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I wish there was a way to directly help Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yandex improve their search results. I've tried both, and it's just not the same. Google I can bang in

by lykr0n 7y ago

I wish there was a way to directly help Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yandex improve their search results. I've tried both, and it's just not the same. Google I can bang in cryptic queries like > centos 7 tuned no daemon and get the 3rd link about how to run tuned in a no daemon mode. Bing/DuckDuckGo have the article at around 7th or 8th place, but prefaced by a lot of "while technically not wrong, not what I'm looking for" links. It's even worse for more niche errors or code snippets. We cannot, as a healthy internet, let Google control so much of the web.

awb 7y ago
Do they factor in the number of clicks on each result? If so then it would presumably improve over time. I know Google also factors in how long people spend on the resulting webpage.
- smt88 7y ago
  Yes, they do factor in number of clicks. They also consider "regret" -- returning to the search list and picking a different result.
Analemma_ 7y ago
I used to work at Bing. If you really want Bing to improve, the best thing you can do is just use it: clicks on search results, plus backs and dwell times, are vital training data. Ideally you could use Bing as your default engine, then fall back to Google whenever there's a search that doesn't yield good results. If you have the time, you can also use the Feedback link on the bottom-right of the page to report bad search results; people do actually triage and read those.
- seanwilson 7y ago
  > clicks on search results, plus backs and dwell times, are vital training data Interesting. Can you explain more on what is tracked after a user clicks a result and how this data is used?
  - Analemma_ 7y ago
    (Disclaimer: as I said, I don't work at Bing anymore. Things may have changed in the intervening period and I could be mistaken or plain wrong about things) Obviously ranking search results is immensely complicated with lots of accumulated insider wisdom, but the short answer is that "static" page features (PageRank, how well the query matches text on the page, etc.) are good for pruning down zillions of pages to generate a candidate list of 10 or so results to show the user, but not great at ordering those results, and serving the results in the best order is really important for user satisfaction. For generating the final top-10 ordering, "dynamic" features like how many people clicked that link, how long did they spend on the page, etc. are the most useful. Regarding what is tracked, obviously Bing can only track what you're doing on Bing itself, so clicks on blue links and backs are tracked, but they can't see what you do on the destination page. This data is used to train models/NNs/etc. but the raw click data isn't kept for very long: it's too large and it has to be removed for GDPR compliance.
    - seanwilson 7y ago
      > For generating the final top-10 ordering, "dynamic" features like how many people clicked that link, how long did they spend on the page, etc. are the most useful. Do Google do this as well?
      - Analemma_ 7y ago
        I've never worked there and can't say for sure, but I have to assume that the broad strokes of their search engine are the same as Bing's. Bear in mind my response above was a very very high-level description of a really complex system with tens of thousands of person-years of accumulated knowledge and experience inside it.
- nwsm 7y ago
  >Ideally you could use Bing as your default engine, then fall back to Google whenever there's a search that doesn't yield good results. This is what I do with DDG. Unless I have a pretty specific search, or want Google's really nice live sports scores widgets, DDG is usually pretty good.
  - pheug 7y ago
    DDG doesn't track what you click on, so unfortunately you are not contributing much to improving its and Bing's search quality by using it instead of Bing.
- radicalbyte 7y ago
  Thanks for posting, it's nice to hear from someone on the inside! Downvoters: why on earth are you downvoting Analemma's post? It's constructive, on point and overall the kind of post which makes HN comments valuable.
