldn't reliably guess my answers, and I am satisfied with an engine that tries to guess to a much larger extent. This is because DDG guesses are better, and they don't hide the web results so I can fall back to them.
    - beezle 7y ago
      Earlier today I wanted to search for info concerning whether a person had to turn in everything they found in the street. Which one returned any relevant results? Bing: https://www.bing.com/search?q=do+i+have+to+turn+in+everything+i+find+in+the+street&qs=n&form=QBLH&sp=-1&pq=&sc=8-0&sk=&cvid=CB18279BE7E44976B3BD7B64E5ED6C73 https://www.bing.com/search?q=do+i+have+to+turn+in+everythin... Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=do+i+have+to+turn+in+everything+i+find+in+the+street&oq=do+i+have+to+turn+in+everything+i+find+in+the+street&aqs=chrome..69i57j33.43299j0j8&client=tablet-android-huawei&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ip=1 https://www.google.com/search?q=do+i+have+to+turn+in+everyth...
      - tracker1 7y ago
        Wow... that's the single, most impressive thing I've seen supporting the use of Bing over Google...
  - ivanbakel 7y ago
    I think it's highly naive to suggest that Google's leadership is operating in complete ignorance of their own product. This is the company of analytics - whatever approach is being taken is probably backed by a gargantuan amount of data. That doesn't mean it's good for the web, but "what (the most) users want" is Google's strong point. And this is par for the "the internet is now 4 websites" course, so I don't think it's possible to claim that this isn't "how the internet works" anymore.
alexpetralia 7y ago
Just switched thanks to this recommendation. DDG looks very clean and functional. Thank you
aflag 7y ago
I have been using startpage.com. I find it even better than ddg. It feels as google used to a few years ago.
- Dangeranger 7y ago
  Startpage is just anonymized Google search right? Or did I miss a change to their service?
  - everybodyknows 7y ago
    Correct >You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results in order to remove all trackers and logs. https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ Still has ads -- but a sweet UI. Great find!
switch007 7y ago
Also "people also searched for" (which can be tricky to uBlock), which is about 80% of the reason I prefer DDG these days.
colordrops 7y ago
I tried DDG in the past for privacy reasons but struggled due to poor results. Recently I switched to DDG because of poor results on Google. On certain controversial subjects, Google seems to how filtered out many results for political or advertiser pressure reasons. Even on non political results, the wrong sorts of sites seems to be pushed to the top.
- bduerst 7y ago
  That is because DDG is not a real search engine, since they do not index the web (at least by the 2019 meaning of the word). Unless you are search in Russian, DDG is basically Bing search results.
joedevon 7y ago
Same here but I wanted to add that search is at par 100% on the main search tab. Almost identical but less ads on DDG. Not sure about the images, they seem to just be different images. Google is better at news search. That's the only place I've noticed DDG not being as good at. But DDG is FAR superior as a user experience IMO because of the bangs https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
- stephenr 7y ago
  My only issue with DDG (which doesn’t stop me using it) is if you turn off safe search (eg to prevent false positive blocks for something you want to find) holy shit does a lot of porn show up - for completely non-sexual terms. I’m a big boy, I’m not offended by most of it (the frequency of bizarre Simpson’s porn is a little weird) but it’s somewhat weird the way it appears. I searched for “power Mac case door”, all fine (with safe search off), as you’d expect. Change “type” to gif, expecting to see images of the hinged door on the g3/g4 series... oh wow that’s a lot of porn. And lots of other weird unrelated stuff.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    Do you find false positives after turning the filter off?
    - stephenr 7y ago
      In the example search the first two “pages” of image results (with the adult filter off) have no actual matches for what I wanted - two contain laptops I think.
  - hrktb 7y ago
    > “power Mac case door” I have the same results for animated gifs with safe search off, but I think it’s more because of the presence of “power” or “mac” in so many of these gifs or related pages, compared to the number of gifs of computer related stuff. Put it another way, I think these are legit results, and not false positives or usurping the search terms.
reaperducer 7y ago
This is a good reminder for me to switch my default search engine to DDG again. I try it every few months for a week or so and then switch back to Big G when I find DDG isn't right for the types of searches I need. I look forward to the day when I forget to switch back to Google.
- SECProto 7y ago
  Same! I just did a test search, and the results seem much more relevant than ~1 year ago (last time I tried)
JensRex 7y ago
>How have they let their core product get so lost? Search is not their core product. Google is an advertising company, and everything they do is centered around that.
morog 7y ago
Unfortunately if you're a long way from ddg servers it's many seconds longer than Google to load, making it a poor proposition in many parts of the world (southern Africa for example)
donmcronald 7y ago
I switched to Firefox and use the dedicated search widget with bing as the default. It’s only a couple clicks to repeat a search on google. I’m fairly happy. Google search has definitely gone down hill IMO because I find bing to be close enough in quality now that I don’t find myself searching on google a lot.
on_and_off 7y ago
>for about eight actual search results. judging from what I understand of how people use Google, it looks more than enough.

lettergram 7y ago

Indeed! I too was slapped with this when I did a recent Google search. I had to wade through a ton of what I’d call “story cards” - I.e. a square around some story Google wanted to highlight. I couldn’t get to the actual results until half way down the page. Luckily, DuckDuckGo has been improving and now it’s even what I recommend to non-technical people; as I never use “!g” any more.

mattkevan 7y ago
Really dislike those story cards. They get in the way of actual results, steal traffic from the sites the content is from and don’t deliver enough information to be useful. Not once has a story card provided what I needed.

