15 ms·

Why I use DuckDuckGo and You Should Too

237 points by ClifReeder 15y ago

john_horton 15y ago
The first link to DuckDuckGo on the page is a link to Google's main search page. Typo or some joke I'm not getting?
- joejohnson 15y ago
  It must be a mistake.
- ClifReeder 15y ago
  Doh, definitely a mistake. Fixed!
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
edwardy20 15y ago
I love the !bang searches and use them daily. Even on a regular search, the zero-click gives me what I want quickly. I'd like to see DDG improve on the following things: -Instant Search: maybe I've been spoiled by Google, but DDG feels slow in comparison -Foreign language searches: Have you tried them? They're absolutely horrible. -Ads: They're not relevant at all.
zalew 15y ago
I don't know who actually goes to google.com and types the query in. I simply CTRL+L to Firefox bar and write "wiki http codes". the same number of clicks as going to DDG and typing the 'bang' query. I'd probably save one click when having DDG as main Firefox search and CTRL+K and 'bang'
- ClifReeder 15y ago
  If you are directly going to google.com/duckduckgo.com, you are correct. You get the zero click benefit by using DDG as the default search in Chrome or Firefox.
phamilton 15y ago
I spent a week on duckduckgo and I jumped ship because it was slower than Google. The queries took longer to return and it took me longer to cognitively process the page (because I'm so adjusted to Google.) I'll use it when I want independent search results, but Google's catering to my interests usually works in my favor. When I search for Ruby on Google, all of my results are about the language. DuckDuckGo gives me results about the gem.
- kleiba 15y ago
  I believe to remember a recent discussion on HN where Gabriel seemed to be somewhat astounded by how important query speed is, even when we're talking about seconds here, and promised to look into that. I guess we have become spoilt and now cannot go back to waiting if only three seconds sometimes. I've been DDG as my default search engine in Firefox for quite a long time now, and sometimes I still find myself re-running a query with "!g" - mostly when I expect to have to tweak my query once or twice and google is just faster (and still gives better results sometimes).
  - tazzy531 15y ago
    Google works in the world of ms not seconds.
  - rieter 15y ago
    Yet DDG will never be as fast as a real search engine since it relies on external APIs (Yahoo BOSS, etc).
- underwater 15y ago
  I switched from Google after the DDG redesign a few weeks back and the slowness is getting to the point that I am thinking of reverting. I considered Blecko, but the few queries I tried were far worse than DDG. I would consider Bing but the design is horrible. One nice thing about the bang syntax is that if DDG fails I can easily rerun the search on Google. I don't end up switching back to Google out of frustration after a bad search.
ddrager 15y ago
Another reason to use DDG - they don't "bubble" you with their search results, and have a strict privacy policy. See: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html I have them set to my search engine and I would say about 90% of my searches hit productive results. For the other 10%, I consult with Google via their handy link or just via Google directly. You can't compete with Google for breadth of web search, but I find most of my searches don't utilize that for accurate results, eg finding a company page. When I look for a specific error message or help with a code snippet, GOOG is still king.
- valugi 15y ago
  Actually this is the only reason.
kevinpacheco 15y ago
The author is using Chrome. He could set up search engines to use in the Omnibar instead of visiting DuckDuckGo (e.g. ama[TAB] to perform a search directly on Amazon.com). http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95655 http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
- ClifReeder 15y ago
  Sorry, I should have been clearer. I do use DuckDuckGo via the omnibar, which would be necessary for any of the efficiency gains I refer to.
  - kevinpacheco 15y ago
    No, it wouldn't. You can just as easily perform searches on those other sites directly from Chrome's Omnibar without having to go through a middleman like DuckDuckGo.
crux 15y ago
People go on quite a bit about the bang syntax in DDG, but is this not a functionality that's entirely contained within Chrome's (and many other browsers') search keywords function? When I type 'wik http codes', it takes me directly to the wikipedia page for http codes, and it's built in. Does bang syntax do anything else in addition?
- oinksoft 15y ago
  Yes, this is in Firefox too. I've had `wp %s` bookmark for many years now bound to the wikipedia search page, so I do `wp cat`, etc. etc. The JavaScript example really didn't hit home for me either because I'm always on Freenode, and /msg ecmabot mdn [term] is faster than anything else, especially because I usually have a chat open with ecmabot already.
  - lordlicorice 15y ago
    You should change it to a capital s (%S) for your Wikipedia search bookmark: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches#Creating_bookmarks_with_keywords http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches#Creating_bo...
  - w1ntermute 15y ago
    And in Firefox, you can either set it up in the search bar's menu (by going to its preferences), or, if there is no search plugin for a site, go to that site, right click in the search box, and choose "Add Keyword Search". This'll create a bookmark with the same effect. I've done this for every single site I search regularly, and have used up almost all 26 letters at this point. It's amazingly useful.
- sebastianavina 15y ago
  also, in chrome, using google, you just type Ctrl+K, wiki http codes, it shows you the google results, tab and enter. I love the keyboard functionality google has.
  - gnosis 15y ago
8ig8 15y ago
As explained, the author is not really using a search engine as most do. He/she really is just using DDG as a bookmark for searching a specific site. This works, but how would you then discover that a better information source is available? When would you stop asking Jeeves or HotBot and switch to Stack Exchange?
pranjalv123 15y ago
