6 ms·

The curious case of DuckDuckGo

103 points by sbashyal 15y ago

sofuture 15y ago
I switched and never looked back :) I did have to (re)map my search keyword 'g' to DDG in all my browsers though!
- rwolf 15y ago
  vimperator or luakit?
ceejayoz 15y ago
> I did the same search in DuckDuckGo and I got results as expected. Simple. For this unusual case. In most situations I've encountered, Google's auto correction is quite helpful. > What if I was searching for place Java of Java Coffee fame. I would need to scan through the search results, spanning multi-pages (second page in this), until I came across the one that related to Java, the place. Or, you revise your query to "Java coffee". Hell, with Google Instant it's not even another pageview. As a programmer, I'm glad Google does a little guesswork and gives me results that are relevant to the types of queries I'm likely to be making.
- mtogo 15y ago
  > Or, you revise your query to "Java coffee". Right, but DDG makes it easier. Sure, technological advancement isn't required, you could still just do it the old way and edit your query, but this makes it easier and better. And that's a good thing.
- lotharbot 15y ago
  > "In most situations I've encountered, Google's auto correction is quite helpful." I'm a fairly good speller and a good typist, and I almost always mean to search for what I typed. Most days, Google's auto-correct feature is of negative value to me. YMMV of course.
  - wiradikusuma 15y ago
    but it can be beneficial for those non-native English speakers like me. sometimes, when composing email, i googled for some word to know its meaning and its correct spelling.
- sbashyal 15y ago
  In most situations I've encountered, Google's auto correction is quite helpful. If I place an order for a Chicken Burrito but am served a Beef Burrito (auto correction) because that's the most popular dish, it would not be okay. Same applies to search. (Sorry, I repeated this example I used in another response in this same thread.)
  - ceejayoz 15y ago
    > If I place an order for a Chicken Burrito but am served a Beef Burrito (auto correction) because that's the most popular dish, it would not be okay. If I were immediately - i.e. within a second or two - served a chicken burrito when I say "sorry, I ordered the chicken", I don't think I'd mind that much.
Mithrandir 15y ago
One of the great parts of DuckDuckGo is that if you don't find what you're looking for, you can just type in '!g QUERY', '!b QUERY', or one of the other ~1400 !bangs. https://www.duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://www.duckduckgo.com/bang.html
- thezilch 15y ago
  This feature is a builtin on Chrome and Firefox. One need not proxy, and eat overhead time, for specific searches through DDG nor Google, and the keyword configuration is also custom.
  - mtogo 15y ago
    See my replies above, Chrome and Firefox's features are nice, but not half of what DDG's !bang commands can do.
mtogo 15y ago
Among the benefits listed and hundreds of others are the !bang commands, which i really love. Want to do a search on stackoverflow right from your url bar? !so Hello world Or maybe wikipedia? !w Hello world Or do a google search !g Hello world
- thezilch 15y ago
  How does this differ from using browser-builtin search-keywords, other than not having to rely/wait on a proxy? http://i.imgur.com/Tz7by.png http://i.imgur.com/Tz7by.png
  - mtogo 15y ago
    It's really similar, but you get a few hundred without having to configure anything in your browser, and it's the same no matter which browser[1] or computer you're using without having to sync anything. The downside, as you said, is that you have to wait for DDG's servers. [1] Which matters a lot to me, since i use 3 or 4 different browsers at a time across a few different computers and often don't have the ability to sync my browser prefs.
- Sephr 15y ago
  If you visit any of those sites enough in Chrome, all you have to do is type a couple letters from the domain and then space or tab to search that site, given that they expose an OpenSearch Description. DuckDuckGo can't do this, as it static keywords instead of heuristically selecting the site you most likely want to search with the characters you have entered so far.
  - mtogo 15y ago
    This is one of my favorite features of Chrome, but as i said in my comment below, that only works in chrome, it only works on the computer you visit those sites from, and DDG has a handful of hundred sites whereas chrome has only a few that you visit. A good feature, but for my usage patterns it doesn't hold a candle to DDG !bang commands.
- 15y ago
bendmorris 15y ago
I use DDG as my main search engine mostly because of the convenience of !bangs. Also, search results on other engines seem to be going down in quality lately. Too many spam sites are reaching the top of Google, and I'm finding real answers to questions I ask on page 2 or 3. The nice thing about DDG is that if you can't find what you're looking for you can just add !w, !so, etc. to try a more targeted search.
- sbashyal 15y ago
  I am impressed by bangs. I am still exploring it's full potential. The reason I did not mention bangs in my write-up was because it was not related to the basic search comparison I found interesting.
slowpoke 15y ago
I've been saying since a while that, barring pure performance, DDG beats GoogleSearch any day. Switched months ago and never looked back. Unfortunately, many people think I'm just a paranoid neckbeard who dislikes Google when I dare to suggest DDG to them.
