5 ms·

Side note: For those who tried DDG in the past and were unimpressed I suggest giving it a whirl again. I kind of wrote it off a few years ago and then tried it

by notus 7y ago

Side note: For those who tried DDG in the past and were unimpressed I suggest giving it a whirl again. I kind of wrote it off a few years ago and then tried it recently and its pretty good. You may have to modify some search habits. If you enable location tracking they do anonymous localized results (can read about it here: https://help.duckduckgo.com/privacy/anonymous-localized-results/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/privacy/anonymous-localized-resu...) Usually good if you're used to typing in food choices and getting local results

tarsinge 7y ago
Same here, switched my default search engine to DDG a few months and it took only a few days to get used to it. So much that I was very surprised to discover that I know dislike Google results UI (something I never imagined could happen). I still fallback to Google for advanced search (usually technical subjects) with !g but in the majority of common searches the DDG default results are what I expect. Seriously to all people thinking there is no alternative give it a try, I switched my family and they don’t see a difference.
- behnamoh 7y ago
  DDG should seriously drop the infinite scrolling on their results page. It's so annoying, even Google tried it once and gave up on it.
  - tcpekin 7y ago
    This looks to be a setting you can change in their "Other Settings" page.
  - Zetaphor 7y ago
    You can easily disable that here, among other handy settings: https://duckduckgo.com/settings https://duckduckgo.com/settings
- dorgo 7y ago
  >I know dislike Google results UI I use DDG as a default search engine for a while, but fell back to google search often, because I felt that Google results are better. At some point i enabled a stylesheet which made DDG results look like google's. And the search results improved significantly. I stopped using Google search for anything other than Google maps.
dilap 7y ago
I’m a happy DDG user; I think it’s close but defnly a notch below Google in search quality. Sadly, this is mostly Google having fallen off, not DDG having gotten better. Still it’s worth it for the better website design, avoiding AMP, and the general impression that you’re not interacting with a malevolently intentioned entity.
- danaris 7y ago
  I've been using DDG on and off for several years, and as my primary search engine for the past 2-3+. It's definitely increased in quality from the first times I tried it, and has continued to inch up even as Google has decided they care more about enabling horrendous link farms than actually returning good search results.
powersnail 7y ago
I found that DDG is okay for two types of queries: common everyday topics and technical queries. For many other niche topic, it’s not good at all. I use DDG as the default and have been doing so for many years. I still have to add !g every time I search for violin related questions. The results are often just not relevant at all. I think DDG still has a long way to grow to be a 100% replacement for Google outside the tech and science community.
- maest 7y ago
  Regarding technical queries, they consistently return links to the python 2 docs, never python 3. What I assume people do is they click on the python 2 docs then change the version on the python website. So, from bings perspective it looks like people want the python 2 links. It always frustrates me and makes looking stuff up longer than needed.
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    qwant hands back py3 links: https://lite.qwant.com/?q=python+builtin+exceptions https://lite.qwant.com/?q=python+builtin+exceptions
  - ConceptJunkie 7y ago
    Yeah, this is what I always do as well. Python is going EOL in less than two months. I hope that helps.
  - gspetr 7y ago
    There is a very easy workflow remedy for this, if DDG is your default search engine: type "!py [topic]" For example, I tried searching for "python lists" in my address bar (DDG is my default) and I got all sorts of garbage. Next, I typed "!py lists" and the browser immediately opened this page for me: https://docs.python.org/3/search.html?q=lists https://docs.python.org/3/search.html?q=lists So that works really nice if what you need is Python's native docs. But there's more to "bang" syntax usage, now totaling over 13,000 bangs: https://duckduckgo.com/bang#bangs-list https://duckduckgo.com/bang#bangs-list
arminiusreturns 7y ago
For those considering it, just please remember you can still do google searches from DDG, and imho much more smoothly. For example, I don't even know if googles date operator works anymore, and it's too slow for my taste to click the date range I want in google, so if I want google results for the last year I just do !gyear, etc. Once you start remembering the DDG bang operators things get much smoother. Also, one more thing, DDG has a cli client that is pretty awesome if you live in the cli like I do. https://github.com/jarun/ddgr https://github.com/jarun/ddgr
maest 7y ago
I think it's fair to say DDG (i.e. Bing) is clearly worse than Google, which is a real shame. However, it's still usable and you can resort to google when a search query isn't working.
- derp_dee_derp 7y ago
  It's not fair to say that at all. DDG has better results than Google for most has cases, and Bing has better results for just under half of use cases.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    The one place DDG really falls off is correlating searches with results so they do a worse job than Google at giving you what you want instead of what you search for. That is, trying to remember something and typing along the lines of "that thing with the blue guy and the explosion" is more likely to get you a good result on Google when the actual movie you wanted was "green guy and a fire". Not a huge performance difference but it's there.
  - maest 7y ago
    This might be a place where we have to agree to disagree. I guess the stark quality difference I've experienced made me assume everyone had a similar experience. I'm glad people find ddg useful, I want it to grow (I'm using it despite the fact that I personally find the results inferior)
  - m463 7y ago
    It's not clearly worse than google to me. Virtually all my searches are resolved by DDG. I should also mention that statistically speaking my searches are not particularly complicated, and many are searching for an article or tidbit I had seen before or something where I pick wikipedia as the result.
birksherty 7y ago
I still can't leave google. Because it saves me lots of clicks and js slowness of other websites. Most of the time I find whatever I am looking for directly on the results page like movie review, ratings, actors, related movies and many other things. It shows prices of a product on different stores directly and also related products. No other search engine does this. Bing is almost there except it does not show product prices in my country.
stockkid 7y ago
You're right, nowadays DDG is really not bad for satisfying everyday web search needs. On the other hand, I cannot help but switch to Google (g! at the end of the query) for anything programming related because Google just finds things that DDG doesn't.
maremp 7y ago
I can second this. It's a default with Brave browser, and I've decided to give it a go. That was about a year ago when I first started to use Brave. Back then, some search results were poor, especially localised ones, so I've decided to use Google. Now it's much better, some results are even better than google where better SEO trumps more relevant results. Also, Brave has this nice feature where typing `:g<tab>[search term]` uses google for that one serach term. I use it if am not able to get good results with DDG.