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    I still don’t understand the hive mind downvote patterns.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    What I'm about to say will probably get downvoted as well, but I've noticed HN getting more polarized in terms of votes in the last maybe 2 years. Because of the way that downvoting works on HN, the few times I use it, my thought is "nobody should see this comment". Because enough downvotes delegitemize and hide a comment, it's effectively telling other people that it's not worth being read. I don't know if that's actually going through people's minds when they downvote, but that's what I think which is exactly why I rarely use it. But too many people now are simply using it on posts they don't like, even if a post deserves to be there. For some reason, it's an unpopular opinion to believe that an idea or opinion you think is wrong deserves to be seen and rebutted rather than silenced.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Downvotes for dislike is supported by HN/pg. Their choice of fading out comments, when combined with downvotes-for-opposition is really terrible for a high quality discussion site. Just goes to show the community around a site makes all the difference.
- clarry 7y ago
  > I used to work at Bing. If you really want Bing to improve, the best thing you can do is just use it: clicks on search results, plus backs and dwell times, are vital training data. A million flies are attracted to shit. I don't believe this sort of training data will ever become useful if it's in the same pool with the rest of the world. See also: voting with your wallet against the tyranny of the majority of uninformed consumers who buy whatever is most marketed. Those pennies don't matter. In fact, I believe this sort of training and optimization for the mainstream plays a role in allowing bad results to proliferate. This is before we even consider the fact that clicking on many results can indicate that they're bad (I click another result because the previous wasn't good), or because they're good (I'm browsing choices). Dwelling long can be bad (crappy & slow site, it takes me long to find the information I want or turn away) or it can be good (I found good stuff and I'm spending a while on it). Whatever conclusion your training system draws might be completely wrong. And probably prone to being gamed.
  - mturmon 7y ago
    The above heuristic arguments seem inherently weaker than the direct experience of someone who used to be on the team that improves the results. They are well-funded and should be able to back out the effects you mention.
    - clarry 7y ago
      How are they ever going to know whether they improved results for me or not? You might as well train AI to play a game without ever checking their score. Oh, it's spending 20% more time in each room now and firing fewer bullets than before. Surely it is a better AI now. Sorry, appeal to authority is no argument. Direct experience is valuable if there's an argument or some real scenario we can dissect, otherwise it's nothing more than a baseless claim. Without concrete examples, it's not even an anecdote. And there are plenty of anecdotes about search results for in-depth content becoming harder and harder to find. The person I was responding to posted that they're using this training data to order the top 10 results or so. That's already an indication that it's not very helpful for me. I don't get frustrated if the top few results are in suboptimal order, I get frustrated when I get pages and pages of garbage and irrelevant results and can't seem to get anything useful out of it.
- leshenka 7y ago
  Yandex does that. At the bottom of search results page there are links to other search engines. So if you aren't satisfied with results, you're one click away from Google. I believe they track these clicks and know which results are bad.
at-fates-hands 7y ago
> We cannot, as a healthy internet, let Google control so much of the web. It's getting worse too. Back in the day, you could Google something for a manufacturer and include the name of the manufacturer like, "Pioneer 10" Subwoofer" and automatically the first result would be a like to Pioneer's subwoofer page or their main ecommerce site. You type that into Google today? You will get 15 results for AMAZON pages with Pioneer speakers. No, I want to buy it from Pioneer, not Amazon. Oh yeah? The actual link to the actual company, who actually makes those speakers? They're on Page 2. When you have the actual manufacturer being buried in the results, we have a major problem.
- extropy 7y ago
  IMO Google is doing the best they can to serve you relevant results, just that everyone and their uncle is spamming internet to get up in the ranking game. Think of modern google as a question answering machine not a serch engine. And do "Show me Pioneer 10 subwoofer manufacturer specs" instead of just jamming keywords and hoping for the best.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > IMO Google is doing the best they can to serve you relevant results Maybe, but if so then they're singularly bad at it. Google consistently gives me worse results than DDG and Bing, anyway. I really think it's because Google is trying to figure out what I "really mean" by my search queries, and it's really terrible at guessing.
    - pb7 7y ago
