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I like DDG, but honestly, this is a really bad move. It is already harder for me to find certain sites in the rankings. I mean look at this, even searching for

I like DDG, but honestly, this is a really bad move. It is already harder for me to find certain sites in the rankings. I mean look at this, even searching for "drudge" doesn't even bring up a link to Drudge Report: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drudge&t=h_&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=drudge&t=h_&ia=web I liked DDG because it respected the user. Limiting what I can see in order to make sure I don't see "Russian disinformation" seems to me like the exact opposite of respecting the user. Will be uninstalling soon if this intensifies.

soundnote 5y ago
Went with Brave, I like the effort of building their own index.
snowman-yelling 5y ago
Drudge was literally the first link in my results. Haha.
- uejfiweun 5y ago
  Weird. Maybe I got unlucky with some experiment rollout. My top links are Drudge Retort (some stupid parody), the link to the Drudge app on iPhone, and the dictionary definition for "drudge". Nowhere on the page is there an actual link to the site for me.
  - bmarquez 5y ago
    I clicked on that link for "drudge", the search results vary every time I reload the page. I always get the iOS app, the retort parody, and the dictionary definition as the top 3. But the position of all 3 links vary every time I click reload. Still don't see the link to the actual site either.
  - chriscjcj 5y ago
    For the last couple years, I think the Drudge Report itself has actually been a parody of the Drudge Report.
    - beerandt 5y ago
      It was sold with an nda.
    - uejfiweun 5y ago
      I like Drudge as an aggregator, it's a great way to see a "full picture" of what is going on in the world. But I do have some major gripes, the main one being that he routinely links to dog shit sources like DailyMail, The Sun, etc. That crap isn't news and I wish I could just remove all links to it from Drudge and Google results forever.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    So is mine. But that seems accurate to me. Searching for 'drudge' returns drudge.com as the first result. If users are clicking on that link, and saying there, then that must be what they were looking for. Searching for "drudge report" brings up drudgereport.com. Also, after having searched for both "drudge" and "drudge report" several times in a row, drudgereport.com is the top result for both searches.
- Skiiing 5y ago
  Look again! The first result is "Drudge Retort", a "wrecker" website designed to take clicks away from the actual real Drudge Report.
- spiderice 5y ago
  I can almost assure you it wasn't. I'm guessing the top result is > drudge.com Which is not the Drudge Report, but the Drudge "Retort". The Drudge Report, seems to be completely removed, obviously intentionally. If I'm wrong, let me know. But I'd be very surprised if you're getting the Drudge Report at the top hit, and everybody else isn't getting it on the first multiple pages.
  - snowman-yelling 5y ago
    Wow, you're right. My mistake!
  - croutonwagon 5y ago
    Here it is in my browser (which admittedly is a somewhat "hardened" privacy-wise version of FF). https://imgur.com/a/KJL03NW https://imgur.com/a/KJL03NW
    - spiderice 5y ago
      Wow. Showing up for me now too. I sent feedback to DDG. I also wonder if they saw this thread. Seems unlikely that it just happened to show back up a day after it got attention here.
  - wsgeorge 5y ago
    I am shocked. I followed the link and thought I'd hit the Drudge Report, saw this link and had to double check. I am shocked.
  - jrnichols 5y ago
    I do not see it on the first page of my results at all. What I did notice was that if I go directly to the Drudge Report, it's "not secure." Seems to only be happening the first time I load the page. I wonder if that has something to do with it.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Yep, search is getting more and more broken... I remember all the "trump vs reporters" etc. compilations, that were funny... now searching for any of those terms (basically anything at all involving trump, or now russia) ignores almost everything in the searchbox, ignores all the small creators, just picks out the one keyword (trump/russia/putin/...), and show the CNN/MSNBC/... news related to that one term, and unrelated to other search terms in the search box. We wan't search and "sort by relevant", not by "who we think is right".
- threatofrain 5y ago
  But credibility is also obviously a quality issue for information based search. You give people relevancy without credibility and that's just what we have today with the state of SEO. We might say that Amazon has such an issue with the lack of curation.
- orhmeh09 5y ago
  It also tends to prioritize recency a lot. Good luck searching for something with terms that have been in the news lately.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Good luck searching for someone who shares the first name of someone who has been in the news lately.
    - mardifoufs 5y ago
      That's if they don't disregard your query and just return results for whatever they deemed to be close enough. So if you search for Simone Something, it will just disregard what you wrote and just return tons of Simon Something even if there's no shortage of results for your actual query! It's incredible that even when searching for a specific real person/name Google still assumes it knows better and just throw out letters arbitrarily. It would only be reasonable to do so if there are 0 results for the exact name or maybe just a "did you mean?" prompt for suspected typos. It never used to do that before and that's the most frustrating part imo
hammock 5y ago
Drudge Report sold out to the deep state, they didn't cover hardly any of the election integrity news at all (among other editorial decisions). The rumor is Matt Drudge doesn't even own it anymore. If you still get your "conservative" news from there I suggest switching to Rantingly.
- honkler 5y ago
  Thanks for rantingly!
- spiderice 5y ago
  I don't see the relevance. The issue is that DDG is intentionally preventing people from finding a website that they're looking for. Worst, the top result is a look-alike website that would confuse a lot of people in to thinking it is the real thing. I never get new from Drudge, but that doesn't mean I can't see the issue with my search engine trying to hide what I'm looking for from me.
  - travisporter 5y ago
    It doesn’t exist anymore. That’s probably why it’s not being shown
    - spiderice 5y ago
      Um.. what? lol. Google "drudge". It's the top result. Definitely exists.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- sarchertech 5y ago
  Just because Matt Drudge stopped agreeing with Donald Trump doesn't mean he "sold out to the deep state". Drudge is just as conservative as he ever was. Many conservatives just pulled a hard shift in a different direction.
prvc 5y ago
>I liked DDG because it respected the user. Is there any evidence that they actually fulfilled their promises?
hfsh 5y ago
> I liked DDG because it respected the user. Unless you were searching for anything recipe-related, in which case they will push results from their partner 'yummly'. Or if you were trying to get literal result from you search string, which it will apparently silently ignore if it doesn't find enough results. Honestly, I'll dump DDG in a heartbeat whenever I find something even marginally better. Their only edge is the '!' syntax which I haven't yet bothered to find an independent solution for.
- julianlam 5y ago
  But why aren't bangs more ubiquitous? Did DDG patent them or something? The actual logic behind it isn't anything stunning, it finds a bang, removes it from the query, then forwards the query to the search engine that was requested.
- emmo 5y ago
  Kagi has been a dream. They support bangs as well. I was only on the wait list for a couple of weeks before getting an invite; worth jumping in.
- tyler_sf 5y ago
  >Their only edge is the '!' syntax which I haven't yet bothered to find an independent solution for. I simply mimic that bang behavior using my browser's ability to add custom searches. It's a slight pain to set up on a fresh install because of all the extra addresses I manually plug in but once done, I'm not necessarily tied to any search engine. If you're in Chromium you can right-click on the address bar and see the option to select "manage search engines." From there just start editing commands and changing things from ":yt" to "!yt" like we're used to. yt being a YouTube search. Your usage might be vastly different than mine but I found myself using sipmle things like !yt (youtube) or !hn (hackernews search) for the most part. Hardly anything beyond that and a few specific Wikis. For what it's worth, Brave's search engine also uses that ! bang feature though I'm not sure to what extent compared to DuckDuckGo.
  - soundnote 5y ago
    Firefox can sync those keywords via bookmarks, but the feature's deprecated and not supported on mobile anymore, as expected.

