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I sometimes wonder why computer-literate people still use Google Search. Basically for all search queries I can imagine, DuckDuckGo or Yandex consistently give
by simbolit 3y ago
I sometimes wonder why computer-literate people still use Google Search. Basically for all search queries I can imagine, DuckDuckGo or Yandex consistently give much better results.
- tyteen4a03 3y agoGoogle wins hands-down for local results, but I use Maps a lot to find restaurants so it might be just me.
- unstuck3958 3y agoSame for me. I use Google only to find local results, DDG for the rest.
- simbolit 3y agoCan the person who downvoted this tell me why? I want to learn.
- ToValueFunfetti 3y agoWe're discouraged from discussing downvotes, but I have seen a lot of totally innocuous comments get greyed out lately. I'm suspicious that some are deliberately abusing the feature. I wouldn't worry about it.
- Baeocystin 3y agoFWIW, I've noticed an uptick of that, too. Not sure what to make of it.
- Sabinus 3y agoThere's been an influx of users since the Reddit snafu, I think they're just settling in. Might just be my perception, but I've seen the tone of the average comment shift a bit.
- Baeocystin 3y agoI didn't make that connection until you mentioned it, but it makes sense. I bet you're right.
- primax 3y agoBecause there are a large cohort of Googlers and Xooglers here who are resolutely in denial that their golden goose is not dying, and they insist it is in fact fine. Whereas nearly any knowledge worker using Google daily for the past decade can attest to it's rapid decline in quality.
- GreymanTheGrey 3y agoEven spouses of Googlers suffer from this malady occasionally. I have a close friend who has a wife working for Google as a tech writer, and every time the subject of Google's decline in search quality comes up he passionately defends them as light years ahead of the competition, untouchable, always on the edge of innovation, etc. I really don't get where it comes from, it's just a company - not a religion!
- crazygringo 3y agoFunny, I see the problem in the opposite direction. Google results seem perfectly fine to me, and I know they have metrics that track how well it performs. And it's their golden goose, so it doesn't make any business sense that they wouldn't maintain its quality. The "religion" seems, to me, to be people who keep insisting its results are getting worse. And I don't get it, because I just don't see it at all in my own experience. As far as I can tell, it's just anti-Google bias or something. This thread has someone else asking for actual examples of where Google gives bad results and other search engines are great. And once again, nobody seems to be able to provide any. If Google really were declining, you'd think people would have put together objective evidence around it, because it'd be a heck of a news story.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoThere are a lot of queries where it insists that the results come from common websites like Reddit or major media outlets. Smaller websites don't show up even if they have more relevant content. There others where the results are all SEO content marketing spam. The thing it rarely seems capable of doing now is showing legitimate non-spam content from smaller websites. It also used to be possible when you were looking for a specific web page you've already seen, to type in a bunch of terms that you know are on that page and then it comes right up because it's the one page with all of those terms together. That doesn't seem to work anymore.
- rjh29 3y agoYou got downvoted because your comment is pretentious. The nuance is difficult, but basically it's because you said "computer-literate". Your comment makes the suggestion that anyone who is computer-literate ought to be using Yandex/DDG, and if they are still using Google, then they are stupid. A better comment would be "I've been using Yandex/DDG lately and the results are much better than Google!". That's just your experience or opinion - not judging other people or suggesting that they are stupid.
- simbolit 3y agoThank you. I wrote the comment initially without it, then thought about how many people don't even know there are alternative search engines, and added "computer-literate" to make clear I am not talking about normies, but people here on HN. I can now see how my comment can be read as pretentious.
- slater 3y agoI downvoted because of what others responded. To put it another way, in keeping with the perceived tone of your post "Basically for all search queries I can imagine", maybe your imagination sucks? (not attacking you personally, just doing this for illustration) k, thx for the downvotes :D
- flangola7 3y agoBecause it is not true. I have never found a page that was on duck duck go but not google, but the reverse occurs daily.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- shmde 3y agoAlso add in Phind, ChatGPT.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- andrewmcwatters 3y agoI flip between DuckDuckGo and Google because sometimes Google actually does have the results that I'm looking for when I'm submitting normie queries.
- gs17 3y agoBrave search has been decent too, it has a special section adding reddit/forum results which is pretty helpful.
- superq 3y agoIt's now my fulltime search engine. It's really good.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoWow I just tried Yandex and it seems to be superior to Google in every query. That is amazing. I'll daily drive it for sometime and see how it is.
- ok123456 3y agoThe only problem is I seem to hit CAPTCHA challenges very frequently.
- vitorgrs 3y agoYandex image search/visual search is also pretty good.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoDoes that put you on any lists? (Local ISP seems to know a lot of what folks look at even when using https and an encrypted bittorrent client.)
- tryauuum 3y agoif you live in a country where ISP or government puts you on a list for visiting a russian search engine, consider switching countries.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoEasier said than done.