judge2020 7y ago

Google realizes their biggest loss leader is directing customers off of their website to other websites, so the best way to turn a profit is to either keep users on the site (snippets, calculators[0], amp) or to send them to other sites for a price via ads. 0: https://goo.gl/search/right+rectangular+pyramid+calc:+find+A https://goo.gl/search/right+rectangular+pyramid+calc:+find+A

jostmey 7y ago
Except that people will stop using google if it can’t help them find useful information. Google’s leadership seems to not understand or not care about how the internet works
- mromanuk 7y ago
  It depends. Most people, only want the answer to the “question” they typed. And if that is answered in a widget, cloaking the original content, they don’t care. That’s what google realized.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    So, Google better get the right answer every time. Because when they were only pointing to a larger knowledge base, people understood that they should search a bit for their answer, but if they show it on a Google frame, it better be correct. Funny thing is that I moved to DDG because Google couldn't reliably guess my answers, and I am satisfied with an engine that tries to guess to a much larger extent. This is because DDG guesses are better, and they don't hide the web results so I can fall back to them.
  - beezle 7y ago
    Earlier today I wanted to search for info concerning whether a person had to turn in everything they found in the street. Which one returned any relevant results? Bing: https://www.bing.com/search?q=do+i+have+to+turn+in+everything+i+find+in+the+street&qs=n&form=QBLH&sp=-1&pq=&sc=8-0&sk=&cvid=CB18279BE7E44976B3BD7B64E5ED6C73 https://www.bing.com/search?q=do+i+have+to+turn+in+everythin... Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=do+i+have+to+turn+in+everything+i+find+in+the+street&oq=do+i+have+to+turn+in+everything+i+find+in+the+street&aqs=chrome..69i57j33.43299j0j8&client=tablet-android-huawei&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ip=1 https://www.google.com/search?q=do+i+have+to+turn+in+everyth...
    - tracker1 7y ago
      Wow... that's the single, most impressive thing I've seen supporting the use of Bing over Google...
- ivanbakel 7y ago
  I think it's highly naive to suggest that Google's leadership is operating in complete ignorance of their own product. This is the company of analytics - whatever approach is being taken is probably backed by a gargantuan amount of data. That doesn't mean it's good for the web, but "what (the most) users want" is Google's strong point. And this is par for the "the internet is now 4 websites" course, so I don't think it's possible to claim that this isn't "how the internet works" anymore.

alexpetralia 7y ago

Just switched thanks to this recommendation. DDG looks very clean and functional. Thank you

aflag 7y ago

I have been using startpage.com. I find it even better than ddg. It feels as google used to a few years ago.

Dangeranger 7y ago
Startpage is just anonymized Google search right? Or did I miss a change to their service?
- everybodyknows 7y ago
  Correct >You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results in order to remove all trackers and logs. https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ Still has ads -- but a sweet UI. Great find!

switch007 7y ago

Also "people also searched for" (which can be tricky to uBlock), which is about 80% of the reason I prefer DDG these days.

colordrops 7y ago

I tried DDG in the past for privacy reasons but struggled due to poor results. Recently I switched to DDG because of poor results on Google. On certain controversial subjects, Google seems to how filtered out many results for political or advertiser pressure reasons. Even on non political results, the wrong sorts of sites seems to be pushed to the top.

bduerst 7y ago
That is because DDG is not a real search engine, since they do not index the web (at least by the 2019 meaning of the word). Unless you are search in Russian, DDG is basically Bing search results.

joedevon 7y ago

Same here but I wanted to add that search is at par 100% on the main search tab. Almost identical but less ads on DDG. Not sure about the images, they seem to just be different images. Google is better at news search. That's the only place I've noticed DDG not being as good at. But DDG is FAR superior as a user experience IMO because of the bangs https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang

stephenr 7y ago
My only issue with DDG (which doesn’t stop me using it) is if you turn off safe search (eg to prevent false positive blocks for something you want to find) holy shit does a lot of porn show up - for completely non-sexual terms. I’m a big boy, I’m not offended by most of it (the frequency of bizarre Simpson’s porn is a little weird) but it’s somewhat weird the way it appears. I searched for “power Mac case door”, all fine (with safe search off), as you’d expect. Change “type” to gif, expecting to see images of the hinged door on the g3/g4 series... oh wow that’s a lot of porn. And lots of other weird unrelated stuff.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Do you find false positives after turning the filter off?
  - stephenr 7y ago
    In the example search the first two “pages” of image results (with the adult filter off) have no actual matches for what I wanted - two contain laptops I think.
- hrktb 7y ago
  > “power Mac case door” I have the same results for animated gifs with safe search off, but I think it’s more because of the presence of “power” or “mac” in so many of these gifs or related pages, compared to the number of gifs of computer related stuff. Put it another way, I think these are legit results, and not false positives or usurping the search terms.

reaperducer 7y ago

This is a good reminder for me to switch my default search engine to DDG again. I try it every few months for a week or so and then switch back to Big G when I find DDG isn't right for the types of searches I need. I look forward to the day when I forget to switch back to Google.

SECProto 7y ago
Same! I just did a test search, and the results seem much more relevant than ~1 year ago (last time I tried)

JensRex 7y ago

>How have they let their core product get so lost? Search is not their core product. Google is an advertising company, and everything they do is centered around that.

morog 7y ago

Unfortunately if you're a long way from ddg servers it's many seconds longer than Google to load, making it a poor proposition in many parts of the world (southern Africa for example)

donmcronald 7y ago

I switched to Firefox and use the dedicated search widget with bing as the default. It’s only a couple clicks to repeat a search on google. I’m fairly happy. Google search has definitely gone down hill IMO because I find bing to be close enough in quality now that I don’t find myself searching on google a lot.

on_and_off 7y ago

>for about eight actual search results. judging from what I understand of how people use Google, it looks more than enough.