7 ms·

Use a search engine that doesn't fuck up your results instead of trying to unfuck the results it gives you. Why go through this much effort to still give your m

by pluc 5y ago

Use a search engine that doesn't fuck up your results instead of trying to unfuck the results it gives you. Why go through this much effort to still give your money to google?

Cort3z 5y ago
I use ecosia.org wich is like ddg, but a part of the proceeds go into charity. Not affiliated with them, just like it a lot. Like ddg it's just Bing with a gimmick, but it's decent.
- ffhhj 5y ago
  > ddg it's just Bing with a gimmick Is that true? I've read images are served by Bing, not sure about the web search.
  - Closi 5y ago
    Web search is served by the Bing Web Search API.
    - sct202 5y ago
      Their ads are also from Microsoft https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ads-by-microsoft-on-duckduckgo-private-search/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ad...
  - alberth 5y ago
    DDG is like "Dr Pepper" of search engines. Coke/Pepsi create, market, manufacture, distribute their soda. Dr. Pepper just creates and markets their soda. They don't manufacture or distribute their own soda (believe it or not, Pepsi manufactures & distribute Dr Pepper soda).
omnicognate 5y ago
Any recommendation? I use ddg but it's Bing based and the results are no better.
- TrueDuality 5y ago
  DuckDuckGo is not Bing based.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - matheweis 5y ago
    It does in fact use the Bing backend for the majority of its web searches: > DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google). https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
    - TrueDuality 5y ago
      Of their additional sources they receive the commonly from Bing, but that is only from their additional sources. They use the results from there sure but by no means are they "Bing based".
      - pb7 5y ago
        Their intention is to confuse you, so they're successful on that front. Their "hundreds of sources" are for very niche topics and appear in separate boxes. The 10 links per page come from Bing which would make them Bing-based.
- javajosh 5y ago
  My experience with ddg has been very positive over the years. Although I think my eyes have gotten good at skipping over the noise in the search results. It might be nice to offload that effort to software.
Mk2000 5y ago
I don't like Brave Browser at all with its integrated crypto ads, but I've been using Brave Search for a couple of days and it seems nice, much better than DDG: https://search.brave.com https://search.brave.com
littlecranky67 5y ago
Fully agree, its an endless cats'n'mice game, as SEO spammers create new pages on new domains with automated wordpress deployments in no-time. Instead of a blacklist, a whitelist like a curated list of links à la Yahoo would be better approach, or something with upvote/reputation/karma as on HN.
- sanketpatrikar 5y ago
  I'm interested in that alternative too. Does a whitelist like that exist?
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  Funny enough. Years back I poked around Google Custom search. As a laugh I used it to index and search Quora (which was still a high quality site then). But I contemplated setting up a series of specialty search engines (e.g., JavaScript) such that I would feed Custom Search a list of URLs and/or rules for what to index. I never took any further than "what a cool idea".
jpalomaki 5y ago
Wonder if the alternatives are really fixing the SEO spam problem by improving their algoritms or manually pinning sites like StackOverflow to the top.
chasebank 5y ago
Considering this method would be through an ad-block extension, it doesn’t seem as if they would be giving their money to google. Side question, is there a max number of sites you can block on that list? Edit: fruedian misread. I thought this was through ublock origin.

by pluc 5y ago

Use a search engine that doesn't fuck up your results instead of trying to unfuck the results it gives you. Why go through this much effort to still give your money to google?

Cort3z 5y ago

I use ecosia.org wich is like ddg, but a part of the proceeds go into charity. Not affiliated with them, just like it a lot. Like ddg it's just Bing with a gimmick, but it's decent.

ffhhj 5y ago
> ddg it's just Bing with a gimmick Is that true? I've read images are served by Bing, not sure about the web search.
- Closi 5y ago
  Web search is served by the Bing Web Search API.
  - sct202 5y ago
    Their ads are also from Microsoft https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ads-by-microsoft-on-duckduckgo-private-search/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ad...
- alberth 5y ago
  DDG is like "Dr Pepper" of search engines. Coke/Pepsi create, market, manufacture, distribute their soda. Dr. Pepper just creates and markets their soda. They don't manufacture or distribute their own soda (believe it or not, Pepsi manufactures & distribute Dr Pepper soda).

omnicognate 5y ago

Any recommendation? I use ddg but it's Bing based and the results are no better.

TrueDuality 5y ago
DuckDuckGo is not Bing based.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- matheweis 5y ago
  It does in fact use the Bing backend for the majority of its web searches: > DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google). https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
  - TrueDuality 5y ago
    Of their additional sources they receive the commonly from Bing, but that is only from their additional sources. They use the results from there sure but by no means are they "Bing based".
    - pb7 5y ago
      Their intention is to confuse you, so they're successful on that front. Their "hundreds of sources" are for very niche topics and appear in separate boxes. The 10 links per page come from Bing which would make them Bing-based.
javajosh 5y ago
My experience with ddg has been very positive over the years. Although I think my eyes have gotten good at skipping over the noise in the search results. It might be nice to offload that effort to software.

Mk2000 5y ago

I don't like Brave Browser at all with its integrated crypto ads, but I've been using Brave Search for a couple of days and it seems nice, much better than DDG: https://search.brave.com https://search.brave.com

littlecranky67 5y ago

Fully agree, its an endless cats'n'mice game, as SEO spammers create new pages on new domains with automated wordpress deployments in no-time. Instead of a blacklist, a whitelist like a curated list of links à la Yahoo would be better approach, or something with upvote/reputation/karma as on HN.

sanketpatrikar 5y ago
I'm interested in that alternative too. Does a whitelist like that exist?
chiefalchemist 5y ago
Funny enough. Years back I poked around Google Custom search. As a laugh I used it to index and search Quora (which was still a high quality site then). But I contemplated setting up a series of specialty search engines (e.g., JavaScript) such that I would feed Custom Search a list of URLs and/or rules for what to index. I never took any further than "what a cool idea".

jpalomaki 5y ago

Wonder if the alternatives are really fixing the SEO spam problem by improving their algoritms or manually pinning sites like StackOverflow to the top.

chasebank 5y ago

Considering this method would be through an ad-block extension, it doesn’t seem as if they would be giving their money to google. Side question, is there a max number of sites you can block on that list? Edit: fruedian misread. I thought this was through ublock origin.