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>why has every article about search engines recently ended up talking about DDG? Because they're the new darling, and tech types like them. It's always nice t

>why has every article about search engines recently ended up talking about DDG? Because they're the new darling, and tech types like them. It's always nice to see someone come in as a substantial underdog and make a real effort to succeed. Also, their results seem to be at least as good as Google's which is pretty impressive.

nostrademons 16y ago
"Also, their results seem to be at least as good as Google's which is pretty impressive." They're Bing with some twiddles on top. DDG uses Yahoo! BOSS, which is Yahoo's API to its search service, which is now powered by Bing. Your DDG results all originally come from Bing's index, they just get filtered and possibly re-ranked by some custom code Gabriel's written.
- epi0Bauqu 16y ago
  Actually, that's not true and it really isn't hard to verify so I'm not sure why you keep saying that.
  - coderdude 16y ago
    Where are you getting your results?
    - epi0Bauqu 16y ago
      From the FAQ: How do you get your results? From over 30 sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites, Yahoo! BOSS, embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Bing & Blekko. Just do some searches and compare to Bing, etc., e.g. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hacker+news http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hacker+news vs http://www.bing.com/search?q=hacker%20news http://www.bing.com/search?q=hacker%20news vs http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hacker%20news http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hacker%20news
      - coderdude 16y ago
        Alright. I think the spirit of what our ancestor poster was saying is that it's mostly just powered by an API (by which most of the "work" is being done). In a previous discussion I asked if you were going to do full-scale Web crawls, and you said: >We never stopped crawling; we just scaled it back for specific purposes, mainly now for spam detection and zero-click info So if you've scaled back the crawling and are mostly using it just for spam detection and zero-click info (forgive my ignorance, but I'm not sure what zero-click info is) then does that mean that you are getting the majority of your result data from outside APIs like BOSS? Edit: And does that mean that you store those pages in your database and use your own ranking algorithm, or are you using their ranked results for a query and then rearranging them on the fly?
        epi0Bauqu 16y ago
        No, the spirit of the above comment was condescending, dismissive and only mentioned one source: They're Bing with some twiddles on top. (I believe he is a Google employee.) About 50% of queries show information from my index. I've concentrated on the fat head of the search space, where I get a lot of volume (1 and 2 word queries). For long-tail stuff, yes, the majority of results come from external APIs, but even there it is inaccurate to say they are all derived from a direct call to one API. It really varies by query. Some will look like Bing for sure, but others will look very different. I'm not going to disclose everything I do of course.
        coderdude 16y ago
        >No, the spirit of the above comment was condescending, dismissive Well, I didn't even think of it that way. Naturally you're probably looking at these types of criticisms under a magnifying glass since it's your project. >About 50% of queries show information from my index. I've concentrated on the fat head of the search space, where I get a lot of volume (1 and 2 word queries). See now that's actually good to know! From many people's point of view (including mine), DDG is Bing with some twiddles on top. Maybe out of ignorance, but what can you expect? If you aren't already enamored by the idea of DDG then you probably don't care enough to find out what you're really doing on the back-end, which is what really matters most to me in these discussions. (Not the results since unless I'm told otherwise I just assume it's Bing or Yahoo.) Edit: It's quite humorous to be down-voted by the fan boys for expressing an honest and IMO helpful opinion to the owner of DDG. If all he gets is blind love he won't know how to get the rest of us on board. Believe it or not, the down vote button isn't the disagree button. If you have something constructive to add, say it.
jamesaguilar 16y ago
Considering it's basically just a syndicated Bing search, I don't see what the fuss over results is.
- raganwald 16y ago
  This is like saying a Mac is just an Intel PC. If DDG re-ranks the results, or provides a better interface for reading the results, or provides some privacy when obtaining the results... Those are all big wins by themselves. And speaking as a user, if it's doing all three I am only mildy curious about how it gets those results.
jdp23 16y ago
We were driving into SF today, saw their billboard, and it made me happy.

nostrademons 16y ago

"Also, their results seem to be at least as good as Google's which is pretty impressive." They're Bing with some twiddles on top. DDG uses Yahoo! BOSS, which is Yahoo's API to its search service, which is now powered by Bing. Your DDG results all originally come from Bing's index, they just get filtered and possibly re-ranked by some custom code Gabriel's written.

epi0Bauqu 16y ago
Actually, that's not true and it really isn't hard to verify so I'm not sure why you keep saying that.
- coderdude 16y ago
  Where are you getting your results?
  - epi0Bauqu 16y ago
    From the FAQ: How do you get your results? From over 30 sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites, Yahoo! BOSS, embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Bing & Blekko. Just do some searches and compare to Bing, etc., e.g. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hacker+news http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hacker+news vs http://www.bing.com/search?q=hacker%20news http://www.bing.com/search?q=hacker%20news vs http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hacker%20news http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hacker%20news
    - coderdude 16y ago
      Alright. I think the spirit of what our ancestor poster was saying is that it's mostly just powered by an API (by which most of the "work" is being done). In a previous discussion I asked if you were going to do full-scale Web crawls, and you said: >We never stopped crawling; we just scaled it back for specific purposes, mainly now for spam detection and zero-click info So if you've scaled back the crawling and are mostly using it just for spam detection and zero-click info (forgive my ignorance, but I'm not sure what zero-click info is) then does that mean that you are getting the majority of your result data from outside APIs like BOSS? Edit: And does that mean that you store those pages in your database and use your own ranking algorithm, or are you using their ranked results for a query and then rearranging them on the fly?
      - epi0Bauqu 16y ago
        No, the spirit of the above comment was condescending, dismissive and only mentioned one source: They're Bing with some twiddles on top. (I believe he is a Google employee.) About 50% of queries show information from my index. I've concentrated on the fat head of the search space, where I get a lot of volume (1 and 2 word queries). For long-tail stuff, yes, the majority of results come from external APIs, but even there it is inaccurate to say they are all derived from a direct call to one API. It really varies by query. Some will look like Bing for sure, but others will look very different. I'm not going to disclose everything I do of course.
        coderdude 16y ago
        >No, the spirit of the above comment was condescending, dismissive Well, I didn't even think of it that way. Naturally you're probably looking at these types of criticisms under a magnifying glass since it's your project. >About 50% of queries show information from my index. I've concentrated on the fat head of the search space, where I get a lot of volume (1 and 2 word queries). See now that's actually good to know! From many people's point of view (including mine), DDG is Bing with some twiddles on top. Maybe out of ignorance, but what can you expect? If you aren't already enamored by the idea of DDG then you probably don't care enough to find out what you're really doing on the back-end, which is what really matters most to me in these discussions. (Not the results since unless I'm told otherwise I just assume it's Bing or Yahoo.) Edit: It's quite humorous to be down-voted by the fan boys for expressing an honest and IMO helpful opinion to the owner of DDG. If all he gets is blind love he won't know how to get the rest of us on board. Believe it or not, the down vote button isn't the disagree button. If you have something constructive to add, say it.

jamesaguilar 16y ago

Considering it's basically just a syndicated Bing search, I don't see what the fuss over results is.

raganwald 16y ago
This is like saying a Mac is just an Intel PC. If DDG re-ranks the results, or provides a better interface for reading the results, or provides some privacy when obtaining the results... Those are all big wins by themselves. And speaking as a user, if it's doing all three I am only mildy curious about how it gets those results.

jdp23 16y ago

We were driving into SF today, saw their billboard, and it made me happy.