6 ms·

When this happened to me, I found better results on https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/

cassianoleal 3y ago
I find better results on it in general. I use Google as a fallback but these days it happens perhaps once every couple months, and mostly I don't get anything out of it.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  Yes. IMO DDG has been better for general questions for a long time. Google remained better for programming questions for significantly longer (I speculate this may be because Google's own programmers used it, and complained when the results sucked :-)), but now it's not. Not really. Like you, I still use Google as a long shot, but that's become quite rare. I sometimes use Bing for Microsoft-specific questions, if DDG doesn't give me what I want. I have the sense that Bing covers Microsoft a little better than the others do. I have no real solid evidence for this, but it seems plausible on the surface.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- inductive_magic 3y ago
  It depends on the usecase. If you're querying for something local like a restaurant or a store, google wins by orders of magnitude. If you're researching, duckduckgo is fine. Duckduckgo doesn't really compare to Kagi though.
  - cassianoleal 3y ago
    What's wrong with DDG and local searches? I find it exceedingly good, especially with the country selector being so up and front. It's very easy to search for those kinds of things in other places, for example to plan a trip. Kagi for me is a no-no. I mostly browse on temporary containers, and also have Firefox delete cookies on close. A search engine that requires me to be signed in would be a massive pain to use.
    - inductive_magic 3y ago
      >What's wrong with DDG and local searches Maybe its different in the US or just not optimised in Germany, but the quality of search results isn't comparable. Query: "All you can eat Kiel" Google: 1. a map with the top three restaurants for this context in the foreground 2: a list of restaurants, sortable by price/date/hours 3 to end of page: links to homepages of the top restaurants DDG: 1. a completely random assortment of irrelevant links on the left 2. a semantic web box with a 3/5 rated irrelevant restaurant on the right 3. wild youtube-videos vaguely related to the query between text results 4. images 5. more wild links that kind of thing. And Kiel isn't a small city, we even had DDG print ads here.
      - cassianoleal 3y ago
        I'm not in the US. :) When I try your query I only get a bunch of local German stuff (including a map with restaurants). I admit, I don't even know what Kiel is so I can't validate the results but despite them being in Germany (and my search having had the country selector set to UK), it looks pretty good. If I search something more generic like "all you can eat sushi" I get a neat map with a few restaurants that do that, plus a bunch of TripAdvisor and other directory and blog posts exactly about that, all local. If I try your query again, setting the country to Germany, I get https://yummy-kiel.de/ https://yummy-kiel.de/ as the first result, a map with top-three restaurants as the second, and again, a bunch of directories and blogs with all you can eat Kiel. Seems pretty good to me.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - allarm 3y ago
        With all respect, there’s not a lot of restaurants around here ) comparing to i.e. Hamburg. A couple of steak houses, some locals, 4-5 asian food and the Brunswik, which is always busy. There’s also Kiellinie, but it’s mostly a seasonal thing. Though there’s a lot of folks around sipping cocktails with ice in winter, crazy. Love this city.
mkl 3y ago
Duck Duck Go has similar problems for me. It's also recently started sometimes ignoring the "-" when you try to exclude a word.
- yegg 3y ago
  We put out a partial fix for that recently and a more complete fix is forthcoming.
  - sen 3y ago
    Partial fix for the minus or the double quotes? Both are such a critical part for searching anything these days, it’d be a real shame to lose either.
    - yegg 3y ago
      Both.
      - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
        That'll be awesome. The parts of the web that don't respect operands feel awful. Having a minus act like a plus has been particularly tough (for years now, I believe).
  - chankstein38 3y ago
    It's crazy how often you're in the comments of HN articles just waiting for a DDG shoutout haha it's appreciated!
  - glimshe 3y ago
    Thank you! As a heavy DDG user, PLEASE don't become Google. Stay great and private.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  I think the "-" is case-sensitive sometimes. So if you write "-honey" it'll still return "Honey" results, so you have to write "-honey -Honey".
sen 3y ago
I’ve used DDG exclusively for a couple years now and at least with my usecases have found it better than Google in every single way other than images (which I still use it for, but need to do !g to proxy Google maybe 1 in 5 times).
- notRobot 3y ago
  FYI: !gi on DDG for direct Google Images search.
ComputerGuru 3y ago
DDG has started injecting completely untreated recent news stories to the results of a search with few hits. Like searching for a programming error with specific class names will give you several articles about the woes of the Democratic Party in recent days!!
- DoItToMe81 3y ago
  Are you sure this isn't from SEO on the part of the news sites? I have not seen this at all.
- felurx 3y ago
  Same for me, but with location-related stuff. I often see random Wikipedia articles or tourism websites for stuff near the city my IP address is from... Worst of all, sometimes there's a block of filler results between actual results, so I sometimes give up and don't see some of the results that might've been what I was looking for.
  - tremon 3y ago
    Same here, yesterday I searched for a very specific error message (don't remember exactly), and even on the first page there were local news stories. This was on Metager, which also uses Bing as one of its backends. I think it's Tay v2.0 injecting itself into the conversation.

