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I’ve been adopting and promoting DuckDuckGo for more than 2–3 years now. I can say that the transition period was quite long actually. I was invoking !g very fr

I’ve been adopting and promoting DuckDuckGo for more than 2–3 years now. I can say that the transition period was quite long actually. I was invoking !g very frequently at the beginning but I force myself to at least probe a few first items first before trying Google. After these years I rarely use Google, and every time that I actually search something on Google, before even seeing the result, Google welcomes me by the whole TOS/Privacy stuff and I close the tab and try the DDG a few more times. I think the friction of accepting their privacy policy makes me think twice. If you like DDG, recommend it to friends and coworkers. I usually put a link in newsletter if appropriate.

dave5104 7y ago
I've switched my default browser search engine to DDG, but I still find myself missing Google results. I miss those knowledge graph results (or whatever Google calls those sidebar boxes). Also, I've found that DDG cannot consistently display a weather forecast widget for the query "[zip code] weather". Sometimes it will show a weather forecast, and other times it will not display it--very frustrating. Any idea why? Even just refreshing the results will switch to displaying the weather widget, which leads me to think it's either a bug (I'm in Firefox), or they don't actually have the data for my zip code and are going to fetch it after I make my request?
- sp332 7y ago
  How about !weather instead of just weather? You can even pick your source: https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=weather https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=weather
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    When I search !weather it ships me off to weather.com. I REALLY don't want that to happen. If I wanted to go there, I would have just typed in that URL.
    - sp332 7y ago
      I don't see why it's worse. If you want to know what the weather is, why not go to a weather site? What's the advantage to seeing the same (or less) information on a search results page instead?
      - nullspace 7y ago
        Not OP, but I was so happy when weather was built into google a few years ago. Weather.com is pure evil when it comes to tracking and clickbait. It's also slow as hell.
        sp332 7y ago
        Yeah but I covered that in the second part of my comment. See https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=weather https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=weather
        Consultant32452 7y ago
        I guess this boils down to what is my goal. Here's two plausible goals from my perspective. I go to DDG and ask for it to give me a sample of some sources from which I could find the weather. This is a traditional search. Or, I could go to DDG and ask it for the current weather. This is what I really want. There's no scenario in which I already know which weather source I want to use, memorize its ! command, navigate to DDG, then enter that ! command. That's too many jumps. If I want the weather from weather underground or whatever, why would I ever go to DDG to start with?
        sp332 7y ago
        I have DDG as my default search engine, so I just type "!wu 01234" in my address bar. This basically skips the DDG navigation and UI entirely. I like this type of shortcut for Wikipedia and IMDB too. Anyway this is just a workaround for when the weather infobox doesn't automatically show up in the DDG UI, which it normally does.
    - 7y ago
- burlesona 7y ago
  This is kinda silly but for me it always works if I do it in the other order: ie. “weather 12345” Maybe try that?
tobr 7y ago
Similar story for me. Until a few months ago probably 90% of my searches included `!g`. Then at some point I just got out of the habit, and now I usually don’t even think about the fact that I’m on DDG’s result page instead of Google’s. I have no idea if it is because the results actually got better or if I just got used to them.
RandomTisk 7y ago
The biggest problem with DDG for me is how easy it is to game. Try doing research on new cars/trucks and you'll find most results at the top are trash sites like 2020-make-model.com and the like.
- Kiro 7y ago
  That's a problem with Bing (the underlying search engine), not DDG.
- mikkom 7y ago
  It's bing..
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- fredsanford 7y ago
  Use !mill to filter DDG searches through millionshort.com. You can also go directly there. [1] Change the 1000000 to however many results you want to remove from the top of the results list. 1: https://millionshort.com/search?keywords=weather+22222&remove=1000000 https://millionshort.com/search?keywords=weather+22222&remov...
- RileyJames 7y ago
  Agreed, it’s easier to game. But often these ‘spam’ sites combined with an adblocker actually mean you get the content you wanted without ads and bloat. Where as the ‘official’ site has a long load time due to design bloat, videos and other non-content which can’t be blocked with a simple blocker because it’s a part of the actual website. Google seems to assume name brand websites have good content. I rarely agree.

dave5104 7y ago

I've switched my default browser search engine to DDG, but I still find myself missing Google results. I miss those knowledge graph results (or whatever Google calls those sidebar boxes). Also, I've found that DDG cannot consistently display a weather forecast widget for the query "[zip code] weather". Sometimes it will show a weather forecast, and other times it will not display it--very frustrating. Any idea why? Even just refreshing the results will switch to displaying the weather widget, which leads me to think it's either a bug (I'm in Firefox), or they don't actually have the data for my zip code and are going to fetch it after I make my request?

sp332 7y ago
How about !weather instead of just weather? You can even pick your source: https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=weather https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=weather
- Consultant32452 7y ago
  When I search !weather it ships me off to weather.com. I REALLY don't want that to happen. If I wanted to go there, I would have just typed in that URL.
  - sp332 7y ago
    I don't see why it's worse. If you want to know what the weather is, why not go to a weather site? What's the advantage to seeing the same (or less) information on a search results page instead?
    - nullspace 7y ago
      Not OP, but I was so happy when weather was built into google a few years ago. Weather.com is pure evil when it comes to tracking and clickbait. It's also slow as hell.
      - sp332 7y ago
        Yeah but I covered that in the second part of my comment. See https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=weather https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=weather
        Consultant32452 7y ago
        I guess this boils down to what is my goal. Here's two plausible goals from my perspective. I go to DDG and ask for it to give me a sample of some sources from which I could find the weather. This is a traditional search. Or, I could go to DDG and ask it for the current weather. This is what I really want. There's no scenario in which I already know which weather source I want to use, memorize its ! command, navigate to DDG, then enter that ! command. That's too many jumps. If I want the weather from weather underground or whatever, why would I ever go to DDG to start with?
        sp332 7y ago
        I have DDG as my default search engine, so I just type "!wu 01234" in my address bar. This basically skips the DDG navigation and UI entirely. I like this type of shortcut for Wikipedia and IMDB too. Anyway this is just a workaround for when the weather infobox doesn't automatically show up in the DDG UI, which it normally does.
  - 7y ago
burlesona 7y ago
This is kinda silly but for me it always works if I do it in the other order: ie. “weather 12345” Maybe try that?

tobr 7y ago

Similar story for me. Until a few months ago probably 90% of my searches included `!g`. Then at some point I just got out of the habit, and now I usually don’t even think about the fact that I’m on DDG’s result page instead of Google’s. I have no idea if it is because the results actually got better or if I just got used to them.

RandomTisk 7y ago

The biggest problem with DDG for me is how easy it is to game. Try doing research on new cars/trucks and you'll find most results at the top are trash sites like 2020-make-model.com and the like.

Kiro 7y ago
That's a problem with Bing (the underlying search engine), not DDG.
mikkom 7y ago
It's bing..
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
fredsanford 7y ago
Use !mill to filter DDG searches through millionshort.com. You can also go directly there. [1] Change the 1000000 to however many results you want to remove from the top of the results list. 1: https://millionshort.com/search?keywords=weather+22222&remove=1000000 https://millionshort.com/search?keywords=weather+22222&remov...
RileyJames 7y ago
Agreed, it’s easier to game. But often these ‘spam’ sites combined with an adblocker actually mean you get the content you wanted without ads and bloat. Where as the ‘official’ site has a long load time due to design bloat, videos and other non-content which can’t be blocked with a simple blocker because it’s a part of the actual website. Google seems to assume name brand websites have good content. I rarely agree.