by notus 7y ago

tarsinge 7y ago

Same here, switched my default search engine to DDG a few months and it took only a few days to get used to it. So much that I was very surprised to discover that I know dislike Google results UI (something I never imagined could happen). I still fallback to Google for advanced search (usually technical subjects) with !g but in the majority of common searches the DDG default results are what I expect. Seriously to all people thinking there is no alternative give it a try, I switched my family and they don’t see a difference.

behnamoh 7y ago
DDG should seriously drop the infinite scrolling on their results page. It's so annoying, even Google tried it once and gave up on it.
- tcpekin 7y ago
  This looks to be a setting you can change in their "Other Settings" page.
- Zetaphor 7y ago
  You can easily disable that here, among other handy settings: https://duckduckgo.com/settings https://duckduckgo.com/settings
dorgo 7y ago
>I know dislike Google results UI I use DDG as a default search engine for a while, but fell back to google search often, because I felt that Google results are better. At some point i enabled a stylesheet which made DDG results look like google's. And the search results improved significantly. I stopped using Google search for anything other than Google maps.

dilap 7y ago

I’m a happy DDG user; I think it’s close but defnly a notch below Google in search quality. Sadly, this is mostly Google having fallen off, not DDG having gotten better. Still it’s worth it for the better website design, avoiding AMP, and the general impression that you’re not interacting with a malevolently intentioned entity.

danaris 7y ago
I've been using DDG on and off for several years, and as my primary search engine for the past 2-3+. It's definitely increased in quality from the first times I tried it, and has continued to inch up even as Google has decided they care more about enabling horrendous link farms than actually returning good search results.