I've been using DDG for the past 2 weeks or so. First, the bad: 1. It's really slow. Latency is usually on the order of seconds, as opposed to 100s of milliseconds on Google. 2. Results could be better. Roughly 80-90% of the time I find what I'm looking for, but the rest of the time Google does much better (note: it's possible that DDG is getting queries that Google misses). Now, the good: 1. The one-box is really, really good. A lot of the time, I'm searching for domain-specific queries, especially when I'm coding. DDG brings up a one-box with something like a stack-overflow link and often has exactly the code snippet I'm looking for. 2. I don't have to give more information to google. Admittedly, they already get my email and stuff, but at least this way I'm spreading my information so no one has absolutely all of it. Finally, the things that are in principle useful but I don't use much: 1. Bang commands. Seriously, I'm not going to type !cplusplus to search cplusplus.com, I'll just click the first link. I also can't remember all of them. I do use !g, !image, and !video, but mainly because they take me to a better search engine. 2. The search suggestions in the top right. It's a good idea, but I don't have the cognitive capacity to keep track of those in addition to the search results.
- codesuela 15y ago
  to search cplusplus.com just type !cpp <query>, to look for videos use !v or !yt, to look for images use !i or !gi
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
josh33 15y ago
App store link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/duckduckgo-search/id479988136?mt=8&ls=1 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/duckduckgo-search/id479988136...
shaka881 15y ago
In this age of SEO'd dreck and machine-generated content, I'll happily take a few "bubbles" over a static (read: gamable) ranking system.
meow 15y ago
I tried really hard to get used to DDG for an entire week. I changed my bookmarks to DDG, learned hashbang syntax etc.. But at the end of the week I just came to know how much more google does than DDG. I kept missing: Auto complete (suggestions) - I tend to type a lot of things wrong, integrated image search and unfortunately some times quality of the results too.. I'm not saying every one has to stick with google.. just saying DDG isn't a viable alternative for most people used to google search (but its a lot better than bing)...
jwwest 15y ago
Personally I found results from DDG to be inferior to Google results most of the time, so I had to switch back after a week or so. The functionality being described here is something that I actually use Alfred for these days.
dylanz 15y ago
I switched to DDG, and a couple days later, I find myself running searches while at Google headquarters, feeling... a bit awkward. Seriously though... I switched back a week later. Speed was one thing, but I'd rather take the latency hit and support DDG. The biggest issue I had was relevancy. I would find exactly what I needed using Google, while I'd have to scroll down quite a bit to find what I needed in DDG. Also... the format of search results in DDG is a bit too big for me (seems like too much centering and spacing)... I'd like a lot tighter layout. I'd really like to use DDG. Until some of my qualms are fixed, I'll stick to Google. That said, I'll definitely be revisiting and retrying DDG every few months.
xpose2000 15y ago
I tried DDG, I found myself doing queries that I knew worked just fine on Google, but came up a bit short on DDG. Quite honestly, I don't see a need to switch now.
aiurtourist 15y ago
I tried using DuckDuckGo for a few days. Here's what I found, YYMV: • Google's results are much better. A handful of times I searched for something I would think, "Wait, that can't be all there is," and Google would give me back what I was looking for above the fold. • Google is much, much faster in returning results for my regular searches, which are usually programming related or an esoteric Wikipedia topic. • DuckDuckGo's bang syntax (!jquery, etc) isn't any better than search keywords built into Firefox and Chrome. • DuckDuckGo's settings page is like Skyrim -- epic and freeform. • DuckDuckGo is a very well-executed product. The UI is clean, browser integration is smart ("You're using Chrome! Click this!" or something), and it's tailored for my savvy search users.
- pyre 15y ago
  > • DuckDuckGo's bang syntax (!jquery, etc) isn't any > better than search keywords built into Firefox and > Chrome. Having never used DDG, the advantages that I can see: 1) You don't have to set them up, because they are already there. 2) You get them from whatever computer you are at. You don't have to setup or sync the keyword searches with every computer you use (or public terminal). 3) If you use DDG as your main search engine, it's right there, so you can use a singular search interface.
- vetler 15y ago
  I tried using DDG for a few weeks, and I had the same experience as you. I frequently found myself doing the same search on Google to see if there were more results, but the biggest issue for me was speed - both Google and Bing are blazingly fast, and I found myself being annoyed with the noticable delay in DDG.
  - gnosis 15y ago
    There are typically more results on Google. But the extra results are usually of a far lower quality (often just spam sites, or other grabage). I'm very satisfied with using DDG as my primary search engine. And when I feel my search results aren't finding what I need, I might go to Google and wade through the garbage to try to find the gem I'm looking for. But it's rarely worth it.
alagu 15y ago
I loved DDG because it was a one person champion fighting a giant. And the attempt was very sincere and determined. I tried switching to DDG for a week. But went back to Google. Reasons: - Relevance: Google gives me high relevance, very high. Restaurant:Food-Quality::Search-Engine:Relevance. - Speed: Google works in milliseconds. Instant search + search intents also add value. - Gives me rich map results. Also switching to Maps/Image searches with same search term help. DDG doesn't. Positives of DDG which are actually not: - Not bubbling up. I WANT the search engine to know that I'm a hacker. When I search for ruby, it is a programming language. I see value in bubbling up. - Keyboard shortcuts - Good value. But I don't go for more than 3 results in Google. So just a single tab and enter works. - Bang syntax - Chrome's search keyword replaces it. Definite plus: - User experience : DDG is much cleaner than Google.
- tessellated 15y ago