      I'm genuinely asking: can you share an example where the Google results are worse in your opinion than DDG or Bing? Ideally with a screenshot in case there is some personalization going on. I just want to see a very clear example of it so I can try it out for myself.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      What you really mean in a google search is you want to buy something. You only think you don't want to buy. It doesn't matter that you've lost the leaflet for your Pioneer 10 Subwoofer and want to remember which wire goes where in your new house. Or just want to remember some detail of something you had years ago. Google is there to assure you that you really want to buy a shiny new set. Not buying stuff you already own again serves neither the economy nor Google's advertising profit. Go on, buy another set. Infinite growth depends on it. That really is their attitude to every product and service.
enterabdazer 7y ago
I felt the same about Google alternatives up until about 3 months ago. Google's results have been declining in quality for a decade, with much more rapid decline over the past year or three. Google's results are uglier and blatantly revenue based. They have now lapsed behind DuckDuckGo in usefulness for me. I fall back to Google a few times per week, with inconsistent results when I need a "second opinion." I'd suggest giving DDG another try. I plan to remove Google from my life this year, at least as a central dependency. Search is already behind me. Mail, calendars, docs, and drive will be taken care of throughout the year. And my Android phone will be replaced with an iPhone.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  Er, who do you think Apple pays for search on iPhones?
  - nkingsy 7y ago
    Pretty sure google pays them for search
    - israrkhan 7y ago
      Google pays them to be default search engine. Users do have option to switch.
    - selimthegrim 7y ago
      My bad, thanks for the catch.
- lykr0n 7y ago
  Done. Let's see how it works out.
- mobilemidget 7y ago
  Google always says x many results and when you click page 5 6 or some it is usually empty... not as many results as displayed on first page
ulucs 7y ago
Do you have a region set? I got an answer on the right from stackoverflow (don't know if it's the correct answer.)
ddevault 7y ago
In my opinion, the results on DDG et al are a matter of users being trained by Google knowing too much about them. If you search "Django" on Google and get relevant results, it's because Google knows you. On DDG you need to search "Django framework".
lazyjones 7y ago
> Bing/DuckDuckGo have the article at around 7th or 8th place, You should take a closer look at DDG, it has the answer from serverfault.com in an instant answers box for your query and it highlights the required setting in a perfectly chosen excerpt from the correct answer: As of CentOS 7.2 tuned now has a no-daemon mode which can be turned on by setting daemon = 0 in /etc/tuned/tuned-main.conf. This is mentioned in the RedHat Performance Tuning Guide.
- koyote 7y ago
  Weird, I do not get that when running the query on DDG. Do you have the URL?
  - aloknnikhil 7y ago
    I can see the excerpt too. Try this: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=centos+7+tuned+no+daemon&t=iphone&ia=qa https://duckduckgo.com/?q=centos+7+tuned+no+daemon&t=iphone&...
JadeNB 7y ago
> Google I can bang in cryptic queries like > centos 7 tuned no daemon Not only can you bang in whatever query you want to DDG, you can bang it in via Google, using bangs (https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang). I think that "!g <query>" is the second stop for many DDG'ers, when DDG itself disappoints. (My understanding is that it still offers some anonymisation over searching directly through Google, but I'm not sure.)
grogenaut 7y ago
I can pretty much only use Google in verbatim mode now
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  My latest annoyance, nevermind them showing pages that don't have "quoted" keywords. They rewrite the search query in the textbox and remove the quotes. Just when you thought it couldn't get more annoying.
  - grogenaut 7y ago
    Oh yeah that kills me I often have one word that is the important one and instead they show me the low-value responses that do not contain that one differentiating word that is the reason I'm doing a search in the first place
- JohnFen 7y ago
  Does verbatim mode actually work for you? It doesn't seem to for me.
  - techslave 7y ago
    yeah there is no verbatim mode any longer
KingFelix 7y ago
I have noticed that when trying to find the most recent solution Google shows me an answer that is 10 years old. ex. Adobe updates come faster than I can update, so I run into issues, so finding the most recent answer is what I am looking for and not a similar issue from Adobe pre CC.
- freehunter 7y ago
