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I actually think the results on DuckDuckGo are better than on google for many topics especially technical: - there’s less ads (you can turn them off completely
by harha 6y ago
I actually think the results on DuckDuckGo are better than on google for many topics especially technical:
- there’s less ads (you can turn them off completely, but I’ve only seen one ad on the front page at most which is ok for me)
- not as SEOed (still not great though)
- the box on the side is often more useful, e.g. Wikipedia instead of shopping ads
- on mobile Safari I use the bangs [0] which have a sort of Omnibox experience
[0]: https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
(Edited formatting)
- pedroaraujo 6y agoDDG results are okay until you need to look up something non computer science related, like results for your local country.
- harha 6y agoActually that’s better too, I like how it’s possible to switch countries easily to get local results or choose global results. Some non technical searches are more difficult though.
- Doctor_Fegg 6y agoDDG’s definition of “global” is essentially “American” though. Presenting results exclusively for Worcester, MA, when I search for “Worcester” from a UK IP address (near Worcester, Worcestershire) isn’t being global, it’s being dumb. It comes up every time DDG is discussed on HN and I don’t understand why they don’t fix it. It’s the main thing that keeps me using Bing on my phone.
- kick 6y agoWorcester has a higher population than England's Worcester, and as such probably has more backlinks to pages related to it. That is global. Expecting global results to be regionalized is silly; just use regionalized results.
- Doctor_Fegg 6y agoThat's a very engineer-focused way of looking at it. I don't care about backlinks or population or whatever weighting DDG uses: I want relevant results. DDG is a user-facing search engine, not a tech demo. Showing a UK visitor three pages of results about Worcester, MA is simply bad UX.
- enriquto 6y agoNo, it isn't. Non-localized search should ignore the geographical origin of the query, by definition.
- kick 6y agoThen use regional results! I, personally, am not an engineer. I'm a person who has an actual use for 'global' results, and my main reason for using DuckDuckGo is the ability to not have regional results. If you want relevant results, don't use the global weighting. Use the UK weighting. That's why it's there. Literally so people with your preference of localized results can have localized results.
- andrewshadura 6y agoI set the region to Slovakia: it shows me a map of the UK Worcester and mixed results mostly about the US one: https://i.imgur.com/i6fb6sz.png https://i.imgur.com/i6fb6sz.png Now I set the region to the UK, I would expect the more relevant results. It shows the map for the US Worcester and mixed results again, but differently mixed: https://i.imgur.com/OdhCQg9.png https://i.imgur.com/OdhCQg9.png This doesn’t make much sense to me.
- gcthomas 6y agoWhen I do it from the UK, with localisation on I get a whole page of links on the UK Worcester, with it off the hits are mostly the US one, but the Wikipedia page like is still UK. YMMV, of course, but this search works fine for me.
- bad_user 6y agoFor me all results are worse, computer science or not. DDG completely ignores my country or when it doesn't, the results are misclassified. And you can forget about local searches, DDG being worse than useless for those. What strikes me as odd is that DDG is worse for computer science results too. DDG often ignores search terms that Google doesn't. And which terms it ignores is a complete guess, so you do this back and forth putting relevant query words in quotes to try and force it. I use DDG as my default search engine, but there's no point in denying the obvious. UI might be nice, but UI is unimportant.
- soraminazuki 6y agoThat’s odd, because from my experience, it’s Google that’s constantly ignoring my search terms. With Google, I often had to quote “every” “single” “keyword” when it came to searching for computer science stuff. With DDG, not as much.
- KozmoNau7 6y agoDDG returns mostly Norwegian results when I set the region to Denmark. I get that our languages are very closely related and thus hard to tell apart, but it does get annoying.
- rypskar 6y agoThat is funny. The thing that annoy me most when writing in Norwegian on DDG is that most results are from Denmark, often including did you mean "Danish spelling for the same word"
- robin_reala 6y agoJust add region:se (replace as appropriate) to your search.
- kavalg 6y agoDon't you guys use an ad blocker? I barely see any ads since I started using uBlock. Occasionally I browse without an ad blocker and the experience is horrible and intimidating. Actually ads and propaganda were the reasons I quit TV around 10 years ago and I have never regretted it. So much time and mental energy is freed up to do constructive and fulfilling things (e.g. reading books, sports, socializing, musing etc).