ugh 15y ago
Point one I can’t understand. Google is optimized for the common case. It’s not that often that I want to search for something not in Google’s (excellent) dictionary.
- sbashyal 15y ago
  Please see my burrito example in another response in this thread. Let me know if you think differently about search.
  - carbonica 15y ago
    You've repeated the burrito example in nearly every subthread here, which is poor form to begin with, and it is a horrible example. You are comparing ("chicken burrito" -> "beef burrito") to ("something with words I've never seen in the past several billion searches" -> "something for which I have many results that get many clicks") Please stop spamming your analogy to every subthread and please consider that it may in fact have some flaws.
- ZoFreX 15y ago
  Personally, I frequently fall into the uncommon cases. I realise that that makes me uncommon, and don't blame Google for doing what works for 90% of their users. However, for me personally it's not a great experience anymore, I am irritated by auto-correct far more often than I am helped by it. As someone who knew how to use the synonym operator, I never felt that I wanted Google to do this for me automatically. Now it does, frequently, and in some cases using the exact match operator is overriden by Google deciding to match synonymns anyway. At this point, I can't even control what I'm searching for.
sidman 15y ago
I remember during uni I got the results closer to what i wanted them to be from google. It didn't have the instant or any of those fancy things but it just gave me what i wanted. It still does now but i just gotta troll through a few more links (which is ok by me) I feel that the main difference now is because of the immense size of googles data from some 7-8 years ago when i first started uni. However to be able to structure the size of the data they have and still provide relevancy is still an awesome job i think. I just wonder though, if duckduckgo ever did become a contender (from a data size perspective) and started to approach the size of googles dataset whether they would have the same kinds of problem.
homosaur 15y ago
I wish there was some way for the system to ban people if they submit their own blog posts. This is a non-study. The vast majority of people looking for "java" are looking for the programming language. If they weren't, all those links wouldn't be at the top of Google. For most people, this IS the correct response. For anyone else, seems like they could just say "huh, programming languages?" And then type "java indonesia," "java coffee," or even "java country." REALLY DIFFICULT In the first example, all you have to do is click on the non-autocorrected text or even just put that search in quotes. I don't even know why the hell you would look for "college vs. uncollege" anyway, any search for "uncollege" is going to turn up a bunch of pages that talk all about that movement and why it exists. DDG is a good product, but this article is stupid.
- wongm 15y ago
  What makes you think the vast majority of people looking for "java" are looking for the programming language? How many people in the world are programmers and are you biased by your own particular situation? The rest of the non-programming world is probably full of people wanting to know where to buy Java coffee, or wanting to know something about Indonesian islands.
  - homosaur 15y ago
    I'm biased by knowing how Google works. http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=java&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=java&cmpt=q The top searches involving "java" are download java, free java, string java, java script, sun, java sun, java code, etc etc. Even in Indonesia, the top searches are about the programming language. I don't see islands or Indonesia or coffee anywhere.
- ecounysis 15y ago
  The article does a good job of highlighting certain instances where using Google is a pain in the ass. I personally don't like the spell-correct feature. For me, it is only correct in its conclusion that I mistyped a word about 10% of the time. The other 90% is a nuisance because I have to go back and explicitly tell it that I meant to tell it what I told it.
gallerytungsten 15y ago
re: "Google over does search" (and "autocorrects" your search). This "feature" has been getting steadily more annoying, particularly with more obscure words, or words where there is a similar word that's in more widespread use. Thinking about it now, I was wishing there was a way to turn off this feature; but alas, a dive into http://www.google.com/preferences http://www.google.com/preferences doesn't seem to have "turn off that dang autocorrect" as an option.
- robrenaud 15y ago
  Append &nfpr=1 (short for "no full page replacement") to all your google queries: For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=college+or+uncollege&nfpr=1 http://www.google.com/search?q=college+or+uncollege&nfpr... I am sure it's not that hard to write a greasemonkey script to do that for you automatically, but I tend to like the feature, especially when I fat finger queries with my cell phone.
  - mitjak 15y ago
    If you're using Chrome's omni bar to search, you can permanently append that query parameter in the search engine settings in the preferences to avoid having to specify it explicitly.
  - gizzlon 15y ago
    In firefox (and others) you can create a bookmark and give it a keyword. Two different ways to do it: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords
  - gulbrandr 15y ago
    If you use google as your homepage, you can change the address to something like that: http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en You can add as many parameters as you want [1]. I use complete=0 to disable suggestions (I don't need/want them) and hl=en to force the interface language to be in english [1] http://yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/google-url-parameters.pdf http://yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/google-url-param...
geraldwl 15y ago
I recently had to rent a car for 3 months in Europe. Google failed miserably. Even the forum posts it uncovered did not really help me find a bargain. There was too much "advertiser" influence in the search results. Duck came to the rescue -- pointed at a great forum post and ultimately a cheaper rate than I found using Google and the phone. Cheaper by over 20%!
- EmployedRussian 15y ago
  Google results for "cheap car rental europe 3 month" appear pretty reasonable, and (on casual examination) (slightly) better than results from DDG. What was the "cheaper by 20%" solution?
- resnamen 15y ago
  Advertiser influence, or SEO influence?
puredemo 15y ago
I've said this for a long time, but I think the biggest thing holding back DDG from truly widespread adoption is the name and branding. No one is ever going to 'dukgo' someone. Searching is a verb, the naming conventions used with DDG in its current form just don't fly. I'd love to talk shop with Gabriel about the identity decisions, and whether he is open to pivoting the brand identity now that the service is getting more well known..
- fbuilesv 15y ago
  Before Google we never Altavista'd or Yahoo'd anything, I don't see why this has to be a problem. Also, please stop abusing the word "pivot" :(
  - BasDirks 15y ago
    Right, before Google.. but maybe that's the point: they never became as ubiquitous as Google.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
      - BasDirks 15y ago
        No, but it helps. My grandma says "I'll Google it". In the case of Altavista (yep she already had internet back then), she'd say "I'll try to use the site you bookmarked for me". Reason #1 for her familiarity with Google is the ease-of-use: an obvious box for typing shit, one obvious list for clicking shit, combined into one website for finding shit. But the apparent naturalness of Google as a verb—even in Dutch—makes old (and less old) folks feel like they are with the times. A verbalizable name helps because verbs tend to integrate into everyday talk more easily, whereas nouns always have a sense of otherness attached to them. With a service like search that is so central to the web-experience, you don't want that otherness, but perhaps when you are competing with Google Search it is best to have that sort of distance.
  - 15y ago
ansy 15y ago
This is really an example of taking Google's strengths and making them out to be weaknesses. Google's search algorithm is tuned to what actually works for most people. Does anyone search for Java and click on coffee links? Or links for Java the island in Indonesia? Based on these results I would bet not. The thousands if not millions of people that typed Java before you didn't want coffee or islands. They wanted the Java virtual machine and programming language so all those long clicks to Java programming sites and JVM downloads have corrected the results page to reflect that. But if you typed "cup of java" or "java island" there would be no mistake. Those people wanted coffee and Indonesia. So that's what links you get. I have used DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine. But it is not competition for Google. Google is much, much more advanced. If I typed in a proper name and that proper name was tied to an address in my area such as by being in the local white pages or having an address on a website, I would see the local result for that name because Google looked up the geolocation of my IP. That sounds a little creepy, but I got what I wanted. Google gave that link extra weight for being near my location therefore it wasn't buried on page 50. That's incredibly smart. How would DDG solve the same problem? It doesn't even try.
- jordank 15y ago
  We find that our users really like disambiguation. I find it most useful on searches for people (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Doug+smith https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Doug+smith) or places (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Deerfield https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Deerfield). Re: local search, we're bringing in datasets from services like Yelp. For an example see: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Wood+tavern https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Wood+tavern. We're always looking to improve, so if you've got interesting local data, please reach out.
- sbashyal 15y ago
  Google's search algorithm is tuned to what actually works for most people. Yes. And that is where I think it goes wrong. The fact that a lot of people misspell should not be used to correct a person's right search to a wrong one. That's not the right thing to do. It should suggest a different search, but not change my search altogether. As an example, if I place an order for a Chicken Burrito but am served a Beef Burrito because that's the most popular dish, it would not be okay. Same applies to search. Google is much, much more advanced. Yes! I said they over did it.
