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Since this topic keeps coming up, I wish people would save and share with us these supposed failed DDG queries. I wouldn't say that DDG's results are better th

Since this topic keeps coming up, I wish people would save and share with us these supposed failed DDG queries. I wouldn't say that DDG's results are better than the Google of 10 years ago, but I rarely have problems finding what I want. I don't understand how anyone can go as far as to say that DDG is "crap".

foolmeonce 6y ago
I don't understand how anyone who isn't only looking up error strings can say Google results are not crap? For normal human things, DDG seems a little worse than earlier Google and Google seems a lot worse. Or maybe people like sifting through the SEO drivle and vaporous landing pages Google has motivated everyone to create?
- MiroF 6y ago
  Both DDG and Google seem to have regressed to only surfacing lots of blog spam in response to my technical queries, perhaps with a few useful StackOverflow discussions.
  - ravenstine 6y ago
    That's my experience, although I still prefer DDG's results and design over Google's. I think it may not so much be a regression in their algorithms, but that there's just more blog spam than ever. There's a reason I'm hearing the phrase "blogging is dead", and I believe it's because advertising and social media have incentivized more bullshit blogs than ever to pop up. I've come across tons of "blogs" that are really just listing products from Amazon but don't actually do any real analysis on them or tell you which ones are better than the others. In order to get an idea of what products people actually like, you've got to do either `site:reddit.com/r/<subreddit>` or search on YouTube.
mdaniel 6y ago
I actually do one better: I use the Feedback link at the bottom of the bogus search results to formally tell DDG about my bad experience. After having done that for years with no improved outcome, it sure does feel like spitting into the wind, but it also has a higher probability of change than just swearing at my monitor I wish people would save and share with us these supposed failed DDG queries https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22docker%22%20%22unable%20to%20find%20user%22%20%22invalid%20argument%22&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22docker%22%20%22unable%20to%20fi... Contrast that with the !g of the same query And after grinding on search permutations this was what I was looking for: https://github.com/portainer/portainer/issues/4319#issuecomment-690204016 https://github.com/portainer/portainer/issues/4319#issuecomm... Or this would have been fine, too: https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org/msg1764964.html https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.o... Maybe people who are unhappy with DDG results are just extraordinarily technical, but in the absence of a regex powered search engine, the least DDG could do is honor my quotes and index GitHub issues and major Linux mailing lists (I have some sympathy for not finding that mailing list entry since it is only hours old, but I know for certain that GitHub offers a firehose stream of events that will proactively tell DDG of changes, no crawling required)

foolmeonce 6y ago

I don't understand how anyone who isn't only looking up error strings can say Google results are not crap? For normal human things, DDG seems a little worse than earlier Google and Google seems a lot worse. Or maybe people like sifting through the SEO drivle and vaporous landing pages Google has motivated everyone to create?

MiroF 6y ago
Both DDG and Google seem to have regressed to only surfacing lots of blog spam in response to my technical queries, perhaps with a few useful StackOverflow discussions.
- ravenstine 6y ago
  That's my experience, although I still prefer DDG's results and design over Google's. I think it may not so much be a regression in their algorithms, but that there's just more blog spam than ever. There's a reason I'm hearing the phrase "blogging is dead", and I believe it's because advertising and social media have incentivized more bullshit blogs than ever to pop up. I've come across tons of "blogs" that are really just listing products from Amazon but don't actually do any real analysis on them or tell you which ones are better than the others. In order to get an idea of what products people actually like, you've got to do either `site:reddit.com/r/<subreddit>` or search on YouTube.

mdaniel 6y ago

I actually do one better: I use the Feedback link at the bottom of the bogus search results to formally tell DDG about my bad experience. After having done that for years with no improved outcome, it sure does feel like spitting into the wind, but it also has a higher probability of change than just swearing at my monitor I wish people would save and share with us these supposed failed DDG queries https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22docker%22%20%22unable%20to%20find%20user%22%20%22invalid%20argument%22&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22docker%22%20%22unable%20to%20fi... Contrast that with the !g of the same query And after grinding on search permutations this was what I was looking for: https://github.com/portainer/portainer/issues/4319#issuecomment-690204016 https://github.com/portainer/portainer/issues/4319#issuecomm... Or this would have been fine, too: https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org/msg1764964.html https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.o... Maybe people who are unhappy with DDG results are just extraordinarily technical, but in the absence of a regex powered search engine, the least DDG could do is honor my quotes and index GitHub issues and major Linux mailing lists (I have some sympathy for not finding that mailing list entry since it is only hours old, but I know for certain that GitHub offers a firehose stream of events that will proactively tell DDG of changes, no crawling required)