  > - User experience : DDG is much cleaner than Google. Well there's still Google's mobile version around to feast your eyes on. Currently I'm using this to search fast and clean: <http://www.google.com/pda/search?q=%s&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&pws=0&safe=off&filter=0&hl=en&#62 http://www.google.com/pda/search?q=%s&ie=utf-8&oe=ut...; A big hosts file, privoxy, and Opera's Adblock & Ghostery plugin take care of the rest.
  - mintplant 15y ago
    Feast your eyes, ladies and gents, on the beauty of the "Bad Request" page.
    - lywald 15y ago
      http://www.google.com/pda/?q=wat http://www.google.com/pda/?q=wat
pg_bot 15y ago
If you use google chrome you can do a faster search by using the omnibox. For example if you want to find a youtube video type youtube.com into the omnibox and then hit 'Tab' then enter the search terms of the video you are looking for and it will automatically point you to the results page of youtube. This works for almost any site that google can find a search box for (wikipedia, ebay, amazon, hacker news, airbnb, etc.) You can also customize this in the settings of chrome if it doesn't find a site you are looking for.
marshray 15y ago
I just switched my search box over to DDG after Google changed something and now the results are clicktrackers instead of actual URLs. They'd done this before but I'd been able to opt out of it by changing my User-agent string. Wish me luck.
bishnu 15y ago
I used DDG for a few weeks and I'm glad I did because I'd forgotten just how good Google is. A few things that DDG made clear was: 1) How useful personalized search actually is. I like that my search engine knows what city I live in so when Googling the name of a restaurant I don't have to include it (that I don't live in an American city might emphasize this). 2) How much speed and responsiveness matter in web design (not to mention autocomplete). Searching google is a much, much smoother experience. DDG is really good at returning a good result for a really general search term like "C++". However, for me at least, that is an extreme edge case.
- ordinary 15y ago
  I'm a C++ programmer and that's actually the thing I miss most: DDG does not know the difference between 'C' and 'C#' and 'C++'.
tansey 15y ago
Why I don't use DDG: they don't even index most of my startup's pages. - Google: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=seb&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp&q=curvio&pbx=1&oq=&aq=&aqi=&gs_upl=&ix=seb&ion=1&pws=0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=8950b9caf62fc784&ix=seb&ion=1&biw=1920&bih=979 https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=... - DDG: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=curvio http://duckduckgo.com/?q=curvio It seems DDG even thinks I'm asking about Jose Cuervo-- really?? How many backlinks do we need before you think I may actually be searching for Curvio?
fedd 15y ago
using duckduckgo for not to be tracked by google (as one of the reasons), but with chrome by google?..
- mintplant 15y ago
  I'm sorry, what? Chrome does not send your info back to Google, unless you have the anonymized usage statistics (not sure what it tracks) option turned on, or are using Google as your search provider with Suggestions enabled as-you-type.
secoif 15y ago
Ugh, another link to w3 schools? It possibly only ranks so high for JS searches because everyone is linking to it as being an exemplar of horrible JS information. Please stop linking to W3 schools.
zecho 15y ago
I think it's funny that people argue Google's more relevant. One of the reasons I got fed up with Google was the constant link spam in it from the content mills like Demand Media. Which is why I gave DDG a go. Maybe things have changed at Google, but they lost me as a heavy search user. Habits have completely changed. I've been using DDG for quite some time (months) as my main search engine and it's been great. I'd say I only need to hit Google once every 50+ searches. The inline results from Stack Overflow, Youtube and Wikipedia are excellent. That and the keyboard shortcuts are more natural to me (specifically j/k) than Google's (tabs and arrows).
- aiurtourist 15y ago
  After Panda and a few other search ranking improvements were implemented, the spam you're referring to has pretty much disappeared.
  - Drbble 15y ago
    It's still pretty bad for mailing list archives. Archiveorange, ugh. Markmail, nabble (the one that is actually decent), the fact that I can name these sites from memory proves how truly badly deeply Google has let these duplicate content sites infect results.
  - davezatch 15y ago
    I agree, for about 95% of my searches the results are vastly improved, but I still run into the occasional search that's just a spam minefield. Recently my boss asked me to look into purchasing windows licenses, and between the google spam and the awful microsoft.com experience (everything requires silverlight, which I can't install, and half the links opening .docx instead of just a webpage) it was far too difficult. /rant
- gnosis 15y ago
  "One of the reasons I got fed up with Google was the constant link spam in it from the content mills like Demand Media." Exactly. Half of the results for most Google searches I do are mostly garbage. DDG consistently returns far higher quality results than Google for me. The litany of pro-Google posts in this thread really make me wonder if there are conflicts of interest the posters aren't disclosing (ie. how many of them work at Google?) (Since I brought it up - in the interest of disclosure I'll say that I have no financial interest in or association with any search engine or web site.. or any company whatsoever, to be honest)
valugi 15y ago
The only reason for me to use the DuckDuckGo is the privacy. I am a little fed up of feeding my search patterns to google. And until they will do the same thing, I will use them as 95% of the searches are ok even with Bing, who's behind them.
pan69 15y ago
I switched to DDG a few weeks back. The other day I needed some Lorem Ipsum and I typed in "lorum". Got a nasty surprise there...
- cainetighe 15y ago
  was safe-search on? you shouldn't have gotten the Wikipedia zero-click if it was on. please let us know.
- bdg 15y ago
  "Lorum ipsum" and even "Lorem ipsum" worked fine for me.
codesuela 15y ago
one really important aspect of DDG is that I use it to route my google searches. To search for german google I have to go to google.de (type the whole url). With the bang syntax I can just type !gde and it takes me there. Same for Amazon, !a takes you to .com !ade takes you to Amazon.de. I have used DDG for a while now and by now I've got a feeling of what DDG will find and where I should go to Google so I rarely do duplicate queries.