wowamit 15y ago
Google is at its effective best when you are searching for something for which you do not know the result page. You search for expected result page (that too not common), you would be disappointed.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
drpancake 15y ago
I tend to prepend some search terms with a plus sign +like +this, which tells Google not to auto-correct them. For phrases just use double quotes.
Tharkun 15y ago
I've been using DDG almost exclusively for about a year now. Every once in a while I'll do a google search because I can't find what I'm looking for on DDG. This is usually when I'm looking for something local/in a non-english language, or when I'm doing a search for a long string (say a couple of lines from a song lyric). One of google's biggest advantages -- for me at least -- is its localized URLs. google.co.uk, google.fr, google.de, ... they all boost results in the local language(s) and in the relevant country. There's a way to make DDG act the same way, of course, but it's much easier to just type google.de.
- berkes 15y ago
  Somehow, I still don't get Google's logic behind it. Too often I get thrown back to google.nl from .com. When I am certain that I need an American/English/Int result, I want to use google.com immediately, not .nl, but it takes me two or three times correcting the url before I get where I want to go. My solution for this is !g in duckduckgo: This brings me to the international Google.com, no matter what locales in the browser, what computer and what google-account is active. For local searches I just type in google.com and somehow 90% of the time end up with the .nl version. Works for me.
  - morsch 15y ago
    Hit http://www.google.com/ncr http://www.google.com/ncr (no country redirection) once. I think it saves a cookie that will stop google.com from redirecting to a local google. Still works after years and years. See also http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=873 http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer...
yaix 15y ago
If you want your "college or uncollege" verbatim searched for by G, simple put a plus sign in from of it +"college or uncollege" to override the auto correction. Simple. It's more about "geeks doing a web search" vs everybody else. Especially hackers want and are used to have a machine do exactly what is typed, without "smart correction". But that is not true for most people, they want fault tolerance and a "you know what I mean" attitude from the machine. That's what G does. I prefer DDG, of course.
giffo 15y ago
I just want something simple. DuckDuckGo just offers me more stuff/info I don't need. I don't need 4000 results I want the best correct result. http://giffo.imgur.com/search_results http://giffo.imgur.com/search_results The link above are screenshots from a test page of a search engine project I gave up on last year due to burn out and that I just couldn't afford to get it to the online stage. Today I feel (as biased as I am) - it still does the job better than anything out there for me. Because its simple.
dale-cooper 15y ago
I don't understand the complaints about auto-correction. At least google shows you that it does, DDG just does it without giving you any indication. Try "http://duckduckgo.com/?q=pyqt+glp http://duckduckgo.com/?q=pyqt+glp and it will actually search for "pyqt gpl"
- epi0Bauqu 15y ago
  This is actually a bug that we are working through. Thank you for the specific example. Our intention is to always respect the query.
alohahacker 15y ago
its crazy that through marketing and all the push DuckDuckGo is getting that they only get searched 250,000 times a day. With the hundreads of millions of searches that go on everyday you would think they could pull a little bit more. I guess it truly is hard for people to change who they search with after all is said and done.
- jonathansizz 15y ago
  I don't think it's surprising. The only place I hear talk about DDG is on this website and a few blog posts. I tried it myself based on all the glowing comments here, but I didn't find it to be particularly impressive (not bad, but not great either). I also found myself using '!g' most of the time because the default results were inferior to those returned by google; in the end I just cut out the middleman. So I guess I just don't get all the hype about DDG on Hacker News (same goes for bitcoin and the never-ending stream of Python non-stories). Maybe there's a cult-ish aspect to it?
  - alohahacker 15y ago
    yeah same here. don't get me wrong i think its pretty neat and even have the duck app on my droid. i guess its hard for me to switch since EVERYTHING i do is with g ( email, search, google+, etc.) its more a convienience thing for me. but yeah i think it def is a bigger following on tech sites in relation to the average person.
CapitalistCartr 15y ago
I loved Alta Vista. I had to provide the algorithm. Searches like: ((word AND word) OR (word OR word)) AND word. I could get it to do just what I wanted. Then Google came along and built the algorithm skill into their software. Now we complain that their algorithm isn't as brilliant as us, that we have to still think some. If we want Google's software to do our thinking for us, it has to know all the relevant information that we do, necessitating a rather complete invasion of our privacy. If we want to withhold privacy, which means withholding data, we have to do some of our own thinking.