- mekster 6y agoThrew away TV 15 years ago, zero regret.
- wideasleep1 6y agoYep! 15 years too. Had DirecTV with multiple DirecTivo's, then moved to Sausalito and lost LOS to sats. Never considered Comcast, and that was that.
- blackrock 6y agoI got rid of cable tv. Was spending $80 a month ($960/year) for something that’s mostly previously taped. Best decision ever! The problem, is that during a pandemic or crisis, you sorta miss the cable news. Local TV broadcasts are not as sufficient, but at least I can get some good digital signal coverage for a few channels.
- asdff 6y agoBeen avoiding internet ads and tracking for 15 years now. I feel like the unibomber. Facebook and google probably still have a good fingerprint on me, though, due to iOS not letting you use good ad blockers. Something uncanny happened recently in terms of the ads I do see that gave me quite a bit of paranoia. My SO recently bought a distinct pair of leggings. How am I seeing ads for that same exact pair of leggings, on my phone? I don't think I've ever typed out the word leggings on the internet before this very comment.
- herbstein 6y agoBut you live in the same household, and probably use the same internet connection, as someone who did likely search for and buy leggings. They use this information when correlating.
- brabel 6y agoAs much as I would like to agree, as a user who has DDG as the default search engine, this is not my experience... DDG consistently gives me useless results when I search for less popular languages results (searching Dart, or the search-friendly dartlang, gives me crap every time, while Google finds stuff easily... sure, Dart is by Google, that may be a factor, but if I remember correctly, results for Groovy and very new languages like Unison are a lot better at Google) I unavoidably have to use !g to turn to Google. To the point where when I am at work and cannot afford wasting time, I use Google by default.
- timwis 6y agoI agree. I find myself using the !g bang any time I’m looking for software related queries.
- deeblering4 6y agoI found this to be the case a few years ago. But nowadays it's uncommon that I need to switch to google, even if searching for technical things.
- harha 6y agoGood point, it's possible to send a request to add a bang, but it would be better if there were an interface like in Chrome or Firefox to set up own searches. I do prefer not leaving all my data with Google though to combine with other activities of which I may or may not know of and I think it's good to use alternative services as much as possible, especially when I use Google just as an interface to surface information from site like Wikipedia or Stackexchange. (note I'm not affiliated with DDG, I just also went through the process of De-Googling after Inbox was shut down)
- GoblinSlayer 6y agoWhat do you search? When I search "string dart" the first link is to api.dart.dev. PS uh, rather the whole page is related to dart.
- amelius 6y ago
- ur-whale 6y agoNot been my experience either. I use DDG as my main search engine and I am obliged to fall back to google almost every time.
- hgal 6y agoDDG is good for mainstream. But once I search something in Hungarian I have to revert back to google.
- andrewshadura 6y agoSame for Slovak. P.S. Bojler eladó.
- unethical_ban 6y agoI use DDG as my default, and I do like the bang syntax - in fact, it wouldn't be my default otherwise. I find when searching for manuals on devices, for example, there are lots of garbage results or PDF spam sites that I would not recommend people click. The other night I searched a question (I forget what) and the entire first page was Quora links to possibly the same question over and over, and not the question I asked. tldr: I use !g, !i, and !usps a lot.
- rgoulter 6y agoOne more use case: The result for copying the link of a search result item for e.g. "git book pdf" from DuckDuckGo: https://progit2.s3.amazonaws.com/en/2016-03-22-f3531/progit-en.1084.pdf https://progit2.s3.amazonaws.com/en/2016-03-22-f3531/progit-... from Google: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjclvfBgY7pAhWKuJQKHa_sCkQQFjABegQIARAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fprogit2.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fen%2F2016-03-22-f3531%2Fprogit-en.1084.pdf&usg=AOvVaw10OZjOubT-oac-zAwrUbl3 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... from bing: https://progit2.s3.amazonaws.com/en/2016-03-22-f3531/progit-en.1084.pdf https://progit2.s3.amazonaws.com/en/2016-03-22-f3531/progit-...
- whatzis 6y agoI use Google don't track me for that
- ridgewell 6y agoDuckDuckGo is just Bing, with the optionality of geolocation by country.