  I find that a lot too. Trying to search for anything Rails related always shows Rails 3/4 results before Rails 5/6. If Google really knew that much about me, they should notice I always end my searching by clicking on a Rails 5/6 result (because those are the versions I use) and every time I land on a Rails 3 or 4 result I almost always click back and try again. Same with Python when I get 2.x results, with all their data they should know I've used 3.x for years. If companies want to track me and build profiles on me, I accept that I can't stop that without refusing to use their products and every site that's integrated with it (Google Analytics, Adwords, etc). But if they're going to do it, at least use that information to help me. What's the point otherwise?
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    You click back. That means you see a second helping of ads. You still use Google. From their perspective this is probably working perfectly.
  - KingFelix 7y ago
    or at least filter out results that are irrelevant. They are lacking the ability to remove dated results when you are looking for the most recent. I know you can manually filter results, but why show 10 year old answers to software that gets updated so frequent! I am sure there are other areas where this exists, dated results should be pushed back a few pages.
beefield 7y ago
> I wish there was a way to directly help Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yandex improve their search results. I am amazed that no search engine gives me easy way to blacklist domains from my results. That would make the usefulness of any of them to increase by orders of magnitude. (and if they are careful, they might be even able to use the blacklisted data to adjust their general results , not only my personal results as well) And I can't help to add qwant.com to the list of alternative search engines. No affiliation whatsoever, but I am pretty happy to use that as my daily search engine here in Europe.
- jpindar 7y ago
  Google used to have that, but of course they stopped it. There are browser addons that have he same effect though.
  - aendruk 7y ago
    Reference for the curious: https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/issues/674 https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/issues/674
  - beefield 7y ago
    > Google used to have that, but of course they stopped it. There are browser addons that have he same effect though. Yep. Ironically enough, that was killed soon after I found about that. And anyways, it was implemented far from easy to use. It should be just behind the green arrow that gives the options to see cached version etc. And obviously with cross-platform effect on all my devices as long as I am logged in.
- lazypenguin 7y ago
  I would pay a subscription fee to my search engine to implement this feature. Currently use duckduckgo with a add-on to filter blacklisted sites but would love for this to be integrated.
MadWombat 7y ago
To me it is not so much result quality as integration. Currently, with Google no matter what I am searching for, I just type it into my location bar and hit enter. Whether I am looking for a new bar to check out on a Friday night or what does a specific compile error mean in Haskell. So in the first case, I will get a map with bars around me and in the second case I will get a link to stackoverflow. With DDG these become functionally separate. To do the Haskell error search I do the same thing, but to do a local bar search I have to open a separate tab, go to Google and do a search there. Same goes for looking for things like theater plays (Google will give me reviews, showtimes and a link to buy tickets all right there at the top of my search page), address or place name searches (map, directions, open hours and website link all come up right away) etc. The only thing I can do with DDG is the old fashioned "find me links relevant to these keywords" searches.
- neodymiumphish 7y ago
  Feels like a perfect opportunity for you to try out search engine keywords. On Chrome, it's under Search Engine > Manage Search Engines. This allows you to type (keyword) -tab- (query). For example, my work computer (on which I can only use Chrome or Edge) is force-defaulted to Google, but I have Bing set to keyword "b" and DDG keyworded to "d", so I just type: b(tab) Whatever I want to search for and it goes to Bing with that query. It's a great example of what you're looking for. On my personal devices, I try to use Bing for as much as I can to see whether its personalized results will ever marry up to Google (it's gotten extremely close, lately), but I often prefer searching Google Maps, so I have gMaps added as a search engine with keyword "m", so I can search for anything with "m (tab) place" and immediately see gMaps results.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    It's very easy to add new engines to, just take the query URL from any site, pop in %s in place of the query, choose a keyword (same on FF). I have about 50 keywords.