103 points by sbashyal 15y ago

sofuture 15y ago

I switched and never looked back :) I did have to (re)map my search keyword 'g' to DDG in all my browsers though!

rwolf 15y ago
vimperator or luakit?

ceejayoz 15y ago

> I did the same search in DuckDuckGo and I got results as expected. Simple. For this unusual case. In most situations I've encountered, Google's auto correction is quite helpful. > What if I was searching for place Java of Java Coffee fame. I would need to scan through the search results, spanning multi-pages (second page in this), until I came across the one that related to Java, the place. Or, you revise your query to "Java coffee". Hell, with Google Instant it's not even another pageview. As a programmer, I'm glad Google does a little guesswork and gives me results that are relevant to the types of queries I'm likely to be making.

mtogo 15y ago
> Or, you revise your query to "Java coffee". Right, but DDG makes it easier. Sure, technological advancement isn't required, you could still just do it the old way and edit your query, but this makes it easier and better. And that's a good thing.
lotharbot 15y ago
> "In most situations I've encountered, Google's auto correction is quite helpful." I'm a fairly good speller and a good typist, and I almost always mean to search for what I typed. Most days, Google's auto-correct feature is of negative value to me. YMMV of course.
- wiradikusuma 15y ago
  but it can be beneficial for those non-native English speakers like me. sometimes, when composing email, i googled for some word to know its meaning and its correct spelling.
sbashyal 15y ago
In most situations I've encountered, Google's auto correction is quite helpful. If I place an order for a Chicken Burrito but am served a Beef Burrito (auto correction) because that's the most popular dish, it would not be okay. Same applies to search. (Sorry, I repeated this example I used in another response in this same thread.)
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  > If I place an order for a Chicken Burrito but am served a Beef Burrito (auto correction) because that's the most popular dish, it would not be okay. If I were immediately - i.e. within a second or two - served a chicken burrito when I say "sorry, I ordered the chicken", I don't think I'd mind that much.

Mithrandir 15y ago

One of the great parts of DuckDuckGo is that if you don't find what you're looking for, you can just type in '!g QUERY', '!b QUERY', or one of the other ~1400 !bangs. https://www.duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://www.duckduckgo.com/bang.html

thezilch 15y ago
This feature is a builtin on Chrome and Firefox. One need not proxy, and eat overhead time, for specific searches through DDG nor Google, and the keyword configuration is also custom.
- mtogo 15y ago
  See my replies above, Chrome and Firefox's features are nice, but not half of what DDG's !bang commands can do.

mtogo 15y ago

Among the benefits listed and hundreds of others are the !bang commands, which i really love. Want to do a search on stackoverflow right from your url bar? !so Hello world Or maybe wikipedia? !w Hello world Or do a google search !g Hello world

thezilch 15y ago
How does this differ from using browser-builtin search-keywords, other than not having to rely/wait on a proxy? http://i.imgur.com/Tz7by.png http://i.imgur.com/Tz7by.png
- mtogo 15y ago
  It's really similar, but you get a few hundred without having to configure anything in your browser, and it's the same no matter which browser[1] or computer you're using without having to sync anything. The downside, as you said, is that you have to wait for DDG's servers. [1] Which matters a lot to me, since i use 3 or 4 different browsers at a time across a few different computers and often don't have the ability to sync my browser prefs.
Sephr 15y ago
If you visit any of those sites enough in Chrome, all you have to do is type a couple letters from the domain and then space or tab to search that site, given that they expose an OpenSearch Description. DuckDuckGo can't do this, as it static keywords instead of heuristically selecting the site you most likely want to search with the characters you have entered so far.
- mtogo 15y ago
  This is one of my favorite features of Chrome, but as i said in my comment below, that only works in chrome, it only works on the computer you visit those sites from, and DDG has a handful of hundred sites whereas chrome has only a few that you visit. A good feature, but for my usage patterns it doesn't hold a candle to DDG !bang commands.
15y ago

bendmorris 15y ago

I use DDG as my main search engine mostly because of the convenience of !bangs. Also, search results on other engines seem to be going down in quality lately. Too many spam sites are reaching the top of Google, and I'm finding real answers to questions I ask on page 2 or 3. The nice thing about DDG is that if you can't find what you're looking for you can just add !w, !so, etc. to try a more targeted search.

