6 ms·

Are Bing and DDG using those algorithms? Because every 6-8 months I give one of them a try and they are horrible. First I force myself a week of no falling back

Are Bing and DDG using those algorithms? Because every 6-8 months I give one of them a try and they are horrible. First I force myself a week of no falling back to Google when I cannot find anything and then slowly I just give up again. Did they misunderstand something elementary?

tobr 6y ago
DDG really isn’t horrible anymore. It’s weaker than Google in some areas, stronger in others. I stopped reflexively adding `!g` to my searches some time ago.
- dybber 6y ago
  Depends on the country you’re in, DDG still doesn’t give meaningful results for most danish queries is my impression after 6 months of use.
  - tobr 6y ago
    Yes, local searches (if that’s what you mean) would be one of its weak points. On the other hand, there are often various good local search providers who have bangs that you can use directly, with better SERPs than Google for the relevant queries.
Grimm1 6y ago
Turn off all the data collection in Google and personalization from it and compare the results. They go down in quality considerably in my experience. Even with those features on I find constantly outdated information these days. Yup that article from 2012 Techcrunch with the broken links is really helping me Google. Disclosure: Currently running an alternative search engine. However I legitimately don't like Google search or Google's practices in the search market, so much so it actually prompted us to throw our hat in the ring. Edit: I just made the search again, "Techcrunch submission form" The first result for me is from 2006, not 2012, https://techcrunch.com/2006/02/01/how-to-submit-your-company-to-techcrunch/ https://techcrunch.com/2006/02/01/how-to-submit-your-company...
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Turn off all the data collection in Google and personalization from it and compare the results. Yeah, Google has overtly for, IIRC, about a decade said they are focussing search improvements on personal and even predictive search, so, sure, disable that and the quality goes down. But that just illustrates that, while there is an obvious advertising incentive for data collection, it actually is relevant to delivering useful search results.
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    I don't disagree that personalization is important, I disagree with the methods Google employs to collect that data and then that they also use it against the user on the advertising side. So yeah, Google does well by trampling all over ethics and privacy. [0]Only 22% of consumers say they are okay with having their information collected indiscriminately by websites to provide a better experience. Which means by that metric google abuses 88% of it's users unless they go through the means to turn the features off. Informed consent, access and ownership are all pillars a modern site experience should have when it comes to data collection -- Google fails here and so does DDG in the opposite direction by just never asking which means they can't do any personalization. The winner here is going to be someone who can provide the better ethical and functional experience. I firmly believe in the next 15 years we will see litigation in the US around data privacy just using California as the canary and Europe recently voted to get even stricter than the GDPR. [0]https://www.privacymonitor.com/articles/privacy-guide/ https://www.privacymonitor.com/articles/privacy-guide/
    - nl 6y ago
      > [0]Only 22% of consumers say they are okay with having their information collected indiscriminately by websites to provide a better experience. That isn't a quote from the referenced link. The quote is "Only 22 percent of consumers agreed that they would be willing to hand over personal data to improve experiences." - which is quite a different thing. I'm not happy to hand over personal data to improve experiences. But I'm very happy for Google to track what searches I do to improve their results.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Bing and DDG don't fall prey to being inundated by SEO blog spam like Google does. Either way, I use Searx[1], which is a search engine aggregator that you can self-host or use one of the public instances[2]. [1] https://github.com/searx/searx https://github.com/searx/searx [2] https://searx.space/ https://searx.space/
- pureliquidhw 6y ago
  I don't think this is true anymore. DDG results have declined significantly as they have become more mainstream.
  - curryst 6y ago