powersnail 7y ago

I found that DDG is okay for two types of queries: common everyday topics and technical queries. For many other niche topic, it’s not good at all. I use DDG as the default and have been doing so for many years. I still have to add !g every time I search for violin related questions. The results are often just not relevant at all. I think DDG still has a long way to grow to be a 100% replacement for Google outside the tech and science community.

maest 7y ago
Regarding technical queries, they consistently return links to the python 2 docs, never python 3. What I assume people do is they click on the python 2 docs then change the version on the python website. So, from bings perspective it looks like people want the python 2 links. It always frustrates me and makes looking stuff up longer than needed.
- jakeogh 7y ago
  qwant hands back py3 links: https://lite.qwant.com/?q=python+builtin+exceptions https://lite.qwant.com/?q=python+builtin+exceptions
- ConceptJunkie 7y ago
  Yeah, this is what I always do as well. Python is going EOL in less than two months. I hope that helps.
- gspetr 7y ago
  There is a very easy workflow remedy for this, if DDG is your default search engine: type "!py [topic]" For example, I tried searching for "python lists" in my address bar (DDG is my default) and I got all sorts of garbage. Next, I typed "!py lists" and the browser immediately opened this page for me: https://docs.python.org/3/search.html?q=lists https://docs.python.org/3/search.html?q=lists So that works really nice if what you need is Python's native docs. But there's more to "bang" syntax usage, now totaling over 13,000 bangs: https://duckduckgo.com/bang#bangs-list https://duckduckgo.com/bang#bangs-list

arminiusreturns 7y ago

For those considering it, just please remember you can still do google searches from DDG, and imho much more smoothly. For example, I don't even know if googles date operator works anymore, and it's too slow for my taste to click the date range I want in google, so if I want google results for the last year I just do !gyear, etc. Once you start remembering the DDG bang operators things get much smoother. Also, one more thing, DDG has a cli client that is pretty awesome if you live in the cli like I do. https://github.com/jarun/ddgr https://github.com/jarun/ddgr

maest 7y ago

I think it's fair to say DDG (i.e. Bing) is clearly worse than Google, which is a real shame. However, it's still usable and you can resort to google when a search query isn't working.

derp_dee_derp 7y ago
It's not fair to say that at all. DDG has better results than Google for most has cases, and Bing has better results for just under half of use cases.
- Causality1 7y ago
  The one place DDG really falls off is correlating searches with results so they do a worse job than Google at giving you what you want instead of what you search for. That is, trying to remember something and typing along the lines of "that thing with the blue guy and the explosion" is more likely to get you a good result on Google when the actual movie you wanted was "green guy and a fire". Not a huge performance difference but it's there.
- maest 7y ago
  This might be a place where we have to agree to disagree. I guess the stark quality difference I've experienced made me assume everyone had a similar experience. I'm glad people find ddg useful, I want it to grow (I'm using it despite the fact that I personally find the results inferior)
- m463 7y ago
  It's not clearly worse than google to me. Virtually all my searches are resolved by DDG. I should also mention that statistically speaking my searches are not particularly complicated, and many are searching for an article or tidbit I had seen before or something where I pick wikipedia as the result.

birksherty 7y ago

I still can't leave google. Because it saves me lots of clicks and js slowness of other websites. Most of the time I find whatever I am looking for directly on the results page like movie review, ratings, actors, related movies and many other things. It shows prices of a product on different stores directly and also related products. No other search engine does this. Bing is almost there except it does not show product prices in my country.

stockkid 7y ago

You're right, nowadays DDG is really not bad for satisfying everyday web search needs. On the other hand, I cannot help but switch to Google (g! at the end of the query) for anything programming related because Google just finds things that DDG doesn't.

maremp 7y ago

I can second this. It's a default with Brave browser, and I've decided to give it a go. That was about a year ago when I first started to use Brave. Back then, some search results were poor, especially localised ones, so I've decided to use Google. Now it's much better, some results are even better than google where better SEO trumps more relevant results. Also, Brave has this nice feature where typing `:g<tab>[search term]` uses google for that one serach term. I use it if am not able to get good results with DDG.