I find better results on it in general. I use Google as a fallback but these days it happens perhaps once every couple months, and mostly I don't get anything out of it.

Turing_Machine 3y ago
Yes. IMO DDG has been better for general questions for a long time. Google remained better for programming questions for significantly longer (I speculate this may be because Google's own programmers used it, and complained when the results sucked :-)), but now it's not. Not really. Like you, I still use Google as a long shot, but that's become quite rare. I sometimes use Bing for Microsoft-specific questions, if DDG doesn't give me what I want. I have the sense that Bing covers Microsoft a little better than the others do. I have no real solid evidence for this, but it seems plausible on the surface.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
inductive_magic 3y ago
It depends on the usecase. If you're querying for something local like a restaurant or a store, google wins by orders of magnitude. If you're researching, duckduckgo is fine. Duckduckgo doesn't really compare to Kagi though.
- cassianoleal 3y ago
  What's wrong with DDG and local searches? I find it exceedingly good, especially with the country selector being so up and front. It's very easy to search for those kinds of things in other places, for example to plan a trip. Kagi for me is a no-no. I mostly browse on temporary containers, and also have Firefox delete cookies on close. A search engine that requires me to be signed in would be a massive pain to use.
  - inductive_magic 3y ago
    >What's wrong with DDG and local searches Maybe its different in the US or just not optimised in Germany, but the quality of search results isn't comparable. Query: "All you can eat Kiel" Google: 1. a map with the top three restaurants for this context in the foreground 2: a list of restaurants, sortable by price/date/hours 3 to end of page: links to homepages of the top restaurants DDG: 1. a completely random assortment of irrelevant links on the left 2. a semantic web box with a 3/5 rated irrelevant restaurant on the right 3. wild youtube-videos vaguely related to the query between text results 4. images 5. more wild links that kind of thing. And Kiel isn't a small city, we even had DDG print ads here.
    - cassianoleal 3y ago
      I'm not in the US. :) When I try your query I only get a bunch of local German stuff (including a map with restaurants). I admit, I don't even know what Kiel is so I can't validate the results but despite them being in Germany (and my search having had the country selector set to UK), it looks pretty good. If I search something more generic like "all you can eat sushi" I get a neat map with a few restaurants that do that, plus a bunch of TripAdvisor and other directory and blog posts exactly about that, all local. If I try your query again, setting the country to Germany, I get https://yummy-kiel.de/ https://yummy-kiel.de/ as the first result, a map with top-three restaurants as the second, and again, a bunch of directories and blogs with all you can eat Kiel. Seems pretty good to me.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - allarm 3y ago
      With all respect, there’s not a lot of restaurants around here ) comparing to i.e. Hamburg. A couple of steak houses, some locals, 4-5 asian food and the Brunswik, which is always busy. There’s also Kiellinie, but it’s mostly a seasonal thing. Though there’s a lot of folks around sipping cocktails with ice in winter, crazy. Love this city.

mkl 3y ago

Duck Duck Go has similar problems for me. It's also recently started sometimes ignoring the "-" when you try to exclude a word.

yegg 3y ago
We put out a partial fix for that recently and a more complete fix is forthcoming.
- sen 3y ago
  Partial fix for the minus or the double quotes? Both are such a critical part for searching anything these days, it’d be a real shame to lose either.
  - yegg 3y ago
    Both.
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      That'll be awesome. The parts of the web that don't respect operands feel awful. Having a minus act like a plus has been particularly tough (for years now, I believe).
- chankstein38 3y ago
  It's crazy how often you're in the comments of HN articles just waiting for a DDG shoutout haha it's appreciated!
- glimshe 3y ago
  Thank you! As a heavy DDG user, PLEASE don't become Google. Stay great and private.
Qwertious 3y ago
I think the "-" is case-sensitive sometimes. So if you write "-honey" it'll still return "Honey" results, so you have to write "-honey -Honey".

sen 3y ago

I’ve used DDG exclusively for a couple years now and at least with my usecases have found it better than Google in every single way other than images (which I still use it for, but need to do !g to proxy Google maybe 1 in 5 times).

notRobot 3y ago
FYI: !gi on DDG for direct Google Images search.

ComputerGuru 3y ago

DDG has started injecting completely untreated recent news stories to the results of a search with few hits. Like searching for a programming error with specific class names will give you several articles about the woes of the Democratic Party in recent days!!

DoItToMe81 3y ago
Are you sure this isn't from SEO on the part of the news sites? I have not seen this at all.
felurx 3y ago
Same for me, but with location-related stuff. I often see random Wikipedia articles or tourism websites for stuff near the city my IP address is from... Worst of all, sometimes there's a block of filler results between actual results, so I sometimes give up and don't see some of the results that might've been what I was looking for.
- tremon 3y ago
  Same here, yesterday I searched for a very specific error message (don't remember exactly), and even on the first page there were local news stories. This was on Metager, which also uses Bing as one of its backends. I think it's Tay v2.0 injecting itself into the conversation.