    I'm curious if there's data to back that up. I would be unsurprised if it's true. The reality that DDG is going to have is that search is almost inherently personal, as an artifact of the imprecision of language and the lack of surrounding context. It applies to some searches more than others, but something like "what is vanilla?" Has a whole variety of answers. What is the substance vanilla? What is made out of vanilla? There's probably 80 different software frameworks that use vanilla in the name. Who knows how many companies have vanilla in their name. Oh, or it could be that you mistyped Manilla, which has its own set of results. Personalization let's you cut down on that. Maybe this person searches for Python stuff a lot, so there's a good chance the frameworks are what they're looking for. Or, the inverse, this person looks up recipes all the time, they probably know what vanilla is so don't show a full page of "this is where vanilla comes from" results. Lacking that context, they have to assume the same context for everyone, so either everybody gets a full page of web frameworks or everyone gets a full page of frameworks; DDG has no way to tell which you're probably more interested in.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    That hasn't been my experience. At least for my searches, DDG has significantly improved over the last couple of years.
    - pureliquidhw 6y ago
Exmoor 6y ago
I've read this type of comment a few times on HN and always find it interesting. I've been using Bing for probably 10 years on desktop and Google on my phone (because Android). Generally I've found that I prefer the Bing results to the Google results more often than Bing. I've honestly had the opposite experience (frustrated with Google results, so I switch to Bing) so I wonder how much of it is based on subconscious assumptions about which we assume is better? I'm sure there's some site the obfuscates results and could probably answer the question a little more scientifically.
- fastball 6y ago
  I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't think it's subconscious bias in my case of preferring Google to all others. My process: think of something I want to find, think of all the keywords I can, type them into the search engine. Google helps me find what I'm looking for faster than Bing or DDG.
  - lanstin 6y ago
    I think given a given search algorithm there is an art to searching effectively with that algorithm. For example for a long time you’d search based on the words you expect in an answer to the question. As Google got more into the “reading the search query as a question” mode you had to shift a bit to framing the query with words from a question that would typically be asked to get the search results. I suspect some of the friction between switching search providers is that we unconsciously get tuned to what terms to use to get the answers we want.
weareallcowards 6y ago
I've used DDG search exclusively for about 9 months now, and I've never used the !g flag. Comments like this completely baffle me. In my anecdotal experience, it's every bit as good as google, and I simply did not notice a difference in the results when I switched. It must be down to what people search for, or maybe how heavily Google has customized their personal results to fit their behaviors. I mostly use web searches for looking up technical documentation, and 5-second tasks like weather forecasts and unit conversions.
- Frost1x 6y ago
  I've used DDG for over a year now almost exclusively and while I agree it isn't by any definition horrible, sometimes when I know enough key descriptors for something I'm searching for but continually fail to find it on DDG, I fall back to Google with the same query and find what I'm looking for. This has happened probably a handful of times but enough times that I would have been stuck in the water without Google, unfortunately. Only one of those handful of cases was significant (I needed that information for work, not a simple curious search) but Google saved the day. Some of it may be due to years of growing accustomed to building searches subconsciously around Google which is unfair to DDG, but it's hard to say definitively.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Sometimes I need the "!g" for Google's personalization.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Apropos, I searched "ddg bang patten" and got garbage results, so I added "!g" and Google found DDG's own page on bang patterns.
    - mikem170 6y ago
      I ran the same searches and got the info as the #4 result in DDG and the #1 result in Google. Disclaimer: I switched to DDG and only very infrequently need to resort to google. I happier not being tracked.
mlazos 6y ago
I actually started using edge at work (I work at ms) and I don’t find bing to be too bad, most searches I go to google for I don’t find a good answer there either. Given they are sometimes very obscure c++ questions. For everyday use though I find them both to be very similar
freehunter 6y ago
One reason monopolies are considered bad is because they set the barriers to entry too high for competitors. I hear the “but Google is just better” argument a lot and sure they are. Google search is better because they pay other companies to hamstring Google’s competitors. That’s the whole point of this anti-trust investigation. Google has made themselves the best not necessarily by actually being the best, but by paying other companies to hold Google’s competitors down. They pay to make sure their competitors are worse, not that they are better. You and me, as consumers, shouldn’t be forced to use a worse product just to try to balance the market, because we can’t compete with Google either. That’s the point of anti-trust regulations.
rhino369 6y ago
I’ve never had a problem with bing. Their video and image searching seem better.