tony_le_montana 15y ago
Why it redirects me to google.com when i search for !ruby?
emillon 15y ago
Surfraw is a tool that exposes a similar interface to bang patterns. http://surfraw.alioth.debian.org/ http://surfraw.alioth.debian.org/
mike-cardwell 15y ago
I want to use DDG, and it has been my default search engine for a while now, but most days, I need to fall back to Google for at least one search because the DDG results simply aren't good enough. When I fall back to Google, I go via Scroogle though: https://ssl.scroogle.org/ https://ssl.scroogle.org/. DDG has a bang command for Scroogle, it is "!s"
g3orge 15y ago
I'm using Launchbar to jump easily to site searches. It's the best feature ever.
biafra 15y ago
I switched to DDG about 3 Month ago and use Google only for image search and when I am not happy with DDGs result. More often than not Googles result are not better so I have to change my search terms :-)
Craiggybear 15y ago
I do use DDG and I like it. Oddly, and unlike most of the comments thus far, it does seem to actually find results which I'm actually more interested in than either Google or Bing (although DDG uses both). I do use them too.
parfe 15y ago
I gave up on DDG. The !bang syntax fails, for me, in a pretty annoying way. "!django modles" sends you off to django's search page (as it should), but now I'm trapped in an inferior search engine. searching for just "django modles" returns pretty bad results, including what could kindly be described as a linkedin blog entry. Now try the same search on google. (I made sure to try this logged out in case google personalized my results.) search for "django modles". The first result matches DDG. The next three are Model field reference, instance references, and how to make queries. All highly relevant! I work with Django, and I think these are good results. DDG in general has provided dissatisfying results and I suspect it is from not knowing what I don't know when searching, so I can't identify bad searches as they happen. But not knowing is why I search to begin with, so that is Why I don't use DuckDuckGo, but I don't care if you do.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- bdg 15y ago
  Sounds like a really specific need rather than a broad issue, why not tweet them about it?
  - parfe 15y ago
    It's not a specific need. It's a specific issue. Figured I'd offer up a concrete example rather than gushing or hating on the service.
    - bdg 15y ago
      Sorry if you took offence to what I said, I simply interpreted you listing all the issues searching specifically for django and how you work with django, then claim that they are generally a bad service. Your complaint was very specific, yet you claimed it was a general issue. All that being said, your complaints were entirely targeted towards meeting your needs. Hence, specific need. I can't even conceive of how your complaint wasn't about a specific need, or how this is so drastically different from a specific issue.
shaggy 15y ago
I switched to using DDG exclusively when I got fed up with the poor privacy practices Google was continually enacting. I haven't missed google at all since I switched. DDG provides great results, has lots of cool goodies and best of all doesn't track you at all.
Karunamon 15y ago
Why I don't use DuckDuckGo: Worse results than Google (and even Bing) for most of my everyday searching. "But we're not Google!" is not a real selling point.
- yabai 15y ago
  I have done some side by side comparisons between Google and DuckDuckGo. Google seems to produce more relevant results than DuckDuckGo. I really want to like and use Duck Duck Go...I will keep trying!
- yabai 15y ago
  I have done some side by side comparisons between Google and DuckDuckGo. Google seems to produce more relevant results than DuckDuckGo. I really want to like and use Duck Duck Go...I will keep trying!
unicornporn 15y ago
I would prefer a Seeks Project public server setup by the HN community. http://www.seeks-project.info/site/about/ http://www.seeks-project.info/site/about/ I like everything about DuckDuckGo except for the search results. I so often wind up re-googling what I searched it isn't worth the effort. And this is with a unpersonalized Google version. I am not logged into any Google account, I run Ghostery and I clean cookies at every browser shutdown. Many times a search time yields zero hits in DDG and I instantly find what I search for with Google. Sad but true. And yes, i use "" around all words and phrases in Google.
Sephr 15y ago
If Google implemented !wiki → wikipedia.org they'd be facing a possible antitrust lawsuit (even though they can't be a monopoly as you don't have to use Google, US officials seem to think they are). Wikipedia isn't the only wiki.
AznHisoka 15y ago
I like DuckDuckGo but Google just indexes way more pages than it, and as a result I am able to find more quality results there... If DDG can index more of the web, I would definitely switch over.
mrschwabe 15y ago
As others have pointed out, with !bang you can just "!g search whatever" and voila you're searching Google. So typically, I set my browser default search to DDG and try to use DDG as much as possible. Certain terms or things I know Google will find better I just throw in the "!g" before the query.
jaequery 15y ago
the bang syntax is the wrong way to market this product. i was a fan of ddg until i read about how this bang syntax is the almighty saviour to search engines. the reason why i like google is because i can just search anything i want in plain english w/o any query-language/search-filters. all i'd want from DDG is the ability to get rid of all the fake landing page sites from my searches and i'll be sold from there.
- gnosis 15y ago
  "the reason why i like google is because i can just search anything i want in plain english w/o any query-language/search-filters." It's not like DDG prevents you from doing this! You can search DDG using the exact same "plain english" you use in Google. DDG's bang syntax is an additional feature. If you don't want it or don't like it, don't use it -- just use regular search. Personally, I don't use DDG's bang syntax myself. I like to create my own custom searches within Firefox. But I love the high quality of results DDG provides, and the lack of spam/scam results compared to Google. Not to mention DDG's commitment to privacy, which is very important to me.