by lykr0n 7y ago

awb 7y ago

Do they factor in the number of clicks on each result? If so then it would presumably improve over time. I know Google also factors in how long people spend on the resulting webpage.

smt88 7y ago
Yes, they do factor in number of clicks. They also consider "regret" -- returning to the search list and picking a different result.

Analemma_ 7y ago

I used to work at Bing. If you really want Bing to improve, the best thing you can do is just use it: clicks on search results, plus backs and dwell times, are vital training data. Ideally you could use Bing as your default engine, then fall back to Google whenever there's a search that doesn't yield good results. If you have the time, you can also use the Feedback link on the bottom-right of the page to report bad search results; people do actually triage and read those.

seanwilson 7y ago
> clicks on search results, plus backs and dwell times, are vital training data Interesting. Can you explain more on what is tracked after a user clicks a result and how this data is used?
- Analemma_ 7y ago
  (Disclaimer: as I said, I don't work at Bing anymore. Things may have changed in the intervening period and I could be mistaken or plain wrong about things) Obviously ranking search results is immensely complicated with lots of accumulated insider wisdom, but the short answer is that "static" page features (PageRank, how well the query matches text on the page, etc.) are good for pruning down zillions of pages to generate a candidate list of 10 or so results to show the user, but not great at ordering those results, and serving the results in the best order is really important for user satisfaction. For generating the final top-10 ordering, "dynamic" features like how many people clicked that link, how long did they spend on the page, etc. are the most useful. Regarding what is tracked, obviously Bing can only track what you're doing on Bing itself, so clicks on blue links and backs are tracked, but they can't see what you do on the destination page. This data is used to train models/NNs/etc. but the raw click data isn't kept for very long: it's too large and it has to be removed for GDPR compliance.
  - seanwilson 7y ago
    > For generating the final top-10 ordering, "dynamic" features like how many people clicked that link, how long did they spend on the page, etc. are the most useful. Do Google do this as well?
    - Analemma_ 7y ago
      I've never worked there and can't say for sure, but I have to assume that the broad strokes of their search engine are the same as Bing's. Bear in mind my response above was a very very high-level description of a really complex system with tens of thousands of person-years of accumulated knowledge and experience inside it.
nwsm 7y ago
>Ideally you could use Bing as your default engine, then fall back to Google whenever there's a search that doesn't yield good results. This is what I do with DDG. Unless I have a pretty specific search, or want Google's really nice live sports scores widgets, DDG is usually pretty good.
- pheug 7y ago
  DDG doesn't track what you click on, so unfortunately you are not contributing much to improving its and Bing's search quality by using it instead of Bing.
radicalbyte 7y ago
Thanks for posting, it's nice to hear from someone on the inside! Downvoters: why on earth are you downvoting Analemma's post? It's constructive, on point and overall the kind of post which makes HN comments valuable.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  I still don’t understand the hive mind downvote patterns.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  What I'm about to say will probably get downvoted as well, but I've noticed HN getting more polarized in terms of votes in the last maybe 2 years. Because of the way that downvoting works on HN, the few times I use it, my thought is "nobody should see this comment". Because enough downvotes delegitemize and hide a comment, it's effectively telling other people that it's not worth being read. I don't know if that's actually going through people's minds when they downvote, but that's what I think which is exactly why I rarely use it. But too many people now are simply using it on posts they don't like, even if a post deserves to be there. For some reason, it's an unpopular opinion to believe that an idea or opinion you think is wrong deserves to be seen and rebutted rather than silenced.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Downvotes for dislike is supported by HN/pg. Their choice of fading out comments, when combined with downvotes-for-opposition is really terrible for a high quality discussion site. Just goes to show the community around a site makes all the difference.
clarry 7y ago
> I used to work at Bing. If you really want Bing to improve, the best thing you can do is just use it: clicks on search results, plus backs and dwell times, are vital training data. A million flies are attracted to shit. I don't believe this sort of training data will ever become useful if it's in the same pool with the rest of the world. See also: voting with your wallet against the tyranny of the majority of uninformed consumers who buy whatever is most marketed. Those pennies don't matter. In fact, I believe this sort of training and optimization for the mainstream plays a role in allowing bad results to proliferate. This is before we even consider the fact that clicking on many results can indicate that they're bad (I click another result because the previous wasn't good), or because they're good (I'm browsing choices). Dwelling long can be bad (crappy & slow site, it takes me long to find the information I want or turn away) or it can be good (I found good stuff and I'm spending a while on it). Whatever conclusion your training system draws might be completely wrong. And probably prone to being gamed.
- mturmon 7y ago
  The above heuristic arguments seem inherently weaker than the direct experience of someone who used to be on the team that improves the results. They are well-funded and should be able to back out the effects you mention.
  - clarry 7y ago
    How are they ever going to know whether they improved results for me or not? You might as well train AI to play a game without ever checking their score. Oh, it's spending 20% more time in each room now and firing fewer bullets than before. Surely it is a better AI now. Sorry, appeal to authority is no argument. Direct experience is valuable if there's an argument or some real scenario we can dissect, otherwise it's nothing more than a baseless claim. Without concrete examples, it's not even an anecdote. And there are plenty of anecdotes about search results for in-depth content becoming harder and harder to find. The person I was responding to posted that they're using this training data to order the top 10 results or so. That's already an indication that it's not very helpful for me. I don't get frustrated if the top few results are in suboptimal order, I get frustrated when I get pages and pages of garbage and irrelevant results and can't seem to get anything useful out of it.
leshenka 7y ago
Yandex does that. At the bottom of search results page there are links to other search engines. So if you aren't satisfied with results, you're one click away from Google. I believe they track these clicks and know which results are bad.

at-fates-hands 7y ago

> We cannot, as a healthy internet, let Google control so much of the web. It's getting worse too. Back in the day, you could Google something for a manufacturer and include the name of the manufacturer like, "Pioneer 10" Subwoofer" and automatically the first result would be a like to Pioneer's subwoofer page or their main ecommerce site. You type that into Google today? You will get 15 results for AMAZON pages with Pioneer speakers. No, I want to buy it from Pioneer, not Amazon. Oh yeah? The actual link to the actual company, who actually makes those speakers? They're on Page 2. When you have the actual manufacturer being buried in the results, we have a major problem.