soundnote 5y ago

Went with Brave, I like the effort of building their own index.

snowman-yelling 5y ago

Drudge was literally the first link in my results. Haha.

uejfiweun 5y ago
Weird. Maybe I got unlucky with some experiment rollout. My top links are Drudge Retort (some stupid parody), the link to the Drudge app on iPhone, and the dictionary definition for "drudge". Nowhere on the page is there an actual link to the site for me.
- bmarquez 5y ago
  I clicked on that link for "drudge", the search results vary every time I reload the page. I always get the iOS app, the retort parody, and the dictionary definition as the top 3. But the position of all 3 links vary every time I click reload. Still don't see the link to the actual site either.
- chriscjcj 5y ago
  For the last couple years, I think the Drudge Report itself has actually been a parody of the Drudge Report.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    It was sold with an nda.
  - uejfiweun 5y ago
    I like Drudge as an aggregator, it's a great way to see a "full picture" of what is going on in the world. But I do have some major gripes, the main one being that he routinely links to dog shit sources like DailyMail, The Sun, etc. That crap isn't news and I wish I could just remove all links to it from Drudge and Google results forever.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  So is mine. But that seems accurate to me. Searching for 'drudge' returns drudge.com as the first result. If users are clicking on that link, and saying there, then that must be what they were looking for. Searching for "drudge report" brings up drudgereport.com. Also, after having searched for both "drudge" and "drudge report" several times in a row, drudgereport.com is the top result for both searches.
Skiiing 5y ago
Look again! The first result is "Drudge Retort", a "wrecker" website designed to take clicks away from the actual real Drudge Report.
spiderice 5y ago
I can almost assure you it wasn't. I'm guessing the top result is > drudge.com Which is not the Drudge Report, but the Drudge "Retort". The Drudge Report, seems to be completely removed, obviously intentionally. If I'm wrong, let me know. But I'd be very surprised if you're getting the Drudge Report at the top hit, and everybody else isn't getting it on the first multiple pages.
- snowman-yelling 5y ago
  Wow, you're right. My mistake!
- croutonwagon 5y ago
  Here it is in my browser (which admittedly is a somewhat "hardened" privacy-wise version of FF). https://imgur.com/a/KJL03NW https://imgur.com/a/KJL03NW
  - spiderice 5y ago
    Wow. Showing up for me now too. I sent feedback to DDG. I also wonder if they saw this thread. Seems unlikely that it just happened to show back up a day after it got attention here.
- wsgeorge 5y ago
  I am shocked. I followed the link and thought I'd hit the Drudge Report, saw this link and had to double check. I am shocked.
- jrnichols 5y ago
  I do not see it on the first page of my results at all. What I did notice was that if I go directly to the Drudge Report, it's "not secure." Seems to only be happening the first time I load the page. I wonder if that has something to do with it.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

Yep, search is getting more and more broken... I remember all the "trump vs reporters" etc. compilations, that were funny... now searching for any of those terms (basically anything at all involving trump, or now russia) ignores almost everything in the searchbox, ignores all the small creators, just picks out the one keyword (trump/russia/putin/...), and show the CNN/MSNBC/... news related to that one term, and unrelated to other search terms in the search box. We wan't search and "sort by relevant", not by "who we think is right".

threatofrain 5y ago
But credibility is also obviously a quality issue for information based search. You give people relevancy without credibility and that's just what we have today with the state of SEO. We might say that Amazon has such an issue with the lack of curation.
orhmeh09 5y ago
It also tends to prioritize recency a lot. Good luck searching for something with terms that have been in the news lately.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Good luck searching for someone who shares the first name of someone who has been in the news lately.
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    That's if they don't disregard your query and just return results for whatever they deemed to be close enough. So if you search for Simone Something, it will just disregard what you wrote and just return tons of Simon Something even if there's no shortage of results for your actual query! It's incredible that even when searching for a specific real person/name Google still assumes it knows better and just throw out letters arbitrarily. It would only be reasonable to do so if there are 0 results for the exact name or maybe just a "did you mean?" prompt for suspected typos. It never used to do that before and that's the most frustrating part imo

hammock 5y ago

Drudge Report sold out to the deep state, they didn't cover hardly any of the election integrity news at all (among other editorial decisions). The rumor is Matt Drudge doesn't even own it anymore. If you still get your "conservative" news from there I suggest switching to Rantingly.

honkler 5y ago
Thanks for rantingly!
spiderice 5y ago
I don't see the relevance. The issue is that DDG is intentionally preventing people from finding a website that they're looking for. Worst, the top result is a look-alike website that would confuse a lot of people in to thinking it is the real thing. I never get new from Drudge, but that doesn't mean I can't see the issue with my search engine trying to hide what I'm looking for from me.
- travisporter 5y ago
  It doesn’t exist anymore. That’s probably why it’s not being shown
  - spiderice 5y ago
    Um.. what? lol. Google "drudge". It's the top result. Definitely exists.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
sarchertech 5y ago
Just because Matt Drudge stopped agreeing with Donald Trump doesn't mean he "sold out to the deep state". Drudge is just as conservative as he ever was. Many conservatives just pulled a hard shift in a different direction.

prvc 5y ago

>I liked DDG because it respected the user. Is there any evidence that they actually fulfilled their promises?

hfsh 5y ago

> I liked DDG because it respected the user. Unless you were searching for anything recipe-related, in which case they will push results from their partner 'yummly'. Or if you were trying to get literal result from you search string, which it will apparently silently ignore if it doesn't find enough results. Honestly, I'll dump DDG in a heartbeat whenever I find something even marginally better. Their only edge is the '!' syntax which I haven't yet bothered to find an independent solution for.

julianlam 5y ago
But why aren't bangs more ubiquitous? Did DDG patent them or something? The actual logic behind it isn't anything stunning, it finds a bang, removes it from the query, then forwards the query to the search engine that was requested.
emmo 5y ago
Kagi has been a dream. They support bangs as well. I was only on the wait list for a couple of weeks before getting an invite; worth jumping in.
tyler_sf 5y ago
>Their only edge is the '!' syntax which I haven't yet bothered to find an independent solution for. I simply mimic that bang behavior using my browser's ability to add custom searches. It's a slight pain to set up on a fresh install because of all the extra addresses I manually plug in but once done, I'm not necessarily tied to any search engine. If you're in Chromium you can right-click on the address bar and see the option to select "manage search engines." From there just start editing commands and changing things from ":yt" to "!yt" like we're used to. yt being a YouTube search. Your usage might be vastly different than mine but I found myself using sipmle things like !yt (youtube) or !hn (hackernews search) for the most part. Hardly anything beyond that and a few specific Wikis. For what it's worth, Brave's search engine also uses that ! bang feature though I'm not sure to what extent compared to DuckDuckGo.
- soundnote 5y ago
  Firefox can sync those keywords via bookmarks, but the feature's deprecated and not supported on mobile anymore, as expected.