237 points by ClifReeder 15y ago

john_horton 15y ago

The first link to DuckDuckGo on the page is a link to Google's main search page. Typo or some joke I'm not getting?

joejohnson 15y ago
It must be a mistake.
ClifReeder 15y ago
Doh, definitely a mistake. Fixed!
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

edwardy20 15y ago

I love the !bang searches and use them daily. Even on a regular search, the zero-click gives me what I want quickly. I'd like to see DDG improve on the following things: -Instant Search: maybe I've been spoiled by Google, but DDG feels slow in comparison -Foreign language searches: Have you tried them? They're absolutely horrible. -Ads: They're not relevant at all.

zalew 15y ago

I don't know who actually goes to google.com and types the query in. I simply CTRL+L to Firefox bar and write "wiki http codes". the same number of clicks as going to DDG and typing the 'bang' query. I'd probably save one click when having DDG as main Firefox search and CTRL+K and 'bang'

ClifReeder 15y ago
If you are directly going to google.com/duckduckgo.com, you are correct. You get the zero click benefit by using DDG as the default search in Chrome or Firefox.

phamilton 15y ago

I spent a week on duckduckgo and I jumped ship because it was slower than Google. The queries took longer to return and it took me longer to cognitively process the page (because I'm so adjusted to Google.) I'll use it when I want independent search results, but Google's catering to my interests usually works in my favor. When I search for Ruby on Google, all of my results are about the language. DuckDuckGo gives me results about the gem.

kleiba 15y ago
I believe to remember a recent discussion on HN where Gabriel seemed to be somewhat astounded by how important query speed is, even when we're talking about seconds here, and promised to look into that. I guess we have become spoilt and now cannot go back to waiting if only three seconds sometimes. I've been DDG as my default search engine in Firefox for quite a long time now, and sometimes I still find myself re-running a query with "!g" - mostly when I expect to have to tweak my query once or twice and google is just faster (and still gives better results sometimes).
- tazzy531 15y ago
  Google works in the world of ms not seconds.
- rieter 15y ago
  Yet DDG will never be as fast as a real search engine since it relies on external APIs (Yahoo BOSS, etc).
underwater 15y ago
I switched from Google after the DDG redesign a few weeks back and the slowness is getting to the point that I am thinking of reverting. I considered Blecko, but the few queries I tried were far worse than DDG. I would consider Bing but the design is horrible. One nice thing about the bang syntax is that if DDG fails I can easily rerun the search on Google. I don't end up switching back to Google out of frustration after a bad search.

ddrager 15y ago

Another reason to use DDG - they don't "bubble" you with their search results, and have a strict privacy policy. See: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html I have them set to my search engine and I would say about 90% of my searches hit productive results. For the other 10%, I consult with Google via their handy link or just via Google directly. You can't compete with Google for breadth of web search, but I find most of my searches don't utilize that for accurate results, eg finding a company page. When I look for a specific error message or help with a code snippet, GOOG is still king.

valugi 15y ago
Actually this is the only reason.

kevinpacheco 15y ago

The author is using Chrome. He could set up search engines to use in the Omnibar instead of visiting DuckDuckGo (e.g. ama[TAB] to perform a search directly on Amazon.com). http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95655 http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...

ClifReeder 15y ago
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I do use DuckDuckGo via the omnibar, which would be necessary for any of the efficiency gains I refer to.
- kevinpacheco 15y ago
  No, it wouldn't. You can just as easily perform searches on those other sites directly from Chrome's Omnibar without having to go through a middleman like DuckDuckGo.

crux 15y ago

People go on quite a bit about the bang syntax in DDG, but is this not a functionality that's entirely contained within Chrome's (and many other browsers') search keywords function? When I type 'wik http codes', it takes me directly to the wikipedia page for http codes, and it's built in. Does bang syntax do anything else in addition?

oinksoft 15y ago
Yes, this is in Firefox too. I've had `wp %s` bookmark for many years now bound to the wikipedia search page, so I do `wp cat`, etc. etc. The JavaScript example really didn't hit home for me either because I'm always on Freenode, and /msg ecmabot mdn [term] is faster than anything else, especially because I usually have a chat open with ecmabot already.
- lordlicorice 15y ago
  You should change it to a capital s (%S) for your Wikipedia search bookmark: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches#Creating_bookmarks_with_keywords http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches#Creating_bo...
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  And in Firefox, you can either set it up in the search bar's menu (by going to its preferences), or, if there is no search plugin for a site, go to that site, right click in the search box, and choose "Add Keyword Search". This'll create a bookmark with the same effect. I've done this for every single site I search regularly, and have used up almost all 26 letters at this point. It's amazingly useful.
sebastianavina 15y ago
also, in chrome, using google, you just type Ctrl+K, wiki http codes, it shows you the google results, tab and enter. I love the keyboard functionality google has.
- gnosis 15y ago

8ig8 15y ago

As explained, the author is not really using a search engine as most do. He/she really is just using DDG as a bookmark for searching a specific site. This works, but how would you then discover that a better information source is available? When would you stop asking Jeeves or HotBot and switch to Stack Exchange?