extropy 7y ago
IMO Google is doing the best they can to serve you relevant results, just that everyone and their uncle is spamming internet to get up in the ranking game. Think of modern google as a question answering machine not a serch engine. And do "Show me Pioneer 10 subwoofer manufacturer specs" instead of just jamming keywords and hoping for the best.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > IMO Google is doing the best they can to serve you relevant results Maybe, but if so then they're singularly bad at it. Google consistently gives me worse results than DDG and Bing, anyway. I really think it's because Google is trying to figure out what I "really mean" by my search queries, and it's really terrible at guessing.
  - pb7 7y ago
    I'm genuinely asking: can you share an example where the Google results are worse in your opinion than DDG or Bing? Ideally with a screenshot in case there is some personalization going on. I just want to see a very clear example of it so I can try it out for myself.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    What you really mean in a google search is you want to buy something. You only think you don't want to buy. It doesn't matter that you've lost the leaflet for your Pioneer 10 Subwoofer and want to remember which wire goes where in your new house. Or just want to remember some detail of something you had years ago. Google is there to assure you that you really want to buy a shiny new set. Not buying stuff you already own again serves neither the economy nor Google's advertising profit. Go on, buy another set. Infinite growth depends on it. That really is their attitude to every product and service.

enterabdazer 7y ago

I felt the same about Google alternatives up until about 3 months ago. Google's results have been declining in quality for a decade, with much more rapid decline over the past year or three. Google's results are uglier and blatantly revenue based. They have now lapsed behind DuckDuckGo in usefulness for me. I fall back to Google a few times per week, with inconsistent results when I need a "second opinion." I'd suggest giving DDG another try. I plan to remove Google from my life this year, at least as a central dependency. Search is already behind me. Mail, calendars, docs, and drive will be taken care of throughout the year. And my Android phone will be replaced with an iPhone.

selimthegrim 7y ago
Er, who do you think Apple pays for search on iPhones?
- nkingsy 7y ago
  Pretty sure google pays them for search
  - israrkhan 7y ago
    Google pays them to be default search engine. Users do have option to switch.
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    My bad, thanks for the catch.
lykr0n 7y ago
Done. Let's see how it works out.
mobilemidget 7y ago
Google always says x many results and when you click page 5 6 or some it is usually empty... not as many results as displayed on first page

ulucs 7y ago

Do you have a region set? I got an answer on the right from stackoverflow (don't know if it's the correct answer.)

ddevault 7y ago

In my opinion, the results on DDG et al are a matter of users being trained by Google knowing too much about them. If you search "Django" on Google and get relevant results, it's because Google knows you. On DDG you need to search "Django framework".

lazyjones 7y ago

> Bing/DuckDuckGo have the article at around 7th or 8th place, You should take a closer look at DDG, it has the answer from serverfault.com in an instant answers box for your query and it highlights the required setting in a perfectly chosen excerpt from the correct answer: As of CentOS 7.2 tuned now has a no-daemon mode which can be turned on by setting daemon = 0 in /etc/tuned/tuned-main.conf. This is mentioned in the RedHat Performance Tuning Guide.

koyote 7y ago
Weird, I do not get that when running the query on DDG. Do you have the URL?
- aloknnikhil 7y ago
  I can see the excerpt too. Try this: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=centos+7+tuned+no+daemon&t=iphone&ia=qa https://duckduckgo.com/?q=centos+7+tuned+no+daemon&t=iphone&...

JadeNB 7y ago

> Google I can bang in cryptic queries like > centos 7 tuned no daemon Not only can you bang in whatever query you want to DDG, you can bang it in via Google, using bangs (https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang). I think that "!g <query>" is the second stop for many DDG'ers, when DDG itself disappoints. (My understanding is that it still offers some anonymisation over searching directly through Google, but I'm not sure.)

grogenaut 7y ago

I can pretty much only use Google in verbatim mode now

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
My latest annoyance, nevermind them showing pages that don't have "quoted" keywords. They rewrite the search query in the textbox and remove the quotes. Just when you thought it couldn't get more annoying.
- grogenaut 7y ago
  Oh yeah that kills me I often have one word that is the important one and instead they show me the low-value responses that do not contain that one differentiating word that is the reason I'm doing a search in the first place
JohnFen 7y ago
Does verbatim mode actually work for you? It doesn't seem to for me.
- techslave 7y ago
  yeah there is no verbatim mode any longer

