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To people who use DuckDuckGo: how do you deal with its inability to answer simple queries with factual answers? Things like “distance from Los Angeles to New Yo

To people who use DuckDuckGo: how do you deal with its inability to answer simple queries with factual answers? Things like “distance from Los Angeles to New York”, “Joe Biden age”, “knives out cast”, “capital of South Africa”, etc. The time it takes to click a result on DuckDuckGo and navigate to the answer is so much longer than just getting the answer at the top of the results page, as google (and even bing) provide. This is the main reason I can’t use DuckDuckGo, as much as I’d like to

davegauer 7y ago
For facts like these, I use WolframAlpha. For everything else, it's DDG.
ghastmaster 7y ago
I use my search engine to direct me to a source. I do not expect it to be the source. That is just how my brain sees the purpose of the engine. I can, however, understand why anyone would like it to provide you with instant factual and reliable information! That would be a godsend. I do not trust the instant answers most of the time. I like seeing forum answers and comments, finding age in wikipedia and stumbling upon more information, and generally getting lost in the web.
Normal_gaussian 7y ago
Either it appears as part of the first result or one of the top results have it. This is the case for all of your queries, and the result to select is obvious - normally wikipedia or imdb. This is arguably harder (+1 click and page load). However for capital of south africa this is arguably more correct. My google test shows no distinction between the capitals, whereas the wiki page does. Of course the wiki page is accessible on google as well. I'm wary of cases when these facts are incorrect. Google declares them while trying to hide the source. This was very important recently when a friend googled for caucus winners and recieved an incorrect fact at the top of Google, something that would have rang alarm bells when seen on its candidate affiliated source page
- kube-system 7y ago
  You don't need the extra click and page load. Try these: "joe biden !w" "Los Angeles to New York !wa" "knives out !w" "south africa !w" "ddg bangs !hn"
TallGuyShort 7y ago
That seems like more of what WolframAlpha caters to. Personally, I don't like assuming an engine has interpreted what I'm looking for correctly - I'd prefer to maintain some of the load of personally understanding the source of information and it's context. So here is what I do: >> distance from Los Angeles to New York !m los angeles to new york >> Joe Biden age !w joe biden >> knives out cast !imdb knives out >> capital of South Africa !w South Africa And that last one is a really good example of why I don't want to trust an engine to interpret what I'm looking for, because Wolfram Alpha just tells you Pretoria, and if I hadn't spent a large part of my life there I wouldn't know that's probably not what people are looking for. Economically? They probably want to know that Johannesburg is the largest city. Just like how people are sometimes surprised when they learn that New York City and Los Angeles are not state capitals, even though they're really important cities. Politically? Well the roles of the government is split between 3 cities and that's not a simple thing for an engine to comprehend. And I didn't even know Bloemfontein held that kind of status until I just read it on Wikipedia. Neither I, a former citizen of the country, nor WolframAlpha, was aware of that.
- bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
  Google and Bing both list all three capitals of South Africa. They also write out how they've interpreted your query so you can tell if they're giving you the answer to the right question.
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    Color me impressed by them, then - but it's still not the kind of thing I entirely trust to an engine. Even though in this specific example we're discussing in detail, it's doing the right thing. Hard to know when it's not. The "explanation" of how it was interpreted isn't much. I'm also biased by the fact that I'm constantly delighted by the random things I learn by consulting Wikipedia about virtually every topic I encounter.

davegauer 7y ago

For facts like these, I use WolframAlpha. For everything else, it's DDG.

ghastmaster 7y ago

I use my search engine to direct me to a source. I do not expect it to be the source. That is just how my brain sees the purpose of the engine. I can, however, understand why anyone would like it to provide you with instant factual and reliable information! That would be a godsend. I do not trust the instant answers most of the time. I like seeing forum answers and comments, finding age in wikipedia and stumbling upon more information, and generally getting lost in the web.

Normal_gaussian 7y ago

Either it appears as part of the first result or one of the top results have it. This is the case for all of your queries, and the result to select is obvious - normally wikipedia or imdb. This is arguably harder (+1 click and page load). However for capital of south africa this is arguably more correct. My google test shows no distinction between the capitals, whereas the wiki page does. Of course the wiki page is accessible on google as well. I'm wary of cases when these facts are incorrect. Google declares them while trying to hide the source. This was very important recently when a friend googled for caucus winners and recieved an incorrect fact at the top of Google, something that would have rang alarm bells when seen on its candidate affiliated source page

kube-system 7y ago
You don't need the extra click and page load. Try these: "joe biden !w" "Los Angeles to New York !wa" "knives out !w" "south africa !w" "ddg bangs !hn"

TallGuyShort 7y ago

That seems like more of what WolframAlpha caters to. Personally, I don't like assuming an engine has interpreted what I'm looking for correctly - I'd prefer to maintain some of the load of personally understanding the source of information and it's context. So here is what I do: >> distance from Los Angeles to New York !m los angeles to new york >> Joe Biden age !w joe biden >> knives out cast !imdb knives out >> capital of South Africa !w South Africa And that last one is a really good example of why I don't want to trust an engine to interpret what I'm looking for, because Wolfram Alpha just tells you Pretoria, and if I hadn't spent a large part of my life there I wouldn't know that's probably not what people are looking for. Economically? They probably want to know that Johannesburg is the largest city. Just like how people are sometimes surprised when they learn that New York City and Los Angeles are not state capitals, even though they're really important cities. Politically? Well the roles of the government is split between 3 cities and that's not a simple thing for an engine to comprehend. And I didn't even know Bloemfontein held that kind of status until I just read it on Wikipedia. Neither I, a former citizen of the country, nor WolframAlpha, was aware of that.

bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
Google and Bing both list all three capitals of South Africa. They also write out how they've interpreted your query so you can tell if they're giving you the answer to the right question.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  Color me impressed by them, then - but it's still not the kind of thing I entirely trust to an engine. Even though in this specific example we're discussing in detail, it's doing the right thing. Hard to know when it's not. The "explanation" of how it was interpreted isn't much. I'm also biased by the fact that I'm constantly delighted by the random things I learn by consulting Wikipedia about virtually every topic I encounter.