tobr 6y ago

DDG really isn’t horrible anymore. It’s weaker than Google in some areas, stronger in others. I stopped reflexively adding `!g` to my searches some time ago.

dybber 6y ago
Depends on the country you’re in, DDG still doesn’t give meaningful results for most danish queries is my impression after 6 months of use.
- tobr 6y ago
  Yes, local searches (if that’s what you mean) would be one of its weak points. On the other hand, there are often various good local search providers who have bangs that you can use directly, with better SERPs than Google for the relevant queries.

Grimm1 6y ago

Turn off all the data collection in Google and personalization from it and compare the results. They go down in quality considerably in my experience. Even with those features on I find constantly outdated information these days. Yup that article from 2012 Techcrunch with the broken links is really helping me Google. Disclosure: Currently running an alternative search engine. However I legitimately don't like Google search or Google's practices in the search market, so much so it actually prompted us to throw our hat in the ring. Edit: I just made the search again, "Techcrunch submission form" The first result for me is from 2006, not 2012, https://techcrunch.com/2006/02/01/how-to-submit-your-company-to-techcrunch/ https://techcrunch.com/2006/02/01/how-to-submit-your-company...

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Turn off all the data collection in Google and personalization from it and compare the results. Yeah, Google has overtly for, IIRC, about a decade said they are focussing search improvements on personal and even predictive search, so, sure, disable that and the quality goes down. But that just illustrates that, while there is an obvious advertising incentive for data collection, it actually is relevant to delivering useful search results.
- Grimm1 6y ago
  I don't disagree that personalization is important, I disagree with the methods Google employs to collect that data and then that they also use it against the user on the advertising side. So yeah, Google does well by trampling all over ethics and privacy. [0]Only 22% of consumers say they are okay with having their information collected indiscriminately by websites to provide a better experience. Which means by that metric google abuses 88% of it's users unless they go through the means to turn the features off. Informed consent, access and ownership are all pillars a modern site experience should have when it comes to data collection -- Google fails here and so does DDG in the opposite direction by just never asking which means they can't do any personalization. The winner here is going to be someone who can provide the better ethical and functional experience. I firmly believe in the next 15 years we will see litigation in the US around data privacy just using California as the canary and Europe recently voted to get even stricter than the GDPR. [0]https://www.privacymonitor.com/articles/privacy-guide/ https://www.privacymonitor.com/articles/privacy-guide/
  - nl 6y ago
    > [0]Only 22% of consumers say they are okay with having their information collected indiscriminately by websites to provide a better experience. That isn't a quote from the referenced link. The quote is "Only 22 percent of consumers agreed that they would be willing to hand over personal data to improve experiences." - which is quite a different thing. I'm not happy to hand over personal data to improve experiences. But I'm very happy for Google to track what searches I do to improve their results.

heavyset_go 6y ago

Bing and DDG don't fall prey to being inundated by SEO blog spam like Google does. Either way, I use Searx[1], which is a search engine aggregator that you can self-host or use one of the public instances[2]. [1] https://github.com/searx/searx https://github.com/searx/searx [2] https://searx.space/ https://searx.space/

pureliquidhw 6y ago
I don't think this is true anymore. DDG results have declined significantly as they have become more mainstream.
- curryst 6y ago
  I'm curious if there's data to back that up. I would be unsurprised if it's true. The reality that DDG is going to have is that search is almost inherently personal, as an artifact of the imprecision of language and the lack of surrounding context. It applies to some searches more than others, but something like "what is vanilla?" Has a whole variety of answers. What is the substance vanilla? What is made out of vanilla? There's probably 80 different software frameworks that use vanilla in the name. Who knows how many companies have vanilla in their name. Oh, or it could be that you mistyped Manilla, which has its own set of results. Personalization let's you cut down on that. Maybe this person searches for Python stuff a lot, so there's a good chance the frameworks are what they're looking for. Or, the inverse, this person looks up recipes all the time, they probably know what vanilla is so don't show a full page of "this is where vanilla comes from" results. Lacking that context, they have to assume the same context for everyone, so either everybody gets a full page of web frameworks or everyone gets a full page of frameworks; DDG has no way to tell which you're probably more interested in.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  That hasn't been my experience. At least for my searches, DDG has significantly improved over the last couple of years.
  - pureliquidhw 6y ago