sbashyal 15y ago
I am impressed by bangs. I am still exploring it's full potential. The reason I did not mention bangs in my write-up was because it was not related to the basic search comparison I found interesting.

slowpoke 15y ago

I've been saying since a while that, barring pure performance, DDG beats GoogleSearch any day. Switched months ago and never looked back. Unfortunately, many people think I'm just a paranoid neckbeard who dislikes Google when I dare to suggest DDG to them.

ugh 15y ago

Point one I can’t understand. Google is optimized for the common case. It’s not that often that I want to search for something not in Google’s (excellent) dictionary.

sbashyal 15y ago
Please see my burrito example in another response in this thread. Let me know if you think differently about search.
- carbonica 15y ago
  You've repeated the burrito example in nearly every subthread here, which is poor form to begin with, and it is a horrible example. You are comparing ("chicken burrito" -> "beef burrito") to ("something with words I've never seen in the past several billion searches" -> "something for which I have many results that get many clicks") Please stop spamming your analogy to every subthread and please consider that it may in fact have some flaws.
ZoFreX 15y ago
Personally, I frequently fall into the uncommon cases. I realise that that makes me uncommon, and don't blame Google for doing what works for 90% of their users. However, for me personally it's not a great experience anymore, I am irritated by auto-correct far more often than I am helped by it. As someone who knew how to use the synonym operator, I never felt that I wanted Google to do this for me automatically. Now it does, frequently, and in some cases using the exact match operator is overriden by Google deciding to match synonymns anyway. At this point, I can't even control what I'm searching for.

sidman 15y ago

I remember during uni I got the results closer to what i wanted them to be from google. It didn't have the instant or any of those fancy things but it just gave me what i wanted. It still does now but i just gotta troll through a few more links (which is ok by me) I feel that the main difference now is because of the immense size of googles data from some 7-8 years ago when i first started uni. However to be able to structure the size of the data they have and still provide relevancy is still an awesome job i think. I just wonder though, if duckduckgo ever did become a contender (from a data size perspective) and started to approach the size of googles dataset whether they would have the same kinds of problem.

homosaur 15y ago

I wish there was some way for the system to ban people if they submit their own blog posts. This is a non-study. The vast majority of people looking for "java" are looking for the programming language. If they weren't, all those links wouldn't be at the top of Google. For most people, this IS the correct response. For anyone else, seems like they could just say "huh, programming languages?" And then type "java indonesia," "java coffee," or even "java country." REALLY DIFFICULT In the first example, all you have to do is click on the non-autocorrected text or even just put that search in quotes. I don't even know why the hell you would look for "college vs. uncollege" anyway, any search for "uncollege" is going to turn up a bunch of pages that talk all about that movement and why it exists. DDG is a good product, but this article is stupid.

wongm 15y ago
What makes you think the vast majority of people looking for "java" are looking for the programming language? How many people in the world are programmers and are you biased by your own particular situation? The rest of the non-programming world is probably full of people wanting to know where to buy Java coffee, or wanting to know something about Indonesian islands.
- homosaur 15y ago
  I'm biased by knowing how Google works. http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=java&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=java&cmpt=q The top searches involving "java" are download java, free java, string java, java script, sun, java sun, java code, etc etc. Even in Indonesia, the top searches are about the programming language. I don't see islands or Indonesia or coffee anywhere.
ecounysis 15y ago
The article does a good job of highlighting certain instances where using Google is a pain in the ass. I personally don't like the spell-correct feature. For me, it is only correct in its conclusion that I mistyped a word about 10% of the time. The other 90% is a nuisance because I have to go back and explicitly tell it that I meant to tell it what I told it.

gallerytungsten 15y ago

re: "Google over does search" (and "autocorrects" your search). This "feature" has been getting steadily more annoying, particularly with more obscure words, or words where there is a similar word that's in more widespread use. Thinking about it now, I was wishing there was a way to turn off this feature; but alas, a dive into http://www.google.com/preferences http://www.google.com/preferences doesn't seem to have "turn off that dang autocorrect" as an option.

