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I've used DDG full-time for over two years now. I honestly don't miss Google. Every time I use !g I'm reminded just how bad it's gotten. Between the SEO spam a

I've used DDG full-time for over two years now. I honestly don't miss Google. Every time I use !g I'm reminded just how bad it's gotten. Between the SEO spam and ads I find myself scrolling at least halfway down the page to find anything even remotely relevant. I can't say that DDG always has the 'best' results, but at least they seem appropriate to what I'm searching for. One thing I do wish DDG has is webmaster tools. I know they don't do their own indexing, but it would be nice to have a way to get performance & keyword data the way Google/Bing/Yandex etc present it.

nostromo 6y ago
!g is some sort of brilliant marketing. Me: "I don't see what I expected. I'll try Google." Me two seconds later 9 out of 10 times: "Oh, Google also sucks for this query. Oh well."
- Zhyl 6y ago
  It's also amazing for analytics. "What are people not finding on our engine?" grep -F '!g' log
- FalconSensei 6y ago
  That is brilliant indeed. Although I don't understand why I would use '!g' instead of just 'g'+tab/whitespace, as that would use google as the browser search engine - if you manually added 'g' as google's keyword, or if you used google enough that when you type 'g' it interprets as possible google
  - spurgu 6y ago
    Yeah or "y <tab> <youtube query>". BUT! You can't do that in Firefox, which is one of the many reasons I switched back to Chrome (Brave) after trying to like Firefox for a couple of months. Chrome just does UX so much better. I really really miss containers though but Google has little incentive to offer that.
    - FalconSensei 6y ago
      Agree! I tried to switch to Firefox many times. But the usability (for me) is nowhere near chrome/edge chromium. You can do this on Firefox, by adding bookmarking google.com and adding 'g' as a keyword. But there's no way to manage your keywords/search engines, and even adding it is more involved than on chrome/edge
move-on-by 6y ago
I've been switched for several years as well. I like most not seeing AMP links and am always reminded how terrible Google is when someone shares a link with me and its just a big ugly google AMP mangled URL.
- PikachuEXE 6y ago
  I switched to DDG before AMP link appears Lucky for me ;)
mikkom 6y ago
What you are saying is you like Bing results more than Google, DDG is bing with different UI.

nostromo 6y ago

!g is some sort of brilliant marketing. Me: "I don't see what I expected. I'll try Google." Me two seconds later 9 out of 10 times: "Oh, Google also sucks for this query. Oh well."

Zhyl 6y ago
It's also amazing for analytics. "What are people not finding on our engine?" grep -F '!g' log
FalconSensei 6y ago
That is brilliant indeed. Although I don't understand why I would use '!g' instead of just 'g'+tab/whitespace, as that would use google as the browser search engine - if you manually added 'g' as google's keyword, or if you used google enough that when you type 'g' it interprets as possible google
- spurgu 6y ago
  Yeah or "y <tab> <youtube query>". BUT! You can't do that in Firefox, which is one of the many reasons I switched back to Chrome (Brave) after trying to like Firefox for a couple of months. Chrome just does UX so much better. I really really miss containers though but Google has little incentive to offer that.
  - FalconSensei 6y ago
    Agree! I tried to switch to Firefox many times. But the usability (for me) is nowhere near chrome/edge chromium. You can do this on Firefox, by adding bookmarking google.com and adding 'g' as a keyword. But there's no way to manage your keywords/search engines, and even adding it is more involved than on chrome/edge

move-on-by 6y ago

I've been switched for several years as well. I like most not seeing AMP links and am always reminded how terrible Google is when someone shares a link with me and its just a big ugly google AMP mangled URL.

PikachuEXE 6y ago
I switched to DDG before AMP link appears Lucky for me ;)

mikkom 6y ago

What you are saying is you like Bing results more than Google, DDG is bing with different UI.