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Ive been using DDG as a default search for a while now. My conclusion is that the results are just NOT as good as Google's. I find myself using Google searches
by mr-ron 6y ago
Ive been using DDG as a default search for a while now. My conclusion is that the results are just NOT as good as Google's. I find myself using Google searches for time sensitive or mission critical searches, which totally defeats the purpose of a search engine.
As an example, I was playing around with Phaser and found that DDG just does not surface the entire Phaser documentation or forums correctly, and had to switch my default browser search for when I was putting time there.
I want to want to support DDG, but the lack of quality around searches makes it difficult.
- mostlysimilar 6y agoWhy not use DDG to find the correct site, and then use that site's built-in search for finding things within it? Better yet, if I already know I want a particular doc or site, I'll go directly to that site instead of hopping through a search engine first.
- h4l0 6y agoLet me introduce you to a site called Reddit.
- nefitty 6y agoI think you’re implying that Reddit’s search is subpar, which I agree, although it seems it has improved slightly, recently. When I want firsthand perspective on something I usually append “reddit” to my google searches instead of searching reddit itself, even if I have a reddit tab open already.
- dredmorbius 6y agoOn relatively sparse, self-post (fow or no link) subreddits, Reddit search is fairly useful for searchin posts only. Comments are not indexed. At volume and with links, search breaks down from both insufficient context (esppecially with editorialised, sensationalised, or vague titles) and excess low-yield content.
- dredmorbius 6y agos/fow/few/
- hansvm 6y agoPlenty of sites have terrible search and discovery stories. I routinely search in a general purpose search engine and filter to the site whose results I want because it's faster and more reliable than trying to navigate the site itself.
- ffpip 6y agoPlease use reddit search via the Reddit site, and then via Google/DDG to see the difference.
- swiftcoder 6y agoIt's been a decade since the majority of sites had a usable search of their own. Many that still do are just hosting a site-specific Google search at this point.
- svachalek 6y agoUsually you get much better results by doing the opposite, go to Google and run the search with site:reddit.com or wherever.
- majormunky 6y agoI think you can prepend your search on DDG with !g and it'll search google for you, without leaking your info to google.
- bad_user 6y agoActually, by searching with !g, you’re leaking your info to both DuckDuckGo and Google, instead of just Google. If you want to do Google searches without leaking your data to Google, you could use Startpage.com, but personally I don’t trust Startpage more than Google.
- canadaduane 6y agoThis is what I do as well. Privacy by default, more precision when needed.
- temp 6y ago>without leaking your info to google. Can you elaborate? It just does the same query on Google, how is it preventing leakage of information to Google?
- t0mbstone 6y agoIf it runs the query through DDG's server side, then Google would just see at as an anonymous query along with a million other anonymous queries coming from DuckDuckGo's servers. Unfortunately, that's NOT what they do. Instead, they just forward you to the google search result, which is pointless and stupid.
- unicodepepper 6y agoI imagine that Google would not be happy if they ever were to offer such a proxy service.
- FabHK 6y ago> which is pointless and stupid Not so. The point is that you can set DDG to be your default search engine, and put !g anywhere in the search string to search google in case you need it.
- pmachinery 6y agoI agree, sadly, and in (literally) every discussion on DDG that I've seen, people cite as one of DDG's plus points that you can use !g to search Google instead. Just out of curiosity, what do you (anyone reading) see when you search "curry" on DDG images?
- soco 6y agoWikipedia definition, many recipes, news about Steph Curry... pretty much what I'd expect.
- pmachinery 6y agoOn images?
- soco 6y agoOops sorry. Mostly Steph Curry there, not much food. Very different than Google, can't tell what is better - depends which kind of curry one needs...
- pmachinery 6y agoThanks, and thank you too, svachalek. And yeah it's weird that the non-image search is fine, results about the food and about the player, but the image results really stand out. I have to say I didn't know who Steph Curry was before, but I'm impressed that in the US at least he's bigger than the food.
- GoblinSlayer 6y agoIn general I would say image is more relevant to a human than food.
- svachalek 6y agoAbout 75% Steph Curry, 25% curry dishes.
- svachalek 6y agoI actually like the results on DDG better than Google most of the time: 1. It's more likely to respond to the actual query, rather than guessing what I want based on the query. 2. The results are not stuffed with ads and Google service substitutions. However it's not as good at searching every last corner of the web, so occasionally I need to g!. It's pretty rare that I use that these days, and rarer that it actually gives me a better result.
- mr-ron 6y agoFor number 2 I use uBlock Origin which seems to take a lot of the issues from ads away from .e
- alpaca128 6y agoSame. DDG often requires 1-2 additional search terms to give it enough context, but in return I get results that are actually relevant instead of half a page full of pinterest links and other spam content.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoMy findings are that if your search terms are a question, Google results are usually much better.