pranjalv123 15y ago

I've been using DDG for the past 2 weeks or so. First, the bad: 1. It's really slow. Latency is usually on the order of seconds, as opposed to 100s of milliseconds on Google. 2. Results could be better. Roughly 80-90% of the time I find what I'm looking for, but the rest of the time Google does much better (note: it's possible that DDG is getting queries that Google misses). Now, the good: 1. The one-box is really, really good. A lot of the time, I'm searching for domain-specific queries, especially when I'm coding. DDG brings up a one-box with something like a stack-overflow link and often has exactly the code snippet I'm looking for. 2. I don't have to give more information to google. Admittedly, they already get my email and stuff, but at least this way I'm spreading my information so no one has absolutely all of it. Finally, the things that are in principle useful but I don't use much: 1. Bang commands. Seriously, I'm not going to type !cplusplus to search cplusplus.com, I'll just click the first link. I also can't remember all of them. I do use !g, !image, and !video, but mainly because they take me to a better search engine. 2. The search suggestions in the top right. It's a good idea, but I don't have the cognitive capacity to keep track of those in addition to the search results.

codesuela 15y ago
to search cplusplus.com just type !cpp <query>, to look for videos use !v or !yt, to look for images use !i or !gi

deleted 15y ago

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josh33 15y ago

App store link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/duckduckgo-search/id479988136?mt=8&ls=1 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/duckduckgo-search/id479988136...

shaka881 15y ago

In this age of SEO'd dreck and machine-generated content, I'll happily take a few "bubbles" over a static (read: gamable) ranking system.

meow 15y ago

I tried really hard to get used to DDG for an entire week. I changed my bookmarks to DDG, learned hashbang syntax etc.. But at the end of the week I just came to know how much more google does than DDG. I kept missing: Auto complete (suggestions) - I tend to type a lot of things wrong, integrated image search and unfortunately some times quality of the results too.. I'm not saying every one has to stick with google.. just saying DDG isn't a viable alternative for most people used to google search (but its a lot better than bing)...

jwwest 15y ago

Personally I found results from DDG to be inferior to Google results most of the time, so I had to switch back after a week or so. The functionality being described here is something that I actually use Alfred for these days.

dylanz 15y ago

I switched to DDG, and a couple days later, I find myself running searches while at Google headquarters, feeling... a bit awkward. Seriously though... I switched back a week later. Speed was one thing, but I'd rather take the latency hit and support DDG. The biggest issue I had was relevancy. I would find exactly what I needed using Google, while I'd have to scroll down quite a bit to find what I needed in DDG. Also... the format of search results in DDG is a bit too big for me (seems like too much centering and spacing)... I'd like a lot tighter layout. I'd really like to use DDG. Until some of my qualms are fixed, I'll stick to Google. That said, I'll definitely be revisiting and retrying DDG every few months.

xpose2000 15y ago

I tried DDG, I found myself doing queries that I knew worked just fine on Google, but came up a bit short on DDG. Quite honestly, I don't see a need to switch now.

aiurtourist 15y ago

I tried using DuckDuckGo for a few days. Here's what I found, YYMV: • Google's results are much better. A handful of times I searched for something I would think, "Wait, that can't be all there is," and Google would give me back what I was looking for above the fold. • Google is much, much faster in returning results for my regular searches, which are usually programming related or an esoteric Wikipedia topic. • DuckDuckGo's bang syntax (!jquery, etc) isn't any better than search keywords built into Firefox and Chrome. • DuckDuckGo's settings page is like Skyrim -- epic and freeform. • DuckDuckGo is a very well-executed product. The UI is clean, browser integration is smart ("You're using Chrome! Click this!" or something), and it's tailored for my savvy search users.

pyre 15y ago
> • DuckDuckGo's bang syntax (!jquery, etc) isn't any > better than search keywords built into Firefox and > Chrome. Having never used DDG, the advantages that I can see: 1) You don't have to set them up, because they are already there. 2) You get them from whatever computer you are at. You don't have to setup or sync the keyword searches with every computer you use (or public terminal). 3) If you use DDG as your main search engine, it's right there, so you can use a singular search interface.
vetler 15y ago
I tried using DDG for a few weeks, and I had the same experience as you. I frequently found myself doing the same search on Google to see if there were more results, but the biggest issue for me was speed - both Google and Bing are blazingly fast, and I found myself being annoyed with the noticable delay in DDG.
- gnosis 15y ago
  There are typically more results on Google. But the extra results are usually of a far lower quality (often just spam sites, or other grabage). I'm very satisfied with using DDG as my primary search engine. And when I feel my search results aren't finding what I need, I might go to Google and wade through the garbage to try to find the gem I'm looking for. But it's rarely worth it.

alagu 15y ago

I loved DDG because it was a one person champion fighting a giant. And the attempt was very sincere and determined. I tried switching to DDG for a week. But went back to Google. Reasons: - Relevance: Google gives me high relevance, very high. Restaurant:Food-Quality::Search-Engine:Relevance. - Speed: Google works in milliseconds. Instant search + search intents also add value. - Gives me rich map results. Also switching to Maps/Image searches with same search term help. DDG doesn't. Positives of DDG which are actually not: - Not bubbling up. I WANT the search engine to know that I'm a hacker. When I search for ruby, it is a programming language. I see value in bubbling up. - Keyboard shortcuts - Good value. But I don't go for more than 3 results in Google. So just a single tab and enter works. - Bang syntax - Chrome's search keyword replaces it. Definite plus: - User experience : DDG is much cleaner than Google.

