4 ms·

DDG results are okay until you need to look up something non computer science related, like results for your local country.

harha 6y ago
Actually 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 ago
  DDG’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 ago
    Worcester 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 ago
      That'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 ago
        No, it isn't. Non-localized search should ignore the geographical origin of the query, by definition.
      - kick 6y ago
        Then 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 ago
        I 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 ago
    When 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 ago
  For 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 ago
    That’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 ago
  DDG 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 ago
    That 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 ago
Just add region:se (replace as appropriate) to your search.

harha 6y ago

Actually 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 ago
DDG’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 ago
  Worcester 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 ago
    That'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 ago
      No, it isn't. Non-localized search should ignore the geographical origin of the query, by definition.
    - kick 6y ago
      Then 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 ago
        I 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 ago
  When 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 ago
For 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 ago
  That’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 ago
DDG 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 ago
  That 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 ago

Just add region:se (replace as appropriate) to your search.