7 ms·

It's somehow funny to see that Bing search results are so successful when packaged with privacy in mind into DuckDuckGo. I don't like bing search results, espec

It's somehow funny to see that Bing search results are so successful when packaged with privacy in mind into DuckDuckGo. I don't like bing search results, especially for Europe. They are just bad for many local things. The only other search engine beside Google which is interesting and surprising for me is maybe Yandex. It's also not as good as Google in (most of) Europe but it's interesting to see that many things are not censored away in comparison to Bing and Google (political correctness, copyright, nsfw etc. etc.). I'm happy there is an alternative with different culture and jurisdiction.

Barrin92 7y ago
> but it's interesting to see that many things are not censored away in comparison to Bing and Google (political correctness, copyright, nsfw etc. etc.). I am not aware that there is a censorship of things that are deemed 'politically incorrect' by either bing or google, and Yandex does comply with European copyright law and other EU legislation like the right-to-be-forgotten.
- therealmarv 7y ago
  There are differences in search results for sure. Political correctness is also a very broad field. Depending on topic it is sometimes biased and even filtered (e.g. nsfw content) by Google/Bing or search results in Google are too much SEO hacked in comparison to Yandex on first pages. I've never analysed in deep and don't have numbers but for some searches it is worth to check also Yandex. But to be fair Google is often better... it depends on the topic you search for.
- lostmsu 7y ago
  It became increasingly hard to find EPUBs with DDG or Google.
  - toyg 7y ago
    Is it really? Looking for Calibre libraries is basically considered meme-level effort in places like /r/opendirectories ...
    - xeromal 7y ago
      Just because it's in /r/opendirectories doesn't mean it's in google or on the first pages.
      - toyg 7y ago
        What I meant is, the sub is full of cut-and-paste suggestions on how to make google searches for that sort of thing, because it really is trivial. This stuff is in google. Maybe it's de-emphasized by algos, but it's definitely there.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    I can recommend to just use a NZB search engine for it (during Black Friday deals you can get a for life account for 10-30 EUR). Combined with a Usenet block server (also available cheap during sales), this should not cost you much data or money. And you can use it for Sonarr/Radarr as well, if you want to burn some more data. Speaking of searching, does Qwant support dorks (no pun intended)?
- dleslie 7y ago
  As an illusory example only, and definitely not as an endorsement, and chosen only because it is the extremes of acceptable speach that are most likely to be censured; consider these search results for "Daily Stormer" https://www.google.com/search?q=daily+stormer&oq=daily+stormer https://www.google.com/search?q=daily+stormer&oq=daily+storm... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=daily+stormer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=daily+stormer DDG provides the link to the site as their first result; Google provides links to information about the site. Again, I am not endorsing the site; it is simply an obvious example of search result differentiation between DDG and Google.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    A stark difference. Is Google on the record about what their view is on this sort of thing? I suppose the two scenarios that leap to mind are (1) Google is social engineering or (2) they have good reason to believe that nobody searching for the Daily Stormer actually wants to see the website. It'd be interesting to know if there is a 3rd.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
      I wonder if the rank is based on which options are clicked the most... I wouldn't put it past google to keep track of which link is clicked the most for each search and use that to 'improve the links' OR It could be a massive conspiracy to keep people from seeing some third rate website.
      - lallysingh 7y ago
        You notice that the results aren't direct links, but redirects through Google first? That seems to support your first alternative.
        Polylactic_acid 7y ago
        They don't need to reroute through a url to do tracking, they could do that in JS. The rerouting probably is used for tracking but it also serves the purpose of flushing your search terms out of the referer header.
- DarthGhandi 7y ago
  Well there's a few things in here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google Am a staunch gun-control type, but there certainly has been evidence of google censoring political causes they disagree with. This is not the way forward. It's incredibly hard to have a discussion with someone who clearly has a point about the masses being dictated what they see/think by a Google search. These sort of things do not advance civil discourse and only serve to inflame it in an "us against them" mentality.
Marsymars 7y ago
> It's somehow funny to see that Bing search results are so successful when packaged with privacy in mind into DuckDuckGo. I'm kind of ambivalent about the privacy of DDG vs Bing (maybe I shouldn't be, but since I use DDG anyway, I haven't done the research) - I simply prefer the UI of DDG over Bing. > I don't like bing search results, especially for Europe. They are just bad for many local things. I wish Google was less aggressively local. I pretty regularly search for things on Google where I'm looking for the global/most well-known instance, and Google directs me to weird local results that I've never heard of and don't care about.
- toadi 7y ago
  I live in Thailand and always get the Thai links first. Hate it because can't read Thai.