tessellated 15y ago
> - User experience : DDG is much cleaner than Google. Well there's still Google's mobile version around to feast your eyes on. Currently I'm using this to search fast and clean: <http://www.google.com/pda/search?q=%s&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&pws=0&safe=off&filter=0&hl=en&#62 http://www.google.com/pda/search?q=%s&ie=utf-8&oe=ut...; A big hosts file, privoxy, and Opera's Adblock & Ghostery plugin take care of the rest.
- mintplant 15y ago
  Feast your eyes, ladies and gents, on the beauty of the "Bad Request" page.
  - lywald 15y ago
    http://www.google.com/pda/?q=wat http://www.google.com/pda/?q=wat

pg_bot 15y ago

If you use google chrome you can do a faster search by using the omnibox. For example if you want to find a youtube video type youtube.com into the omnibox and then hit 'Tab' then enter the search terms of the video you are looking for and it will automatically point you to the results page of youtube. This works for almost any site that google can find a search box for (wikipedia, ebay, amazon, hacker news, airbnb, etc.) You can also customize this in the settings of chrome if it doesn't find a site you are looking for.

marshray 15y ago

I just switched my search box over to DDG after Google changed something and now the results are clicktrackers instead of actual URLs. They'd done this before but I'd been able to opt out of it by changing my User-agent string. Wish me luck.

bishnu 15y ago

I used DDG for a few weeks and I'm glad I did because I'd forgotten just how good Google is. A few things that DDG made clear was: 1) How useful personalized search actually is. I like that my search engine knows what city I live in so when Googling the name of a restaurant I don't have to include it (that I don't live in an American city might emphasize this). 2) How much speed and responsiveness matter in web design (not to mention autocomplete). Searching google is a much, much smoother experience. DDG is really good at returning a good result for a really general search term like "C++". However, for me at least, that is an extreme edge case.

ordinary 15y ago
I'm a C++ programmer and that's actually the thing I miss most: DDG does not know the difference between 'C' and 'C#' and 'C++'.

tansey 15y ago

Why I don't use DDG: they don't even index most of my startup's pages. - Google: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=seb&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp&q=curvio&pbx=1&oq=&aq=&aqi=&gs_upl=&ix=seb&ion=1&pws=0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=8950b9caf62fc784&ix=seb&ion=1&biw=1920&bih=979 https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=... - DDG: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=curvio http://duckduckgo.com/?q=curvio It seems DDG even thinks I'm asking about Jose Cuervo-- really?? How many backlinks do we need before you think I may actually be searching for Curvio?

fedd 15y ago

using duckduckgo for not to be tracked by google (as one of the reasons), but with chrome by google?..

mintplant 15y ago
I'm sorry, what? Chrome does not send your info back to Google, unless you have the anonymized usage statistics (not sure what it tracks) option turned on, or are using Google as your search provider with Suggestions enabled as-you-type.

secoif 15y ago

Ugh, another link to w3 schools? It possibly only ranks so high for JS searches because everyone is linking to it as being an exemplar of horrible JS information. Please stop linking to W3 schools.

zecho 15y ago

I think it's funny that people argue Google's more relevant. One of the reasons I got fed up with Google was the constant link spam in it from the content mills like Demand Media. Which is why I gave DDG a go. Maybe things have changed at Google, but they lost me as a heavy search user. Habits have completely changed. I've been using DDG for quite some time (months) as my main search engine and it's been great. I'd say I only need to hit Google once every 50+ searches. The inline results from Stack Overflow, Youtube and Wikipedia are excellent. That and the keyboard shortcuts are more natural to me (specifically j/k) than Google's (tabs and arrows).

aiurtourist 15y ago
After Panda and a few other search ranking improvements were implemented, the spam you're referring to has pretty much disappeared.
- Drbble 15y ago
  It's still pretty bad for mailing list archives. Archiveorange, ugh. Markmail, nabble (the one that is actually decent), the fact that I can name these sites from memory proves how truly badly deeply Google has let these duplicate content sites infect results.
- davezatch 15y ago
  I agree, for about 95% of my searches the results are vastly improved, but I still run into the occasional search that's just a spam minefield. Recently my boss asked me to look into purchasing windows licenses, and between the google spam and the awful microsoft.com experience (everything requires silverlight, which I can't install, and half the links opening .docx instead of just a webpage) it was far too difficult. /rant
gnosis 15y ago
"One of the reasons I got fed up with Google was the constant link spam in it from the content mills like Demand Media." Exactly. Half of the results for most Google searches I do are mostly garbage. DDG consistently returns far higher quality results than Google for me. The litany of pro-Google posts in this thread really make me wonder if there are conflicts of interest the posters aren't disclosing (ie. how many of them work at Google?) (Since I brought it up - in the interest of disclosure I'll say that I have no financial interest in or association with any search engine or web site.. or any company whatsoever, to be honest)

valugi 15y ago

The only reason for me to use the DuckDuckGo is the privacy. I am a little fed up of feeding my search patterns to google. And until they will do the same thing, I will use them as 95% of the searches are ok even with Bing, who's behind them.

pan69 15y ago

I switched to DDG a few weeks back. The other day I needed some Lorem Ipsum and I typed in "lorum". Got a nasty surprise there...

cainetighe 15y ago
was safe-search on? you shouldn't have gotten the Wikipedia zero-click if it was on. please let us know.
bdg 15y ago
"Lorum ipsum" and even "Lorem ipsum" worked fine for me.

codesuela 15y ago

one really important aspect of DDG is that I use it to route my google searches. To search for german google I have to go to google.de (type the whole url). With the bang syntax I can just type !gde and it takes me there. Same for Amazon, !a takes you to .com !ade takes you to Amazon.de. I have used DDG for a while now and by now I've got a feeling of what DDG will find and where I should go to Google so I rarely do duplicate queries.