- lionkor 3y agoA lot of their products are very solid. We have, at home, Yandex Music which is way cheaper than Spotify (and is quite different) and Alice, which is their Alexa equivalent. If you speak Russian, its quite good :) In general, while I was visiting Russia last year and the year before, Yandex Taxi (like Uber) impressed me quite a lot, too.
- meitham 3y ago
- meroes 3y agoIt’s so frustratingly bad. I “-“ a search term and it’s in the title of the first dozen results nonetheless. DDG is slightly better (they say “-“ creates fewer results with the term, not none) and it’s only one in the top 3 say. Say you want to do -order but have switch or rearrange in your search. You’re just SOL on Google. It thinks these terms are interchangeable, related enough, so it overrides -order completely. I think you’re right. I became computer illiterate by using Google.
- iLoveOncall 3y agoI haven't noticed any decrease in the ease to find what I'm looking for when using Google over decades, I always find what I need on the first page if not the first result. Every time someone brings that up, I ask for an example of something they are looking for, and their search query, and every single time I either don't get an answer, or get an answer that shows Google has absolutely no problem at all. So, give me an example.
- kikokikokiko 3y agoCmon now. Try to get a result for "UFC stream free" on Google. Now try that on Yandex. Live sports streaming is just one subject you can easily see Google actively censoring the organic results the web would give you if your search engine was information agnostic. Now try to search for anything politically related on Google that is not center-left/coastal US/mainstream power forces aligned, and you will stop believing in any result the corporate american search engines approve you to see.
- crazygringo 3y agoI think the person you're responding to meant search quality, whether you're getting relevant results for a combination of programming terms for example. Not in terms of filtering illegal content. That's a separate issue that has nothing to do with quality. And what the heck are you talking about with center-left? You can search for literally anything on Fox News and Google will find it for you. There's no evidence whatsoever of Google results trying to show political bias. Indeed, to the contrary -- isn't the whole criticism of YouTube is that is sends people down rabbit holes of right-wing and conspiracy recommendations? How do you explain that?
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago> Not in terms of filtering illegal content. That's a separate issue that has nothing to do with quality. Au contraire, it's extremely common for measures designed to suppress illegal or disfavored content to have a high false positive rate and disappear from the results the very thing you're looking for even though it isn't illegal. > isn't the whole criticism of YouTube is that is sends people down rabbit holes of right-wing and conspiracy recommendations? How do you explain that? Google search and YouTube recommendations are different things entirely. > You can search for literally anything on Fox News and Google will find it for you. There's no evidence whatsoever of Google results trying to show political bias. It has a heavy mainstream bias. Fox News is right-leaning but it's the mainstream media. See if you can get it to organically surface anything from a libertarian or communist perspective, for example.
- glenngillen 3y agoI’ve been using Kagi for a year or so and love it.
- superq 3y agoYes, indeed, or Tailcat (now search.brave.com), or Bing...
- washadjeffmad 3y agoDoes anyone remember Beaucoup? It was a metasearch that aggregated the results of the top, largely manually indexed search engines at the time. It's been years since I last thought to look, but here's a list of current search engines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines Amazing to see Dogpile still around! Search feels like an oddly under-remarked-upon topic on HN because it's always within the context of a few big names (or else massively criticized by Googists - saw a lot of sneering responses to Neeva and Brave search...).
- yreg 3y agoI use both Google and DDG (and also Brave search, depending on the browser/machine) and Google is usually better for me.
- zo1 3y agoI use other engines exclusively. The only time I have to switch back to Google is when I want to look for places where I can "purchase" a thing. It's very telling to me that that's the thing still keeping me on Google because it's so good. One thing I'll recommend to everyone: Just set your default search to anything but Google. It takes a few months but your brain, internal search result filter and your overall search behaviour adjust. Google is like an addictive drug in some sense.
- UberFly 3y agoWhen I see people searching with Google or Bing I cringe. I have a computer-illiterate engineer friend who's default search engine is Yahoo - only because some program defaulted it to that and that's where he stays. Sheesh. There's a lot of them out there to be prayed upon unfortunately.
- jeroenhd 3y agoDuckduckgo is terrible for most of my search queries, it seems to suffer from the same SEO spam problems Google does. Yandex can't be trusted because of its Russian affiliations, which is quite sad because Yandex is quite good. I've started using Bing Chat for search queries thst only produce spam results and while Bing lies and misleads in its direct answers, the links it provides to support its statements are usually quite good.
- qzx_pierri 3y ago[flagged]
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago[flagged]
- jeroenhd 3y agoIts ongoing invasion of and atrocities in Ukraine, mostly, but aside from that the authoritarian regime (and outlawing the free press) also doesn't exactly inspire confidence in Russian companies.
- Twixes 3y agoHmm, might be the way Russia is effectively a dictatorship, the heavily enforced political censorship, or perhaps the major war they started against another independent European nation.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoThe attempted genocide of Ukraine, maybe? That seems to be #1 for most people right now.
- hughesjj 3y agoKagi?
- Fluorescence 3y agoIs there a way to get English results with Yandex when using a ddg !ya hashbang?