4 ms·

Serious Question: How is the DDG search structured? Is it a cosmetic skin over Bing, or is it aggregating from other sites like Yahoo, ecosia etc additionally?

Serious Question: How is the DDG search structured? Is it a cosmetic skin over Bing, or is it aggregating from other sites like Yahoo, ecosia etc additionally? If it is just Bing under the hood, how does it exist as business entity. I am sure MS will take some action to consolidate their search share rather than seeing splintered.

marpstar 5y ago
They aggregate from "over 400 sources" and run their own crawler: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
- bduerst 5y ago
  Do they list their "sources"? It reads like they are saying a website = source, and the hyperlink for the sources is dead.
- cato_the_elder 5y ago
  That's just their corporate propaganda. For the most part, it's Bing with some additional features. Their crawler (DuckDuckBot) doesn't have much of an impact on the search results, it's mainly used to provide instant answers. [1] [1]: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html#fn:2 https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...
  - etataetaet 5y ago
    To be fair the instant answers are usually quite good!
cato_the_elder 5y ago
> If it is just Bing under the hood, how does it exist as business entity. They provide an alternative branding, targeted at "privacy-aware" users and hipsters.
HigherPlain 5y ago
DDG is Bing, they use its API to get the search results. They augment it with other sources to provide the "value added" part, but that's a tiny part. DDG doesn't want you to know that it is Bing, but Bing is what it is.
guyzero 5y ago
DDG does run ads just like Bing and Google, so it's just a way for Bing to get more search ad inventory out there. Once upon a time there were other sites that did the same thing with Google, but eventually Google decided they didn't need third parties to drive search traffic.
calibas 5y ago
HN constantly mentions DDG is really just Bing in disguise and they're essentially the same. However, that can't be entirely true because they produce different results for the same search term. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obscure+search+term&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obscure+search+term&ia=web https://www4.bing.com/search?q=obscure+search+term https://www4.bing.com/search?q=obscure+search+term That being said, when Bing censored "tank man", DDG's image search also produced 0 results for "tank man".
- mda 5y ago
  It is Bing, but they seem to use different ranking and filtering on the index.vIf you make complex queries it is quite obvious. Since they have zero transparency the details of their system and deal with bing is unclear.
- BartBoch 5y ago
  Did you try in incognito? Your search gave me nearly identical results.
  - kiwijamo 5y ago
    Very different ones here.
- account42 5y ago
  Between geotargeting and A/B testing and possible differences between the Bing API and public website you really can't conclude that DDG is not just what they get from Bing based on one example.

marpstar 5y ago

They aggregate from "over 400 sources" and run their own crawler: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

bduerst 5y ago
Do they list their "sources"? It reads like they are saying a website = source, and the hyperlink for the sources is dead.
cato_the_elder 5y ago
That's just their corporate propaganda. For the most part, it's Bing with some additional features. Their crawler (DuckDuckBot) doesn't have much of an impact on the search results, it's mainly used to provide instant answers. [1] [1]: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html#fn:2 https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...
- etataetaet 5y ago
  To be fair the instant answers are usually quite good!

cato_the_elder 5y ago

> If it is just Bing under the hood, how does it exist as business entity. They provide an alternative branding, targeted at "privacy-aware" users and hipsters.

HigherPlain 5y ago

DDG is Bing, they use its API to get the search results. They augment it with other sources to provide the "value added" part, but that's a tiny part. DDG doesn't want you to know that it is Bing, but Bing is what it is.

guyzero 5y ago

DDG does run ads just like Bing and Google, so it's just a way for Bing to get more search ad inventory out there. Once upon a time there were other sites that did the same thing with Google, but eventually Google decided they didn't need third parties to drive search traffic.

calibas 5y ago

HN constantly mentions DDG is really just Bing in disguise and they're essentially the same. However, that can't be entirely true because they produce different results for the same search term. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obscure+search+term&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obscure+search+term&ia=web https://www4.bing.com/search?q=obscure+search+term https://www4.bing.com/search?q=obscure+search+term That being said, when Bing censored "tank man", DDG's image search also produced 0 results for "tank man".

mda 5y ago
It is Bing, but they seem to use different ranking and filtering on the index.vIf you make complex queries it is quite obvious. Since they have zero transparency the details of their system and deal with bing is unclear.
BartBoch 5y ago
Did you try in incognito? Your search gave me nearly identical results.
- kiwijamo 5y ago
  Very different ones here.
account42 5y ago
Between geotargeting and A/B testing and possible differences between the Bing API and public website you really can't conclude that DDG is not just what they get from Bing based on one example.