robrenaud 15y ago
Append &nfpr=1 (short for "no full page replacement") to all your google queries: For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=college+or+uncollege&nfpr=1 http://www.google.com/search?q=college+or+uncollege&nfpr... I am sure it's not that hard to write a greasemonkey script to do that for you automatically, but I tend to like the feature, especially when I fat finger queries with my cell phone.
- mitjak 15y ago
  If you're using Chrome's omni bar to search, you can permanently append that query parameter in the search engine settings in the preferences to avoid having to specify it explicitly.
- gizzlon 15y ago
  In firefox (and others) you can create a bookmark and give it a keyword. Two different ways to do it: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords
- gulbrandr 15y ago
  If you use google as your homepage, you can change the address to something like that: http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en You can add as many parameters as you want [1]. I use complete=0 to disable suggestions (I don't need/want them) and hl=en to force the interface language to be in english [1] http://yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/google-url-parameters.pdf http://yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/google-url-param...

geraldwl 15y ago

I recently had to rent a car for 3 months in Europe. Google failed miserably. Even the forum posts it uncovered did not really help me find a bargain. There was too much "advertiser" influence in the search results. Duck came to the rescue -- pointed at a great forum post and ultimately a cheaper rate than I found using Google and the phone. Cheaper by over 20%!

EmployedRussian 15y ago
Google results for "cheap car rental europe 3 month" appear pretty reasonable, and (on casual examination) (slightly) better than results from DDG. What was the "cheaper by 20%" solution?
resnamen 15y ago
Advertiser influence, or SEO influence?

puredemo 15y ago

I've said this for a long time, but I think the biggest thing holding back DDG from truly widespread adoption is the name and branding. No one is ever going to 'dukgo' someone. Searching is a verb, the naming conventions used with DDG in its current form just don't fly. I'd love to talk shop with Gabriel about the identity decisions, and whether he is open to pivoting the brand identity now that the service is getting more well known..

fbuilesv 15y ago
Before Google we never Altavista'd or Yahoo'd anything, I don't see why this has to be a problem. Also, please stop abusing the word "pivot" :(
- BasDirks 15y ago
  Right, before Google.. but maybe that's the point: they never became as ubiquitous as Google.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
    - BasDirks 15y ago
      No, but it helps. My grandma says "I'll Google it". In the case of Altavista (yep she already had internet back then), she'd say "I'll try to use the site you bookmarked for me". Reason #1 for her familiarity with Google is the ease-of-use: an obvious box for typing shit, one obvious list for clicking shit, combined into one website for finding shit. But the apparent naturalness of Google as a verb—even in Dutch—makes old (and less old) folks feel like they are with the times. A verbalizable name helps because verbs tend to integrate into everyday talk more easily, whereas nouns always have a sense of otherness attached to them. With a service like search that is so central to the web-experience, you don't want that otherness, but perhaps when you are competing with Google Search it is best to have that sort of distance.
- 15y ago

ansy 15y ago

This is really an example of taking Google's strengths and making them out to be weaknesses. Google's search algorithm is tuned to what actually works for most people. Does anyone search for Java and click on coffee links? Or links for Java the island in Indonesia? Based on these results I would bet not. The thousands if not millions of people that typed Java before you didn't want coffee or islands. They wanted the Java virtual machine and programming language so all those long clicks to Java programming sites and JVM downloads have corrected the results page to reflect that. But if you typed "cup of java" or "java island" there would be no mistake. Those people wanted coffee and Indonesia. So that's what links you get. I have used DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine. But it is not competition for Google. Google is much, much more advanced. If I typed in a proper name and that proper name was tied to an address in my area such as by being in the local white pages or having an address on a website, I would see the local result for that name because Google looked up the geolocation of my IP. That sounds a little creepy, but I got what I wanted. Google gave that link extra weight for being near my location therefore it wasn't buried on page 50. That's incredibly smart. How would DDG solve the same problem? It doesn't even try.

jordank 15y ago
We find that our users really like disambiguation. I find it most useful on searches for people (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Doug+smith https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Doug+smith) or places (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Deerfield https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Deerfield). Re: local search, we're bringing in datasets from services like Yelp. For an example see: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Wood+tavern https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Wood+tavern. We're always looking to improve, so if you've got interesting local data, please reach out.
sbashyal 15y ago
Google's search algorithm is tuned to what actually works for most people. Yes. And that is where I think it goes wrong. The fact that a lot of people misspell should not be used to correct a person's right search to a wrong one. That's not the right thing to do. It should suggest a different search, but not change my search altogether. As an example, if I place an order for a Chicken Burrito but am served a Beef Burrito because that's the most popular dish, it would not be okay. Same applies to search. Google is much, much more advanced. Yes! I said they over did it.

wowamit 15y ago

Google is at its effective best when you are searching for something for which you do not know the result page. You search for expected result page (that too not common), you would be disappointed.

deleted 15y ago

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drpancake 15y ago

I tend to prepend some search terms with a plus sign +like +this, which tells Google not to auto-correct them. For phrases just use double quotes.

