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I don't know what happened this year specifically but DDG results in general have abismally tanked in quality. A majority of the first 10-20 results are entirel

I don't know what happened this year specifically but DDG results in general have abismally tanked in quality. A majority of the first 10-20 results are entirely off topic. It's become impossible to make specialized search. Negative queries no longer filter all unrelated results. Lately I've been using phind but for general knowledge or ambiguous problems. I'm afraid I'm being forced to go back to google for searches...

lucb1e 3y ago
> Negative queries no longer filter all unrelated results. This has been bothering me as well, but has been the case for as long as I know. For those who haven't seen this yet, try: "hacker" "news" -"hackers" The results still include the word "hackers". It's like, the operator had one job, why offer this operator if it's going to ignore it? Note that the quotes are so that it definitely takes every word literally, but you get similar results if you unquote any/all of the words so it doesn't really matter. I don't remember an example query, but in the cases where I needed it the most (it's relatively rare that I have no idea what other keywords might occur and I have to fall back to this negative selection in the first place) it seems to work the least well, often more than half of the results (starting with the top result) include the forbidden word(s). There was also a case where more results included the forbidden word after adding it as an exclusion criterion. I should start writing these down...
- NayamAmarshe 3y ago
  Working nicely on Brave Search. I don't use the operators much but I do notice the difference with and without `- "hackers"`
nostromo 3y ago
I want DDG to succeed, but I'm worried they missed their window of opportunity. Being a thin wrapper on Bing will only get you so far... I was hoping they were busy building their own search engine the past several years, but it doesn't seem they have been. People noticed their traffic was trending downward last year, and they responded by removing their publicly facing traffic page entirely (formerly here: https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://duckduckgo.com/traffic).
- dmix 3y ago
  That's not a good sign. > I was hoping they were busy building their own search engine the past several years, but it doesn't seem they have been. I assumed this as well. If Google could do this in the late 90s and iterate into the 2000s why can't DDG be able to do it over a decade in the 2020s? Maybe DDG has figured out some business model and don't want to mess with it or something.
  - thayne 3y ago
    > If Google could do this in the late 90s and iterate into the 2000s why can't DDG be able to do it over a decade in the 2020s Well, part of it is there is a lot more content to index now, which means you need a lot more resources to get started.
- jefftk 3y ago
  Specifically: * Between 2022-06-02 (https://web.archive.org/web/20220602142058/https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20220602142058/https://duckduckg...) and 2022-06-08 (https://web.archive.org/web/20220608024746/https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20220608024746/https://duckduckg...) they removed the graph. It was showing queries leveling off just under 100M/d. * Between 2022-11-18 (https://web.archive.org/web/20221118045948/https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20221118045948/https://duckduckg...) and 2022-12-06 (https://web.archive.org/web/20221206080717/https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20221206080717/https://duckduckg...) they took the page down entirely.
- gtirloni 3y ago
  I've also tried to like it many times and used it as my default search engine, but the results are simply worse. I do cheer for them though but I'm not holding my breath. Being privacy focused only goes so far.
- freedomben 3y ago
  > Being a thin wrapper on Bing will only get you so far... I was hoping they were busy building their own search engine the past several years, but it doesn't seem they have been. Indeed, in the startup world it is wide knowledge that you should buy whatever you can buy - never build. I'm guessing DDG took this approach also. At some point though, I've seen companies get to where aren't actually offering anything of value. Brand value can be high so some companies can float on brand alone, but it's quite a risk. Especially in DDG's case, relying on a third party (especially one that directly competes with you!) is a dangerous practice. By all means leverage the data you have access to, but if you're not improving significantly on it or aggregating or something, you're just rolling dice.

lucb1e 3y ago

> Negative queries no longer filter all unrelated results. This has been bothering me as well, but has been the case for as long as I know. For those who haven't seen this yet, try: "hacker" "news" -"hackers" The results still include the word "hackers". It's like, the operator had one job, why offer this operator if it's going to ignore it? Note that the quotes are so that it definitely takes every word literally, but you get similar results if you unquote any/all of the words so it doesn't really matter. I don't remember an example query, but in the cases where I needed it the most (it's relatively rare that I have no idea what other keywords might occur and I have to fall back to this negative selection in the first place) it seems to work the least well, often more than half of the results (starting with the top result) include the forbidden word(s). There was also a case where more results included the forbidden word after adding it as an exclusion criterion. I should start writing these down...

NayamAmarshe 3y ago
Working nicely on Brave Search. I don't use the operators much but I do notice the difference with and without `- "hackers"`

nostromo 3y ago

I want DDG to succeed, but I'm worried they missed their window of opportunity. Being a thin wrapper on Bing will only get you so far... I was hoping they were busy building their own search engine the past several years, but it doesn't seem they have been. People noticed their traffic was trending downward last year, and they responded by removing their publicly facing traffic page entirely (formerly here: https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://duckduckgo.com/traffic).

dmix 3y ago
That's not a good sign. > I was hoping they were busy building their own search engine the past several years, but it doesn't seem they have been. I assumed this as well. If Google could do this in the late 90s and iterate into the 2000s why can't DDG be able to do it over a decade in the 2020s? Maybe DDG has figured out some business model and don't want to mess with it or something.
- thayne 3y ago
  > If Google could do this in the late 90s and iterate into the 2000s why can't DDG be able to do it over a decade in the 2020s Well, part of it is there is a lot more content to index now, which means you need a lot more resources to get started.
jefftk 3y ago
Specifically: * Between 2022-06-02 (https://web.archive.org/web/20220602142058/https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20220602142058/https://duckduckg...) and 2022-06-08 (https://web.archive.org/web/20220608024746/https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20220608024746/https://duckduckg...) they removed the graph. It was showing queries leveling off just under 100M/d. * Between 2022-11-18 (https://web.archive.org/web/20221118045948/https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20221118045948/https://duckduckg...) and 2022-12-06 (https://web.archive.org/web/20221206080717/https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20221206080717/https://duckduckg...) they took the page down entirely.
gtirloni 3y ago
I've also tried to like it many times and used it as my default search engine, but the results are simply worse. I do cheer for them though but I'm not holding my breath. Being privacy focused only goes so far.
freedomben 3y ago
> Being a thin wrapper on Bing will only get you so far... I was hoping they were busy building their own search engine the past several years, but it doesn't seem they have been. Indeed, in the startup world it is wide knowledge that you should buy whatever you can buy - never build. I'm guessing DDG took this approach also. At some point though, I've seen companies get to where aren't actually offering anything of value. Brand value can be high so some companies can float on brand alone, but it's quite a risk. Especially in DDG's case, relying on a third party (especially one that directly competes with you!) is a dangerous practice. By all means leverage the data you have access to, but if you're not improving significantly on it or aggregating or something, you're just rolling dice.