tony_le_montana 15y ago

Why it redirects me to google.com when i search for !ruby?

emillon 15y ago

Surfraw is a tool that exposes a similar interface to bang patterns. http://surfraw.alioth.debian.org/ http://surfraw.alioth.debian.org/

mike-cardwell 15y ago

I want to use DDG, and it has been my default search engine for a while now, but most days, I need to fall back to Google for at least one search because the DDG results simply aren't good enough. When I fall back to Google, I go via Scroogle though: https://ssl.scroogle.org/ https://ssl.scroogle.org/. DDG has a bang command for Scroogle, it is "!s"

g3orge 15y ago

I'm using Launchbar to jump easily to site searches. It's the best feature ever.

biafra 15y ago

I switched to DDG about 3 Month ago and use Google only for image search and when I am not happy with DDGs result. More often than not Googles result are not better so I have to change my search terms :-)

Craiggybear 15y ago

I do use DDG and I like it. Oddly, and unlike most of the comments thus far, it does seem to actually find results which I'm actually more interested in than either Google or Bing (although DDG uses both). I do use them too.

parfe 15y ago

I gave up on DDG. The !bang syntax fails, for me, in a pretty annoying way. "!django modles" sends you off to django's search page (as it should), but now I'm trapped in an inferior search engine. searching for just "django modles" returns pretty bad results, including what could kindly be described as a linkedin blog entry. Now try the same search on google. (I made sure to try this logged out in case google personalized my results.) search for "django modles". The first result matches DDG. The next three are Model field reference, instance references, and how to make queries. All highly relevant! I work with Django, and I think these are good results. DDG in general has provided dissatisfying results and I suspect it is from not knowing what I don't know when searching, so I can't identify bad searches as they happen. But not knowing is why I search to begin with, so that is Why I don't use DuckDuckGo, but I don't care if you do.

deleted 15y ago
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bdg 15y ago
Sounds like a really specific need rather than a broad issue, why not tweet them about it?
- parfe 15y ago
  It's not a specific need. It's a specific issue. Figured I'd offer up a concrete example rather than gushing or hating on the service.
  - bdg 15y ago
    Sorry if you took offence to what I said, I simply interpreted you listing all the issues searching specifically for django and how you work with django, then claim that they are generally a bad service. Your complaint was very specific, yet you claimed it was a general issue. All that being said, your complaints were entirely targeted towards meeting your needs. Hence, specific need. I can't even conceive of how your complaint wasn't about a specific need, or how this is so drastically different from a specific issue.

shaggy 15y ago

I switched to using DDG exclusively when I got fed up with the poor privacy practices Google was continually enacting. I haven't missed google at all since I switched. DDG provides great results, has lots of cool goodies and best of all doesn't track you at all.

Karunamon 15y ago

Why I don't use DuckDuckGo: Worse results than Google (and even Bing) for most of my everyday searching. "But we're not Google!" is not a real selling point.

yabai 15y ago
I have done some side by side comparisons between Google and DuckDuckGo. Google seems to produce more relevant results than DuckDuckGo. I really want to like and use Duck Duck Go...I will keep trying!
yabai 15y ago
I have done some side by side comparisons between Google and DuckDuckGo. Google seems to produce more relevant results than DuckDuckGo. I really want to like and use Duck Duck Go...I will keep trying!

unicornporn 15y ago

I would prefer a Seeks Project public server setup by the HN community. http://www.seeks-project.info/site/about/ http://www.seeks-project.info/site/about/ I like everything about DuckDuckGo except for the search results. I so often wind up re-googling what I searched it isn't worth the effort. And this is with a unpersonalized Google version. I am not logged into any Google account, I run Ghostery and I clean cookies at every browser shutdown. Many times a search time yields zero hits in DDG and I instantly find what I search for with Google. Sad but true. And yes, i use "" around all words and phrases in Google.

Sephr 15y ago

If Google implemented !wiki → wikipedia.org they'd be facing a possible antitrust lawsuit (even though they can't be a monopoly as you don't have to use Google, US officials seem to think they are). Wikipedia isn't the only wiki.

AznHisoka 15y ago

I like DuckDuckGo but Google just indexes way more pages than it, and as a result I am able to find more quality results there... If DDG can index more of the web, I would definitely switch over.

mrschwabe 15y ago

As others have pointed out, with !bang you can just "!g search whatever" and voila you're searching Google. So typically, I set my browser default search to DDG and try to use DDG as much as possible. Certain terms or things I know Google will find better I just throw in the "!g" before the query.

jaequery 15y ago

the bang syntax is the wrong way to market this product. i was a fan of ddg until i read about how this bang syntax is the almighty saviour to search engines. the reason why i like google is because i can just search anything i want in plain english w/o any query-language/search-filters. all i'd want from DDG is the ability to get rid of all the fake landing page sites from my searches and i'll be sold from there.

gnosis 15y ago
"the reason why i like google is because i can just search anything i want in plain english w/o any query-language/search-filters." It's not like DDG prevents you from doing this! You can search DDG using the exact same "plain english" you use in Google. DDG's bang syntax is an additional feature. If you don't want it or don't like it, don't use it -- just use regular search. Personally, I don't use DDG's bang syntax myself. I like to create my own custom searches within Firefox. But I love the high quality of results DDG provides, and the lack of spam/scam results compared to Google. Not to mention DDG's commitment to privacy, which is very important to me.