4 ms·

Well, the last few months DDG's search quality started dropping hard for me, some queries that I clearly remember having good results no longer have them today.

Well, the last few months DDG's search quality started dropping hard for me, some queries that I clearly remember having good results no longer have them today. It seems there's stuff going on behind the scenes. DDG got taken over by some vested interest, perhaps. Or Bing doing stuff and DDG never branching out of it and just blindly getting results from it. Either way, it's starting to rival Google in uselessness and I'm likely to stop using it fairly soon. Kagi seems to work pretty well.

yegg 3y ago
Any particular examples you can remember that I can look into personally (and bring back to the team to look at as well)?
- pdimitar 3y ago
  I apologize for not keeping them. Sorry. :( The thing with search engines is: you try one, scan results for 30 seconds, don't find a useful result, curse under your breath and hastily try another search engine. It's a normal programmer flow, which sadly almost completely eliminates the possibility to provide actionable feedback to the search engine's maintainers. I gather you're from the DDG team? If so, I'd say that the writing is on the wall that Bing is no longer a good backend for DDG. You guys should start branching out because from where I'm standing, many programmers are 10-15 annoyances away from switching. Again, my apologies for not providing examples.
  - Baeocystin 3y ago
    The person you're replying to is the CEO and founder of DDG. Just FYI.
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      Good to know, thanks. Had no clue.
- worik 3y ago
  I have been using DDG as my main search for years and years. But I have found the LLM powered Bing, using Skype (!!) as the user interface really compelling I have played around myself with getting LLMs to summerise and evaluate text for me, and it seemed that an automated way would be very cool. Then Microsoft implemented it. Wow. It is very very good So DDG is still good. Very good. And privacy, a very strong selling point But wading through click bait websites looking for a website that is not just straining for eyeballs: Bing's LLM based machine is a dogsend! I would pay for a service like that from DDG. I already pay real money for an OpenAI API key. Sell me yours. I would much rather pay my money to you
- arp242 3y ago
  Is there anywhere people can report clearly bad results? I don't have any on hand right now either, but I do know I somewhat regularly encounter DDG results that are just "wtf?!"-level, whereas Google does return good results for the same. I'd be more than happy to report these things when I encounter them if that's helpful.
  - Choco31415 3y ago
    There’s a “Share Feedback” button at the bottom of the search page. Yegg said it’s read by humans too.
    - arp242 3y ago
      Cheers; somehow I had never noticed that >_<
- reaperducer 3y ago
  I'm not the OP, but here's a quick list of search items that did not turn up useful results recently off the top of my head: number of Americans without a credit card panic nova git automation microvision (the video game console) time in chicago (seems to be fixed now) mozilla open directory (seems to be fixed now) Now that you've solicited this feedback, I'll make a point of saving futile searches for the next time you pop up on HN.
FireInsight 3y ago
I'm experiencing a weird bug where after clicking on a result and going back to the results page the order of the results change. I've too noticed result quality in the main search engines I use (DDG, Brave, Phind) go way down in recent times, I wonder what happened...
- joshuaissac 3y ago
  > I'm experiencing a weird bug where after clicking on a result and going back to the results page the order of the results change. This also happens to me and I have found reports on Reddit of it happening to many others. Sometimes, I cannot even find the original result that I had clicked on, when I return to the search results page.
- aimor 3y ago
  "I'm experiencing a weird bug where after clicking on a result and going back to the results page the order of the results change." This drives me crazy.
  - nomel 3y ago
    From DDG, I always open links in new tabs, because of this.
at-fates-hands 3y ago
>> Kagi seems to work pretty well. free for 100 searches. $5/month for 300 searches $10/month for 1,000 searches I'm not at the point where I feel DDG and Bing are so bad I want to start paying to get better search results. I'd be interested to see how many people are there though.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  I am not sure I am doing more than ~33 searches a day lately so probably the $10 plan will suit me fine. I think I do something like anywhere from 5 to 20 a day. But I too started getting disgusted by "everything is a subscription" but I might jump the train if I like Kagi enough. Because apparently the internet companies can't figure out an ad model that's not extremely toxic and does not trample on every single privacy rule the world has (and the 100x more that the world still doesn't have but should not be broken anyway because they should be a moral / ethical no-brainer but alas, go tell that to the "money above everything" types). But finally, after decades, all the VCs funding internet companies that planned to capture the market with network effects and then start charging, are showing their true colors. I am glad. It makes them more honest and gives the users better information to act on.
  - t0bia_s 3y ago
    Doesn't privacy bother you? Tightening your Kagi search query log to credit card sounds privacy invasive to me.
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      It does. Sadly I don't see a way out. Us the nerds just practiced endless bikeshedding and the corporations took over everything in the meantime. Oh, let's not forget the people who kept inventing LISP dialects BECAUSE THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE WORLD NEEDED!
    - freediver 3y ago
      There is no search log on Kagi and there is no incentive for Kagi to have one (it is only a liability with no benefit). https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy

yegg 3y ago

Any particular examples you can remember that I can look into personally (and bring back to the team to look at as well)?

