5 ms·

> People I encounter that argue the results are “not that bad” are 9/10 times ideological purists, or otherwise misguided, that’s purely my personal experience

> People I encounter that argue the results are “not that bad” are 9/10 times ideological purists, or otherwise misguided, that’s purely my personal experience though I find DDG searches to generally be fine and I'm definitely not an ideological purist. Not exactly sure how I might be misguided either. Sometimes I need to use !g if I'm looking for something very specific, but >95% of the time DDG is fine.

roydivision 6y ago
Same, I use !g very rarely, and when I do I only get a better result maybe 1/8 times.
pbronez 6y ago
Agree. I’m perfectly satisfied with native DDG results most of the time. !g is the exception; I use !w, !hn and !gh much more frequently.
magicalhippo 6y ago
One area where DDG is _much_ worse is when it comes to localized results. Say I want to find some hedge trimmers, and I search for "hekksaks" in DDG. Then I get some random videos, links to norwegian-to-english dictionaries and assorted useless pages. If I turn the "Norway" slider on, sure I get decent enough results. But DDG remembers this, so when I later search for some programming related stuff it's awful again. So I need to constantly flip that localized results option on and off, which is super annoying. In comparison, Google shows great results without having toggle some option.
- cdubzzz 6y ago
  Interesting example. And I can replicate it pretty much exactly as you describe. Two things comes to mind — 1. Would you consider this an “edge case”? Searching for things you want to buy in one language, but researching programming topics in another language? 2. Is the difference in experiences not essentially the result of Google’s data collection practices? Both specifically data about you and your search patterns and data in aggregate that DDG (presumably) does not collect on purpose.
  - vlovich123 6y ago
    IP address at a minimum gives you a coarse location anyway so this isn’t even DDG going out of their way to collect personalization information to provide a better result. Alternatively maybe they view any personalization data as a slippery slope and avoid it wholesale.
    - cdubzzz 6y ago
      According to DDG's Privacy page[0] -- "We also save searches, but again, not in a personally identifiable way, as we do not store IP addresses or unique User agent strings. We use aggregate, non-personal search data to improve things like misspellings." So it sounds like they use the slippery slope argument. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/privacy https://duckduckgo.com/privacy
    - marcosdumay 6y ago
      DDG does have a switch to enable location aware search (coarse at the level of country).
  - magicalhippo 6y ago
    I would consider this a typical case. There are several classes of things where I would primarily want local results for. If I'm searching for a grocery store ("matbutikk") I want grocery stores near me, not some instagram account named "Matbutikk" or some random grocery store in Spain. Similarly there are several classes of things where I want international results, typically technical stuff. I think DDG could improve a lot without any privacy issues. Since localized results are often decent enough, the main issue seems to be that it needs to prioritize local results automatically. Are you search for a common product brand name, or using words in the primary language where you are from (geo-ip)? Well then prioritize localized results.
    - cdubzzz 6y ago
      Yeah, I think that is a fair assessment. What I meant by "edge case" though was not necessarily the search term itself. It was selecting "Norway" localization for one search, and then deselecting for another. Of course I have no real insight here, but I would bet the large majority of people who toggle that option intend to keep it for all searches as opposed to just some. E.g. searching for "matbutikk" with the Norway localization on DDG gives me different results (no Instagram account at least, but I can't really judge outside of that, hah).
- brewmarche 6y ago
  This is what I find annoying as well. There is a region parameter you can use for the search query, e.g. the query `hekksaks r:no` will set the Norway slider. It does not permanently set the region (fortunately, as there seems to be no way of specifying “no region.”) Still this is much more effort compared to Google. Edit: see here for some docs, but note that the list of regions they refer to is not correct https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/settings/regions/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/settings/r...
  - Liquix 6y ago
    With DDG + firefox (desktop or mobile), you can create your own custom bangs! 1. Perform the modified search (hekksaks r:no) 2. Create a new bookmark from the search result page 3. Ctrl+shift+B -> edit bookmark 4. Replace the search term but not the custom logic with `%s` (in this case produces https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s+r%3Ano&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s+r%3Ano&ia=web) 5. Type your desired bang into the "keyword" field (!n for example) You can now use !n <any search term> to search for r:no <any search term>, and add/remove/edit filters from the bang as you see fit.
- reportgunner 6y ago
  Well that's by design. How can ddg give you localized results without knowing your location. I get around this by adding the country/city/language/neighborhood to my search query and it works just fine for me.