KingFelix 7y ago

I have noticed that when trying to find the most recent solution Google shows me an answer that is 10 years old. ex. Adobe updates come faster than I can update, so I run into issues, so finding the most recent answer is what I am looking for and not a similar issue from Adobe pre CC.

freehunter 7y ago
I find that a lot too. Trying to search for anything Rails related always shows Rails 3/4 results before Rails 5/6. If Google really knew that much about me, they should notice I always end my searching by clicking on a Rails 5/6 result (because those are the versions I use) and every time I land on a Rails 3 or 4 result I almost always click back and try again. Same with Python when I get 2.x results, with all their data they should know I've used 3.x for years. If companies want to track me and build profiles on me, I accept that I can't stop that without refusing to use their products and every site that's integrated with it (Google Analytics, Adwords, etc). But if they're going to do it, at least use that information to help me. What's the point otherwise?
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  You click back. That means you see a second helping of ads. You still use Google. From their perspective this is probably working perfectly.
- KingFelix 7y ago
  or at least filter out results that are irrelevant. They are lacking the ability to remove dated results when you are looking for the most recent. I know you can manually filter results, but why show 10 year old answers to software that gets updated so frequent! I am sure there are other areas where this exists, dated results should be pushed back a few pages.

beefield 7y ago

> I wish there was a way to directly help Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yandex improve their search results. I am amazed that no search engine gives me easy way to blacklist domains from my results. That would make the usefulness of any of them to increase by orders of magnitude. (and if they are careful, they might be even able to use the blacklisted data to adjust their general results , not only my personal results as well) And I can't help to add qwant.com to the list of alternative search engines. No affiliation whatsoever, but I am pretty happy to use that as my daily search engine here in Europe.

jpindar 7y ago
Google used to have that, but of course they stopped it. There are browser addons that have he same effect though.
- aendruk 7y ago
  Reference for the curious: https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/issues/674 https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/issues/674
- beefield 7y ago
  > Google used to have that, but of course they stopped it. There are browser addons that have he same effect though. Yep. Ironically enough, that was killed soon after I found about that. And anyways, it was implemented far from easy to use. It should be just behind the green arrow that gives the options to see cached version etc. And obviously with cross-platform effect on all my devices as long as I am logged in.
lazypenguin 7y ago
I would pay a subscription fee to my search engine to implement this feature. Currently use duckduckgo with a add-on to filter blacklisted sites but would love for this to be integrated.

MadWombat 7y ago

To me it is not so much result quality as integration. Currently, with Google no matter what I am searching for, I just type it into my location bar and hit enter. Whether I am looking for a new bar to check out on a Friday night or what does a specific compile error mean in Haskell. So in the first case, I will get a map with bars around me and in the second case I will get a link to stackoverflow. With DDG these become functionally separate. To do the Haskell error search I do the same thing, but to do a local bar search I have to open a separate tab, go to Google and do a search there. Same goes for looking for things like theater plays (Google will give me reviews, showtimes and a link to buy tickets all right there at the top of my search page), address or place name searches (map, directions, open hours and website link all come up right away) etc. The only thing I can do with DDG is the old fashioned "find me links relevant to these keywords" searches.

neodymiumphish 7y ago
Feels like a perfect opportunity for you to try out search engine keywords. On Chrome, it's under Search Engine > Manage Search Engines. This allows you to type (keyword) -tab- (query). For example, my work computer (on which I can only use Chrome or Edge) is force-defaulted to Google, but I have Bing set to keyword "b" and DDG keyworded to "d", so I just type: b(tab) Whatever I want to search for and it goes to Bing with that query. It's a great example of what you're looking for. On my personal devices, I try to use Bing for as much as I can to see whether its personalized results will ever marry up to Google (it's gotten extremely close, lately), but I often prefer searching Google Maps, so I have gMaps added as a search engine with keyword "m", so I can search for anything with "m (tab) place" and immediately see gMaps results.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  It's very easy to add new engines to, just take the query URL from any site, pop in %s in place of the query, choose a keyword (same on FF). I have about 50 keywords.