pdimitar 3y ago
I apologize for not keeping them. Sorry. :( The thing with search engines is: you try one, scan results for 30 seconds, don't find a useful result, curse under your breath and hastily try another search engine. It's a normal programmer flow, which sadly almost completely eliminates the possibility to provide actionable feedback to the search engine's maintainers. I gather you're from the DDG team? If so, I'd say that the writing is on the wall that Bing is no longer a good backend for DDG. You guys should start branching out because from where I'm standing, many programmers are 10-15 annoyances away from switching. Again, my apologies for not providing examples.
- Baeocystin 3y ago
  The person you're replying to is the CEO and founder of DDG. Just FYI.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    Good to know, thanks. Had no clue.
worik 3y ago
I have been using DDG as my main search for years and years. But I have found the LLM powered Bing, using Skype (!!) as the user interface really compelling I have played around myself with getting LLMs to summerise and evaluate text for me, and it seemed that an automated way would be very cool. Then Microsoft implemented it. Wow. It is very very good So DDG is still good. Very good. And privacy, a very strong selling point But wading through click bait websites looking for a website that is not just straining for eyeballs: Bing's LLM based machine is a dogsend! I would pay for a service like that from DDG. I already pay real money for an OpenAI API key. Sell me yours. I would much rather pay my money to you
arp242 3y ago
Is there anywhere people can report clearly bad results? I don't have any on hand right now either, but I do know I somewhat regularly encounter DDG results that are just "wtf?!"-level, whereas Google does return good results for the same. I'd be more than happy to report these things when I encounter them if that's helpful.
- Choco31415 3y ago
  There’s a “Share Feedback” button at the bottom of the search page. Yegg said it’s read by humans too.
  - arp242 3y ago
    Cheers; somehow I had never noticed that >_<
reaperducer 3y ago
I'm not the OP, but here's a quick list of search items that did not turn up useful results recently off the top of my head: number of Americans without a credit card panic nova git automation microvision (the video game console) time in chicago (seems to be fixed now) mozilla open directory (seems to be fixed now) Now that you've solicited this feedback, I'll make a point of saving futile searches for the next time you pop up on HN.

FireInsight 3y ago

I'm experiencing a weird bug where after clicking on a result and going back to the results page the order of the results change. I've too noticed result quality in the main search engines I use (DDG, Brave, Phind) go way down in recent times, I wonder what happened...

joshuaissac 3y ago
> I'm experiencing a weird bug where after clicking on a result and going back to the results page the order of the results change. This also happens to me and I have found reports on Reddit of it happening to many others. Sometimes, I cannot even find the original result that I had clicked on, when I return to the search results page.
aimor 3y ago
"I'm experiencing a weird bug where after clicking on a result and going back to the results page the order of the results change." This drives me crazy.
- nomel 3y ago
  From DDG, I always open links in new tabs, because of this.

at-fates-hands 3y ago

>> Kagi seems to work pretty well. free for 100 searches. $5/month for 300 searches $10/month for 1,000 searches I'm not at the point where I feel DDG and Bing are so bad I want to start paying to get better search results. I'd be interested to see how many people are there though.

pdimitar 3y ago
I am not sure I am doing more than ~33 searches a day lately so probably the $10 plan will suit me fine. I think I do something like anywhere from 5 to 20 a day. But I too started getting disgusted by "everything is a subscription" but I might jump the train if I like Kagi enough. Because apparently the internet companies can't figure out an ad model that's not extremely toxic and does not trample on every single privacy rule the world has (and the 100x more that the world still doesn't have but should not be broken anyway because they should be a moral / ethical no-brainer but alas, go tell that to the "money above everything" types). But finally, after decades, all the VCs funding internet companies that planned to capture the market with network effects and then start charging, are showing their true colors. I am glad. It makes them more honest and gives the users better information to act on.
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  Doesn't privacy bother you? Tightening your Kagi search query log to credit card sounds privacy invasive to me.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    It does. Sadly I don't see a way out. Us the nerds just practiced endless bikeshedding and the corporations took over everything in the meantime. Oh, let's not forget the people who kept inventing LISP dialects BECAUSE THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE WORLD NEEDED!
  - freediver 3y ago
    There is no search log on Kagi and there is no incentive for Kagi to have one (it is only a liability with no benefit). https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy