4 ms·

Honestly, I've been using ddg daily and I find I'm having to hit !g more than I'd like. Google in particular seems better at finding matches that come related

by Pxtl 7y ago

Honestly, I've been using ddg daily and I find I'm having to hit !g more than I'd like. Google in particular seems better at finding matches that come related to the ordering of the words, whereas ddg I have to quote them (and risk getting no results because I misremembered one word) when searching for a specific phrase.

vzidex 7y ago
Same here, I switched to DDG as my default engine at work and find it returns mediocre results for anything tech related and sufficiently niche. On the plus side, it does work fine for everything else - i.e. the typical searches a normal person might do - so I might switch my personal devices to using it soon.
fiblye 7y ago
My experience is that google gives me results assuming all of the words I searched aren’t the words I’m looking for, and it uses tangentially related words in place of everything. Even quotes are useless now. Ddg is useless when I’m searching for local things like restaurants and whatnot, but for general searches, it gives me what I’m actually looking for at least 75% of the time. With google, I’m barely hitting 25% these days unless it’s a very well established phrase/concept that I’m searching. In which case, it’s basically functioning as a Wikipedia search engine.
- bishalb 7y ago
  Can confirm that Google doesn't honor quotes as it used to for exact match search these days. It's a hit and miss.
  - skinkestek 7y ago
    Can someone who knows about the inside of Google tell us why this happened, and especially why it happens when verbatim mode is used alone or in addition to double quotes? I can kind of see why double quotes could be confusing for people pasting without being aware of the double quotes rule, but ignoring verbatim outright as has been the standard for years now is even more confusing to me.
    - londons_explore 7y ago
      Usually when people have this concern, it's because the page they are looking for does not exist. I'd like to see examples where you do a search looking for a specific page, either with or without verbatim or double-quotes, and then find it via some other query. Sure, it happens, but it's very rare.
      - fiblye 7y ago
        >it's because the page they are looking for does not exist. I could see that argument holding water if other search engines didn't give me precisely what I searched for. Google just simply tries to be smart and assume I'm looking for something other than what I input, while completely ignoring my input and replacing it entirely.
        londons_explore 7y ago
        Give a few examples of it. Theres a good chance whatever page you were after had a robots.txt excluding googlebot.
      - eitland 7y ago
        Would this count? https://www.google.com/search?q=%22vulnerable+over+and+over+again%22&client=firefox-b-m&prmd=ivn&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:d&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiE5q_o44DnAhUy4KYKHZWBCM0QpwV6BAgLEBE&biw=414&bih=716 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22vulnerable+over+and+over+... The page it is taken from is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22032966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22032966 It is clearly indexed as it shows up in this search: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-m&biw=414&bih=716&tbs=qdr%3Ad&ei=f30cXq6dLoiFk74Pgdu42Ag&q=cable+haunt+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com&oq=cable+haunt+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.3...32861.38811..39806...3.0..0.173.892.14j1......0....1.9FNq9W2X6M4 https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-m&biw=414&bih...
        londons_explore 7y ago
        I think it shows up now? Yes - I think you've hit a case where fresh content isn't indexed for phrases only keywords. That latter indexing usually takes a few hours, depending on which data center you hit and load.
- leokennis 7y ago
  In my experience Google is a lot better if you don’t know what your searching for (the search “movie head box” returns the movie Se7en in Google and some old movie called “Head” on DDG) but infuriating if you do, as it will provide 6 ads, 8 different “answer boxes” and then link to low quality spam sites below that.
surround 7y ago
Try !s (Startpage, which is based on Google’s index)
- gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
  Didn't Startpage change ownership recently?
  - surround 7y ago
    Yes, which is why I’d recommend using DDG primarily and only using !s when you need better results. Using Startpage is probably better than using Google directly. There is debate over the legitimacy of Startpage, see: https://github.com/privacytoolsIO/privacytools.io/issues/1562 https://github.com/privacytoolsIO/privacytools.io/issues/156...
m-p-3 7y ago
Now I'm wondering if DDG uses those !g search queries to understand where it falls short and why their users decides to use it.
leokennis 7y ago
In my experience Google is a lot better if you don’t know what your searching for (the search “movie head box” returns the movie Se7en in Google and some old movie called “Head” on DDG) but infuriating if you do, as it will provide 6 ads, 8 different “answer boxes” and then link to low quality spam sites below that.
- lordgrenville 7y ago
  Exactly this. I use DDG by default but if I have any ambiguity in my search term, I'll automatically do !g

by Pxtl 7y ago

vzidex 7y ago

Same here, I switched to DDG as my default engine at work and find it returns mediocre results for anything tech related and sufficiently niche. On the plus side, it does work fine for everything else - i.e. the typical searches a normal person might do - so I might switch my personal devices to using it soon.

fiblye 7y ago

My experience is that google gives me results assuming all of the words I searched aren’t the words I’m looking for, and it uses tangentially related words in place of everything. Even quotes are useless now. Ddg is useless when I’m searching for local things like restaurants and whatnot, but for general searches, it gives me what I’m actually looking for at least 75% of the time. With google, I’m barely hitting 25% these days unless it’s a very well established phrase/concept that I’m searching. In which case, it’s basically functioning as a Wikipedia search engine.

bishalb 7y ago
Can confirm that Google doesn't honor quotes as it used to for exact match search these days. It's a hit and miss.
- skinkestek 7y ago
  Can someone who knows about the inside of Google tell us why this happened, and especially why it happens when verbatim mode is used alone or in addition to double quotes? I can kind of see why double quotes could be confusing for people pasting without being aware of the double quotes rule, but ignoring verbatim outright as has been the standard for years now is even more confusing to me.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    Usually when people have this concern, it's because the page they are looking for does not exist. I'd like to see examples where you do a search looking for a specific page, either with or without verbatim or double-quotes, and then find it via some other query. Sure, it happens, but it's very rare.
    - fiblye 7y ago
      >it's because the page they are looking for does not exist. I could see that argument holding water if other search engines didn't give me precisely what I searched for. Google just simply tries to be smart and assume I'm looking for something other than what I input, while completely ignoring my input and replacing it entirely.
      - londons_explore 7y ago
        Give a few examples of it. Theres a good chance whatever page you were after had a robots.txt excluding googlebot.
    - eitland 7y ago
      Would this count? https://www.google.com/search?q=%22vulnerable+over+and+over+again%22&client=firefox-b-m&prmd=ivn&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:d&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiE5q_o44DnAhUy4KYKHZWBCM0QpwV6BAgLEBE&biw=414&bih=716 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22vulnerable+over+and+over+... The page it is taken from is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22032966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22032966 It is clearly indexed as it shows up in this search: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-m&biw=414&bih=716&tbs=qdr%3Ad&ei=f30cXq6dLoiFk74Pgdu42Ag&q=cable+haunt+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com&oq=cable+haunt+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.3...32861.38811..39806...3.0..0.173.892.14j1......0....1.9FNq9W2X6M4 https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-m&biw=414&bih...
      - londons_explore 7y ago
        I think it shows up now? Yes - I think you've hit a case where fresh content isn't indexed for phrases only keywords. That latter indexing usually takes a few hours, depending on which data center you hit and load.
leokennis 7y ago
In my experience Google is a lot better if you don’t know what your searching for (the search “movie head box” returns the movie Se7en in Google and some old movie called “Head” on DDG) but infuriating if you do, as it will provide 6 ads, 8 different “answer boxes” and then link to low quality spam sites below that.

surround 7y ago

Try !s (Startpage, which is based on Google’s index)

gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
Didn't Startpage change ownership recently?
- surround 7y ago
  Yes, which is why I’d recommend using DDG primarily and only using !s when you need better results. Using Startpage is probably better than using Google directly. There is debate over the legitimacy of Startpage, see: https://github.com/privacytoolsIO/privacytools.io/issues/1562 https://github.com/privacytoolsIO/privacytools.io/issues/156...

m-p-3 7y ago

Now I'm wondering if DDG uses those !g search queries to understand where it falls short and why their users decides to use it.

leokennis 7y ago

In my experience Google is a lot better if you don’t know what your searching for (the search “movie head box” returns the movie Se7en in Google and some old movie called “Head” on DDG) but infuriating if you do, as it will provide 6 ads, 8 different “answer boxes” and then link to low quality spam sites below that.

lordgrenville 7y ago
Exactly this. I use DDG by default but if I have any ambiguity in my search term, I'll automatically do !g