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Actually, I've noticed that DGG is way overdoing guessing. More often than not I get results that are only similar to the search query in some way instead of ac

by Aoyagi 12y ago

Actually, I've noticed that DGG is way overdoing guessing. More often than not I get results that are only similar to the search query in some way instead of actually what I'm looking for. This has been getting worse over time for me.

username223 12y ago
Both DDG and Google hatefully over-guess. I understand their motivation -- people typing natural-language queries with smartphone-level typos and expecting to get answers -- but as someone long used to simple keyword queries, I wish I could have the old system back. Programmers trying to make computers "smart" seem not to understand that unless they're almost flawless, users will just have more trouble trying to work around the "smartness" to tell the computers what they actually want.
amelius 12y ago
Of course, because DDG can't build a profile of you, it would have to resort to some guessing. For example, if you search for "python", it would have to guess whether you are a programmer, or a biologist, in order to present the most relevant results. And of course, Google already has all this information...
- Aoyagi 12y ago
  ...not that kind of guessing. Obviously. That's not "similar to the search query", that's just different meanings of words/phrases. I didn't say anything about that, but it looks like you didn't read past the first sentence anyway. Example of what I meant: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=BMW+723i https://duckduckgo.com/?q=BMW+723i
  - nl 12y ago
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22BMW+723i%22 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22BMW+723i%22 Seriously, quoting that is a reasonable solution. Given the comparative popularity of the two, it seems statistically likely that most people actually wanted a 323i. Having said that, I note that Google doesn't show 323i results for 723i, so... hm. I do think explaining the substitution that was done and linking to the exact search (ie, how Google does it) would be a good feature though.
    - Aoyagi 12y ago
      No. If the search engine thinks I meant something else, it's supposed to ask "did you mean [something else]?" and not guess that I'm incapable of writing 4 characters correctly and serve me the wrong results. That's over-guessing.

by Aoyagi 12y ago

username223 12y ago

Both DDG and Google hatefully over-guess. I understand their motivation -- people typing natural-language queries with smartphone-level typos and expecting to get answers -- but as someone long used to simple keyword queries, I wish I could have the old system back. Programmers trying to make computers "smart" seem not to understand that unless they're almost flawless, users will just have more trouble trying to work around the "smartness" to tell the computers what they actually want.

amelius 12y ago

Of course, because DDG can't build a profile of you, it would have to resort to some guessing. For example, if you search for "python", it would have to guess whether you are a programmer, or a biologist, in order to present the most relevant results. And of course, Google already has all this information...

Aoyagi 12y ago
...not that kind of guessing. Obviously. That's not "similar to the search query", that's just different meanings of words/phrases. I didn't say anything about that, but it looks like you didn't read past the first sentence anyway. Example of what I meant: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=BMW+723i https://duckduckgo.com/?q=BMW+723i
- nl 12y ago
  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22BMW+723i%22 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22BMW+723i%22 Seriously, quoting that is a reasonable solution. Given the comparative popularity of the two, it seems statistically likely that most people actually wanted a 323i. Having said that, I note that Google doesn't show 323i results for 723i, so... hm. I do think explaining the substitution that was done and linking to the exact search (ie, how Google does it) would be a good feature though.
  - Aoyagi 12y ago
    No. If the search engine thinks I meant something else, it's supposed to ask "did you mean [something else]?" and not guess that I'm incapable of writing 4 characters correctly and serve me the wrong results. That's over-guessing.