Exmoor 6y ago

I've read this type of comment a few times on HN and always find it interesting. I've been using Bing for probably 10 years on desktop and Google on my phone (because Android). Generally I've found that I prefer the Bing results to the Google results more often than Bing. I've honestly had the opposite experience (frustrated with Google results, so I switch to Bing) so I wonder how much of it is based on subconscious assumptions about which we assume is better? I'm sure there's some site the obfuscates results and could probably answer the question a little more scientifically.

fastball 6y ago
I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't think it's subconscious bias in my case of preferring Google to all others. My process: think of something I want to find, think of all the keywords I can, type them into the search engine. Google helps me find what I'm looking for faster than Bing or DDG.
- lanstin 6y ago
  I think given a given search algorithm there is an art to searching effectively with that algorithm. For example for a long time you’d search based on the words you expect in an answer to the question. As Google got more into the “reading the search query as a question” mode you had to shift a bit to framing the query with words from a question that would typically be asked to get the search results. I suspect some of the friction between switching search providers is that we unconsciously get tuned to what terms to use to get the answers we want.

weareallcowards 6y ago

I've used DDG search exclusively for about 9 months now, and I've never used the !g flag. Comments like this completely baffle me. In my anecdotal experience, it's every bit as good as google, and I simply did not notice a difference in the results when I switched. It must be down to what people search for, or maybe how heavily Google has customized their personal results to fit their behaviors. I mostly use web searches for looking up technical documentation, and 5-second tasks like weather forecasts and unit conversions.

Frost1x 6y ago
I've used DDG for over a year now almost exclusively and while I agree it isn't by any definition horrible, sometimes when I know enough key descriptors for something I'm searching for but continually fail to find it on DDG, I fall back to Google with the same query and find what I'm looking for. This has happened probably a handful of times but enough times that I would have been stuck in the water without Google, unfortunately. Only one of those handful of cases was significant (I needed that information for work, not a simple curious search) but Google saved the day. Some of it may be due to years of growing accustomed to building searches subconsciously around Google which is unfair to DDG, but it's hard to say definitively.
whimsicalism 6y ago
Sometimes I need the "!g" for Google's personalization.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Apropos, I searched "ddg bang patten" and got garbage results, so I added "!g" and Google found DDG's own page on bang patterns.
  - mikem170 6y ago
    I ran the same searches and got the info as the #4 result in DDG and the #1 result in Google. Disclaimer: I switched to DDG and only very infrequently need to resort to google. I happier not being tracked.

mlazos 6y ago

I actually started using edge at work (I work at ms) and I don’t find bing to be too bad, most searches I go to google for I don’t find a good answer there either. Given they are sometimes very obscure c++ questions. For everyday use though I find them both to be very similar

freehunter 6y ago

One reason monopolies are considered bad is because they set the barriers to entry too high for competitors. I hear the “but Google is just better” argument a lot and sure they are. Google search is better because they pay other companies to hamstring Google’s competitors. That’s the whole point of this anti-trust investigation. Google has made themselves the best not necessarily by actually being the best, but by paying other companies to hold Google’s competitors down. They pay to make sure their competitors are worse, not that they are better. You and me, as consumers, shouldn’t be forced to use a worse product just to try to balance the market, because we can’t compete with Google either. That’s the point of anti-trust regulations.

rhino369 6y ago

I’ve never had a problem with bing. Their video and image searching seem better.