DDG isn't the answer - not yet, anyway I find that ~50% of my results I re-attempt with a !g, !w or !wo before it I know the guy behind the site reads threads

DDG isn't the answer - not yet, anyway I find that ~50% of my results I re-attempt with a !g, !w or !wo before it I know the guy behind the site reads threads here, so i'd ask him to check his logs for the number of instances a user has re-run a search query but with Google or Bing and then work out why his results for those queries are not working. I think the 'new google' will be built around a PageRank that takes into account online social networks rather than links