roydivision 6y ago

Same, I use !g very rarely, and when I do I only get a better result maybe 1/8 times.

pbronez 6y ago

Agree. I’m perfectly satisfied with native DDG results most of the time. !g is the exception; I use !w, !hn and !gh much more frequently.

magicalhippo 6y ago

One area where DDG is _much_ worse is when it comes to localized results. Say I want to find some hedge trimmers, and I search for "hekksaks" in DDG. Then I get some random videos, links to norwegian-to-english dictionaries and assorted useless pages. If I turn the "Norway" slider on, sure I get decent enough results. But DDG remembers this, so when I later search for some programming related stuff it's awful again. So I need to constantly flip that localized results option on and off, which is super annoying. In comparison, Google shows great results without having toggle some option.

cdubzzz 6y ago
Interesting example. And I can replicate it pretty much exactly as you describe. Two things comes to mind — 1. Would you consider this an “edge case”? Searching for things you want to buy in one language, but researching programming topics in another language? 2. Is the difference in experiences not essentially the result of Google’s data collection practices? Both specifically data about you and your search patterns and data in aggregate that DDG (presumably) does not collect on purpose.
- vlovich123 6y ago
  IP address at a minimum gives you a coarse location anyway so this isn’t even DDG going out of their way to collect personalization information to provide a better result. Alternatively maybe they view any personalization data as a slippery slope and avoid it wholesale.
  - cdubzzz 6y ago
    According to DDG's Privacy page[0] -- "We also save searches, but again, not in a personally identifiable way, as we do not store IP addresses or unique User agent strings. We use aggregate, non-personal search data to improve things like misspellings." So it sounds like they use the slippery slope argument. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/privacy https://duckduckgo.com/privacy
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    DDG does have a switch to enable location aware search (coarse at the level of country).
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  I would consider this a typical case. There are several classes of things where I would primarily want local results for. If I'm searching for a grocery store ("matbutikk") I want grocery stores near me, not some instagram account named "Matbutikk" or some random grocery store in Spain. Similarly there are several classes of things where I want international results, typically technical stuff. I think DDG could improve a lot without any privacy issues. Since localized results are often decent enough, the main issue seems to be that it needs to prioritize local results automatically. Are you search for a common product brand name, or using words in the primary language where you are from (geo-ip)? Well then prioritize localized results.
  - cdubzzz 6y ago
    Yeah, I think that is a fair assessment. What I meant by "edge case" though was not necessarily the search term itself. It was selecting "Norway" localization for one search, and then deselecting for another. Of course I have no real insight here, but I would bet the large majority of people who toggle that option intend to keep it for all searches as opposed to just some. E.g. searching for "matbutikk" with the Norway localization on DDG gives me different results (no Instagram account at least, but I can't really judge outside of that, hah).
brewmarche 6y ago
This is what I find annoying as well. There is a region parameter you can use for the search query, e.g. the query `hekksaks r:no` will set the Norway slider. It does not permanently set the region (fortunately, as there seems to be no way of specifying “no region.”) Still this is much more effort compared to Google. Edit: see here for some docs, but note that the list of regions they refer to is not correct https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/settings/regions/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/settings/r...
- Liquix 6y ago
  With DDG + firefox (desktop or mobile), you can create your own custom bangs! 1. Perform the modified search (hekksaks r:no) 2. Create a new bookmark from the search result page 3. Ctrl+shift+B -> edit bookmark 4. Replace the search term but not the custom logic with `%s` (in this case produces https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s+r%3Ano&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s+r%3Ano&ia=web) 5. Type your desired bang into the "keyword" field (!n for example) You can now use !n <any search term> to search for r:no <any search term>, and add/remove/edit filters from the bang as you see fit.
reportgunner 6y ago
Well that's by design. How can ddg give you localized results without knowing your location. I get around this by adding the country/city/language/neighborhood to my search query and it works just fine for me.