Tharkun 15y ago

I've been using DDG almost exclusively for about a year now. Every once in a while I'll do a google search because I can't find what I'm looking for on DDG. This is usually when I'm looking for something local/in a non-english language, or when I'm doing a search for a long string (say a couple of lines from a song lyric). One of google's biggest advantages -- for me at least -- is its localized URLs. google.co.uk, google.fr, google.de, ... they all boost results in the local language(s) and in the relevant country. There's a way to make DDG act the same way, of course, but it's much easier to just type google.de.

berkes 15y ago
Somehow, I still don't get Google's logic behind it. Too often I get thrown back to google.nl from .com. When I am certain that I need an American/English/Int result, I want to use google.com immediately, not .nl, but it takes me two or three times correcting the url before I get where I want to go. My solution for this is !g in duckduckgo: This brings me to the international Google.com, no matter what locales in the browser, what computer and what google-account is active. For local searches I just type in google.com and somehow 90% of the time end up with the .nl version. Works for me.
- morsch 15y ago
  Hit http://www.google.com/ncr http://www.google.com/ncr (no country redirection) once. I think it saves a cookie that will stop google.com from redirecting to a local google. Still works after years and years. See also http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=873 http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer...

yaix 15y ago

If you want your "college or uncollege" verbatim searched for by G, simple put a plus sign in from of it +"college or uncollege" to override the auto correction. Simple. It's more about "geeks doing a web search" vs everybody else. Especially hackers want and are used to have a machine do exactly what is typed, without "smart correction". But that is not true for most people, they want fault tolerance and a "you know what I mean" attitude from the machine. That's what G does. I prefer DDG, of course.

giffo 15y ago

I just want something simple. DuckDuckGo just offers me more stuff/info I don't need. I don't need 4000 results I want the best correct result. http://giffo.imgur.com/search_results http://giffo.imgur.com/search_results The link above are screenshots from a test page of a search engine project I gave up on last year due to burn out and that I just couldn't afford to get it to the online stage. Today I feel (as biased as I am) - it still does the job better than anything out there for me. Because its simple.

dale-cooper 15y ago

I don't understand the complaints about auto-correction. At least google shows you that it does, DDG just does it without giving you any indication. Try "http://duckduckgo.com/?q=pyqt+glp http://duckduckgo.com/?q=pyqt+glp and it will actually search for "pyqt gpl"

epi0Bauqu 15y ago
This is actually a bug that we are working through. Thank you for the specific example. Our intention is to always respect the query.

alohahacker 15y ago

its crazy that through marketing and all the push DuckDuckGo is getting that they only get searched 250,000 times a day. With the hundreads of millions of searches that go on everyday you would think they could pull a little bit more. I guess it truly is hard for people to change who they search with after all is said and done.

jonathansizz 15y ago
I don't think it's surprising. The only place I hear talk about DDG is on this website and a few blog posts. I tried it myself based on all the glowing comments here, but I didn't find it to be particularly impressive (not bad, but not great either). I also found myself using '!g' most of the time because the default results were inferior to those returned by google; in the end I just cut out the middleman. So I guess I just don't get all the hype about DDG on Hacker News (same goes for bitcoin and the never-ending stream of Python non-stories). Maybe there's a cult-ish aspect to it?
- alohahacker 15y ago
  yeah same here. don't get me wrong i think its pretty neat and even have the duck app on my droid. i guess its hard for me to switch since EVERYTHING i do is with g ( email, search, google+, etc.) its more a convienience thing for me. but yeah i think it def is a bigger following on tech sites in relation to the average person.

CapitalistCartr 15y ago

I loved Alta Vista. I had to provide the algorithm. Searches like: ((word AND word) OR (word OR word)) AND word. I could get it to do just what I wanted. Then Google came along and built the algorithm skill into their software. Now we complain that their algorithm isn't as brilliant as us, that we have to still think some. If we want Google's software to do our thinking for us, it has to know all the relevant information that we do, necessitating a rather complete invasion of our privacy. If we want to withhold privacy, which means withholding data, we have to do some of our own thinking.