  - input_sh 7y ago
    Shouldn't that change when you switch your region to "all regions" at the top of any results page? That's my assumption at least, since my country isn't available as a region.
  - dessant 7y ago
    I'm in a similar situation, so I wrote a small extension that adds a new Google Search provider to the browser with US locale. https://github.com/dessant/search-google-us https://github.com/dessant/search-google-us You could also search by visiting Google using this URL: https://www.google.com?gl=us&hl=en&gws_rd=cr https://www.google.com?gl=us&hl=en&gws_rd=cr
- therealmarv 7y ago
  Oh that is another issue on Google. The local bubble is sometimes too much in Google and hard to escape. The problem is most people don't realize that! I moved between countries in the recent years and also changed language in the OS from German to English (seems that is one switch of many) and suddenly many search results changed.
sandoooo 7y ago
Notice that there are entirely no NSFW images on DDG. This is a big hole right where content should be, and basically voids all claims to anti-censorship street cred.
- robin_reala 7y ago
  I assume you’ve got Safe Search turned on? There’s three options: on (default), moderate or off.
  - sandoooo 7y ago
    There was a period some time ago when image searches are always SFW even with safe search off. I guess this is no longer the case (checked just now).
- detaro 7y ago
  If anything, DDG is a bit too quick to suggest NSFW results if you don't have the NSFW filter on max.
- therealmarv 7y ago
  Same for Google in comparison to Yandex. This is a kind of censorship in my opinion and as a full grown up adult it's my decision what I want to see.
rlv-dan 7y ago
> It's somehow funny to see that Bing search results are so successful when packaged with privacy in mind My understanding is that Bing only provides the index, not the search result
ace_of_spades 7y ago
Do you have an objective (or at least intersubjective) measure for search result quality which could provide some evidence for your claim? Right now you are grounding on anecdotal evidence which is generally accepted to be a quite weak form of argument. I am asking out if interest because I am a happy user of ddg and wonder what I am missing out on? Are my needs so different from other users that I don’t have the issue that you are describing at all? Are you sure it’s not just a “this is slightly different so it must be worse” type situation?
fxtentacle 7y ago
I suffer through DDG to avoid Google, but it's not pretty. Especially for terms with ambiguous meaning, DDG just performs way worse than Google. For example, the tensorflow terminology for reducing dimensionality is "squeeze" and the scipy Gaussian distributing is called "normal". A DDG query for "python squeeze normal" shows me stuff about the animal. Google correctly infers that I want programming advice. I also really don't get why when I search for a TensorFlow function name, DDG will show me random pages with code examples instead of the official manual page for that function, which has my exact search query as meta title and as top h1.
- Angostura 7y ago
  Just tried it in DDG the top 3 results for ‘python squeeze normal’ were for something called numpty.squeeze()
- column 7y ago
  A DDG query for "python squeeze normal" shows me (in order): https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/numpy-squeeze-in-python/ https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/numpy-squeeze-in-python/ https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.15.1/reference/generated/numpy.squeeze.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.15.1/reference/generated/... https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.squeeze.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.s... https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.13.0/reference/generated/numpy.squeeze.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.13.0/reference/generated/... https://www.tutorialspoint.com/numpy/numpy_squeeze.htm https://www.tutorialspoint.com/numpy/numpy_squeeze.htm https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34990652/why-do-we-need-np-squeeze https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34990652/why-do-we-need-... https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/squeeze https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/squeeze https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/torch.html https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/torch.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.stats.norm.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.s... https://www.programcreek.com/python/example/13561/numpy.squeeze https://www.programcreek.com/python/example/13561/numpy.sque... Litterally nothing on the first results about the animal.
- afiori 7y ago
  I have a different problem. When searching for stackoverflow style answers DDG almost always shows years old questions that no longer apply
puranjay 7y ago
When I was in Russia, I was constantly surprised by the quality of Yandex's services. Their map data was far superior to Google Maps and their cab app felt better than Uber.
- fghgfhg 7y ago
  > Their map data was far superior to Google Maps and their cab app felt better than Uber. How?
  - askvictor 7y ago
    Haven't been to Russia or used Yandex, but I'd guess that the Russian Govt/Agencies give more accurate/up-to-date data to a Russian company instead of Google? This and a local presence to understand local nuances etc.
    - def_true_false 7y ago
      Google is capable of providing inferior service all on its own, no shady stuff required. E.g. http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/JM1CMNNU http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparis...

Barrin92 7y ago

> but it's interesting to see that many things are not censored away in comparison to Bing and Google (political correctness, copyright, nsfw etc. etc.). I am not aware that there is a censorship of things that are deemed 'politically incorrect' by either bing or google, and Yandex does comply with European copyright law and other EU legislation like the right-to-be-forgotten.

therealmarv 7y ago
There are differences in search results for sure. Political correctness is also a very broad field. Depending on topic it is sometimes biased and even filtered (e.g. nsfw content) by Google/Bing or search results in Google are too much SEO hacked in comparison to Yandex on first pages. I've never analysed in deep and don't have numbers but for some searches it is worth to check also Yandex. But to be fair Google is often better... it depends on the topic you search for.
lostmsu 7y ago
It became increasingly hard to find EPUBs with DDG or Google.
- toyg 7y ago
  Is it really? Looking for Calibre libraries is basically considered meme-level effort in places like /r/opendirectories ...
  - xeromal 7y ago
    Just because it's in /r/opendirectories doesn't mean it's in google or on the first pages.
    - toyg 7y ago
      What I meant is, the sub is full of cut-and-paste suggestions on how to make google searches for that sort of thing, because it really is trivial. This stuff is in google. Maybe it's de-emphasized by algos, but it's definitely there.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  I can recommend to just use a NZB search engine for it (during Black Friday deals you can get a for life account for 10-30 EUR). Combined with a Usenet block server (also available cheap during sales), this should not cost you much data or money. And you can use it for Sonarr/Radarr as well, if you want to burn some more data. Speaking of searching, does Qwant support dorks (no pun intended)?
dleslie 7y ago
As an illusory example only, and definitely not as an endorsement, and chosen only because it is the extremes of acceptable speach that are most likely to be censured; consider these search results for "Daily Stormer" https://www.google.com/search?q=daily+stormer&oq=daily+stormer https://www.google.com/search?q=daily+stormer&oq=daily+storm... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=daily+stormer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=daily+stormer DDG provides the link to the site as their first result; Google provides links to information about the site. Again, I am not endorsing the site; it is simply an obvious example of search result differentiation between DDG and Google.
- roenxi 7y ago
  A stark difference. Is Google on the record about what their view is on this sort of thing? I suppose the two scenarios that leap to mind are (1) Google is social engineering or (2) they have good reason to believe that nobody searching for the Daily Stormer actually wants to see the website. It'd be interesting to know if there is a 3rd.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
    I wonder if the rank is based on which options are clicked the most... I wouldn't put it past google to keep track of which link is clicked the most for each search and use that to 'improve the links' OR It could be a massive conspiracy to keep people from seeing some third rate website.
    - lallysingh 7y ago
      You notice that the results aren't direct links, but redirects through Google first? That seems to support your first alternative.
      - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
        They don't need to reroute through a url to do tracking, they could do that in JS. The rerouting probably is used for tracking but it also serves the purpose of flushing your search terms out of the referer header.
DarthGhandi 7y ago
Well there's a few things in here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google Am a staunch gun-control type, but there certainly has been evidence of google censoring political causes they disagree with. This is not the way forward. It's incredibly hard to have a discussion with someone who clearly has a point about the masses being dictated what they see/think by a Google search. These sort of things do not advance civil discourse and only serve to inflame it in an "us against them" mentality.

Marsymars 7y ago

> It's somehow funny to see that Bing search results are so successful when packaged with privacy in mind into DuckDuckGo. I'm kind of ambivalent about the privacy of DDG vs Bing (maybe I shouldn't be, but since I use DDG anyway, I haven't done the research) - I simply prefer the UI of DDG over Bing. > I don't like bing search results, especially for Europe. They are just bad for many local things. I wish Google was less aggressively local. I pretty regularly search for things on Google where I'm looking for the global/most well-known instance, and Google directs me to weird local results that I've never heard of and don't care about.

