4 ms·

Having used DDG for several years now as the default on all my devices, i can say that since December the results are completely useless. Not sure what happened

Having used DDG for several years now as the default on all my devices, i can say that since December the results are completely useless. Not sure what happened. I had never to use "!g" before. Now it is required for 1/3 of my regular searches, and "!ig" for 100% of the image "!i" searches.

lucb1e 6y ago
> "!ig" for 100% of the image "!i" searches I replaced 90% of my images searches with Bing Images. I like the UI better and the results are almost as good. Since I use DDG for ~80% of regular searches and Google for the remainder, not giving one party all information seems like it should somewhat level the playing field. Also, I was going to type that a small percentage of my image searches still go to Google for their license selection feature, but I figured I should double check, and whaddayaknow? Bing can do license filtering too. Not sure how good it'll be, but I'll definitely be trying this. Note that instead of typing !something (which I find quite annoying), you can just bind your browser to a keyword. I type "bi test" in my address bar for Bing Images "test" search, instead of having to type a bang and some by-ddg-defined shortcut and giving DDG the data (not that I distrust them, but need-to-know...). Wiki searching is also super convenient like this: wi for wikipedia, dwi for deutsch wikipedia, owi for openstreetmap wiki, etc. Right click in the search field and choose 'Add keyword for this search' usually does the trick.
- q92z8oeif 6y ago
  i naively like the ! shortbuts on DDG because i like to think they use this as data to improve their results.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    That's an angle I hadn't thought of, that it might contribute to DDG's attack on Google by supplying them more data, particularly the queries one goes to Google for. Good point.

4 ms·

Having used DDG for several years now as the default on all my devices, i can say that since December the results are completely useless. Not sure what happened

by q92z8oeif 6y ago

lucb1e 6y ago
> "!ig" for 100% of the image "!i" searches I replaced 90% of my images searches with Bing Images. I like the UI better and the results are almost as good. Since I use DDG for ~80% of regular searches and Google for the remainder, not giving one party all information seems like it should somewhat level the playing field. Also, I was going to type that a small percentage of my image searches still go to Google for their license selection feature, but I figured I should double check, and whaddayaknow? Bing can do license filtering too. Not sure how good it'll be, but I'll definitely be trying this. Note that instead of typing !something (which I find quite annoying), you can just bind your browser to a keyword. I type "bi test" in my address bar for Bing Images "test" search, instead of having to type a bang and some by-ddg-defined shortcut and giving DDG the data (not that I distrust them, but need-to-know...). Wiki searching is also super convenient like this: wi for wikipedia, dwi for deutsch wikipedia, owi for openstreetmap wiki, etc. Right click in the search field and choose 'Add keyword for this search' usually does the trick.
- q92z8oeif 6y ago
  i naively like the ! shortbuts on DDG because i like to think they use this as data to improve their results.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    That's an angle I hadn't thought of, that it might contribute to DDG's attack on Google by supplying them more data, particularly the queries one goes to Google for. Good point.