toadi 7y ago
I live in Thailand and always get the Thai links first. Hate it because can't read Thai.
- input_sh 7y ago
  Shouldn't that change when you switch your region to "all regions" at the top of any results page? That's my assumption at least, since my country isn't available as a region.
- dessant 7y ago
  I'm in a similar situation, so I wrote a small extension that adds a new Google Search provider to the browser with US locale. https://github.com/dessant/search-google-us https://github.com/dessant/search-google-us You could also search by visiting Google using this URL: https://www.google.com?gl=us&hl=en&gws_rd=cr https://www.google.com?gl=us&hl=en&gws_rd=cr
therealmarv 7y ago
Oh that is another issue on Google. The local bubble is sometimes too much in Google and hard to escape. The problem is most people don't realize that! I moved between countries in the recent years and also changed language in the OS from German to English (seems that is one switch of many) and suddenly many search results changed.

sandoooo 7y ago

Notice that there are entirely no NSFW images on DDG. This is a big hole right where content should be, and basically voids all claims to anti-censorship street cred.

robin_reala 7y ago
I assume you’ve got Safe Search turned on? There’s three options: on (default), moderate or off.
- sandoooo 7y ago
  There was a period some time ago when image searches are always SFW even with safe search off. I guess this is no longer the case (checked just now).
detaro 7y ago
If anything, DDG is a bit too quick to suggest NSFW results if you don't have the NSFW filter on max.
therealmarv 7y ago
Same for Google in comparison to Yandex. This is a kind of censorship in my opinion and as a full grown up adult it's my decision what I want to see.

rlv-dan 7y ago

> It's somehow funny to see that Bing search results are so successful when packaged with privacy in mind My understanding is that Bing only provides the index, not the search result

ace_of_spades 7y ago

Do you have an objective (or at least intersubjective) measure for search result quality which could provide some evidence for your claim? Right now you are grounding on anecdotal evidence which is generally accepted to be a quite weak form of argument. I am asking out if interest because I am a happy user of ddg and wonder what I am missing out on? Are my needs so different from other users that I don’t have the issue that you are describing at all? Are you sure it’s not just a “this is slightly different so it must be worse” type situation?

fxtentacle 7y ago

I suffer through DDG to avoid Google, but it's not pretty. Especially for terms with ambiguous meaning, DDG just performs way worse than Google. For example, the tensorflow terminology for reducing dimensionality is "squeeze" and the scipy Gaussian distributing is called "normal". A DDG query for "python squeeze normal" shows me stuff about the animal. Google correctly infers that I want programming advice. I also really don't get why when I search for a TensorFlow function name, DDG will show me random pages with code examples instead of the official manual page for that function, which has my exact search query as meta title and as top h1.

Angostura 7y ago
Just tried it in DDG the top 3 results for ‘python squeeze normal’ were for something called numpty.squeeze()
column 7y ago
A DDG query for "python squeeze normal" shows me (in order): https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/numpy-squeeze-in-python/ https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/numpy-squeeze-in-python/ https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.15.1/reference/generated/numpy.squeeze.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.15.1/reference/generated/... https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.squeeze.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.s... https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.13.0/reference/generated/numpy.squeeze.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.13.0/reference/generated/... https://www.tutorialspoint.com/numpy/numpy_squeeze.htm https://www.tutorialspoint.com/numpy/numpy_squeeze.htm https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34990652/why-do-we-need-np-squeeze https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34990652/why-do-we-need-... https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/squeeze https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/squeeze https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/torch.html https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/torch.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.stats.norm.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.s... https://www.programcreek.com/python/example/13561/numpy.squeeze https://www.programcreek.com/python/example/13561/numpy.sque... Litterally nothing on the first results about the animal.
afiori 7y ago
I have a different problem. When searching for stackoverflow style answers DDG almost always shows years old questions that no longer apply

puranjay 7y ago

When I was in Russia, I was constantly surprised by the quality of Yandex's services. Their map data was far superior to Google Maps and their cab app felt better than Uber.

fghgfhg 7y ago
> Their map data was far superior to Google Maps and their cab app felt better than Uber. How?
- askvictor 7y ago
  Haven't been to Russia or used Yandex, but I'd guess that the Russian Govt/Agencies give more accurate/up-to-date data to a Russian company instead of Google? This and a local presence to understand local nuances etc.
  - def_true_false 7y ago
    Google is capable of providing inferior service all on its own, no shady stuff required. E.g. http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/JM1CMNNU http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparis...