by phatfish on 5/18/19, 2:18 PM
I have used it as a default for at least 2 years. I'd estimate drop back to Google for 20-25% of specific "subject matter" searches, mostly around technology. Probably a bit less than that for general searches.
Most of the time I run the same search on Google the results are very similar for the top hits. But Google does seem to produce helpful results that are not exactly what I searched for more often.
DDG also skews heavily to US results which is a pain. Any Amazon links are always to .com and not the regional site. Just a general understanding of region specific results seems to be missing, and I end up qualifying searches with the country or town.
by lucb1e on 5/18/19, 2:08 PM
Going one step further, I removed my websites from the Google index:
https://lucb1e.com/?p=post&id=130If you want to find my stuff, you now have to use DDG or some other search engine. Hopefully we can signal to Google that we are not okay with monopolistic behaviour (that's why I blocked them, not just for being the biggest or monopolist, but for also behaving like it -- see the blog post for details).
by jplayer01 on 5/18/19, 2:50 PM
DDG's search results seem consistently terrible whenever I try to use it for an extended period of time. It's fine for really basic searches, but anything more specialized or niche is terrible (considering my interests, that's all of my searches). I mostly use Startpage nowadays instead, which seems to give me good enough results most of the time.
by octosphere on 5/18/19, 1:57 PM
I like DuckDuckGo if it wasn't for their data centers being in the U.S. My problem lies in the fact that they could have an intelligence agency like the NSA in their data centers and they could attribute specific queries to specific users by looking at the originating IP. I'm not even sure they have a canary[0] [1] implemented. This is why combining DDG with an anonymous mixer network like Tor is useful (or even a VPN). You're probably wondering why my threat model includes the likes of the NSA. Well I just don't want spying, simple as that.
Sure, Tor might seem like overkill, but over time all those single, isolated queries start to build an elaborate dossier on you and the contents of your mind.
[0] https://duck.co/forum/thread/15228/would-you-adopt-a-canary
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
by lkj on 5/18/19, 2:33 PM
- "python remove from list": Google has the Python docs on the first page. DDG does not.
- "site:news.ycombinator.com rms_returns duckduckgo": At first the DDG results looked better but multiple results had no mention of "rms_returns" at all.
- "archlinux dmesg audit": Both nice.
- "lange nacht der museen berlin": Wow, unexpectedly relevant results on DDG, did they improve their local results?
I think I should indeed try again. Previous times it was full of spam for local results.
by 0xcde4c3db on 5/18/19, 2:39 PM
I use DDG regularly. It's fine for casual "was that company's domain a .net or .com" kinds of searches, but it struggles for more specific or obscure content. My biggest problem with it is that the "advanced" operators are extremely buggy. Quotes and minus sometimes seem to be treated more as suggestions than requirements. Other times they return no results when omitting them returns results that should match. Sometimes a term with a minus is instead treated like there's no minus, i.e. ranking results with that word higher. This seems to have gotten worse over time. I don't have examples for this because the behavior is not consistent at all. The "inurl" and "intitle" operators exist but seem to only work for a single word/instance (e.g. "functional intitle:Haskell" works as expected but "functional intitle:Haskell intitle:reactive" returns a bunch of results without either of those words in the title).
by hjek on 5/18/19, 2:18 PM
DDG is just a proxy for Bing. Yes, let's degoogle our lives, but why not start using a free/libre metasearch engine (like Searx[0]), while you're at it?
[0]: https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/
by makecheck on 5/18/19, 3:05 PM
It’s still my default but results are becoming noticeably worse. For instance, I used to be able to search for uncommon names and have them surface; now DDG seems to try
really hard to assume I meant some dictionary word (frankly, a search engine clearly ignoring your actual search term becomes useless really quickly).
A critical feature though is that “g!” to Google will never return AMP pages; as long as that’s true I will always start from DDG.
by topherPedersen on 5/18/19, 2:13 PM
I launched BuckBuckMoose.org recently so I could start using DuckDuckGo more often. The idea with BuckBuckMoose is that you can search DuckDuckGo without fear of missing out on Google. How it works is you simply enter your search query, and then a two split screen windows pop up with Google search results on the left and DuckDuckGo results on the right. If you want to try it out as your default search engine you can use Tom Schuster's "Add Custom Search Engine" extension for Firefox to add it (BuckBuckMoose) as your default search engine. (I don't actually expect anyone else to use it). Anyway, having used this tool daily for the past few months I feel that I'm somewhat of an expert* on DuckDuckGo's search results. One interesting thing I've noticed is how similar their results are. It's almost as if Bing is trying to mimic Google's results on purpose? It's a little odd. The results are pretty good tho. However, I have noticed that Google is always a little bit faster.
by spookybones on 5/18/19, 2:47 PM
I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year now. I must admit, when doing research, I often g! the search as well to see what I'm missing out on, especially with images. I also don't know why they don't offer a year parameter for the advance time search. It's a pretty good engine nonetheless. I use wikipedia a lot, so w! proves useful.
by fareesh on 5/18/19, 2:16 PM
by owlrobot on 5/18/19, 2:41 PM
I would but one of the biggest problems I have with it is how I can't look up info. in certain areas like Reddit which I use a lot because it only gives one link even if I include the word "reddit".
by utopcell on 5/18/19, 4:28 PM
I find it mind-boggling that privacy-conscious folks go for DDG. This is a company that hides in their FAQ that their results are also backed by Yandex [1], and the first thing they ask you to do when you go to their home page is install a Chrome extension, giving them full access to your machine, let alone your searches.
[1] https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
by newscracker on 5/18/19, 5:53 PM
I have degoogled myself heavily and don’t use anything other than Maps once in a while, but DDG is not the best answer as a replacement for people who just want to get things done. Instead of telling people to use DDG alone, it’s better to tell people to use DDG, Searx, and others so that there’s choice and freedom.
I use DDG as my primary search engine, but the quality of search results and the rate of improvement leave much to be desired. So I tend to go to !s (search in startpage) or !g (search on Google). DDG would have to improve by leaps and bounds if it has to be the only search engine that I have to use (or rather, the only search engine who’s direct results I have to use).
Apart from poorer search results, instant answers aren’t great either. DDG has currency conversions as well as stock quotes as instant answers. But both these are so highly hit or miss that I end up going to some other site anyway. For currency conversion, depending on where you put the currency symbol or code (as a prefix or suffix) or if you don’t leave a space between the currency and the numerical value, you may or may not get instant answers. For stock quotes, there are many symbols where, if you just type the symbol, you wouldn’t get instant answers. You’d have to type “<stock symbol> stock”. For some stocks just typing the stock symbol is enough.
by jypepin on 5/18/19, 3:28 PM
The main thing that made me go back to google is the smart results they offer. I search enough for things like "champions league", "PSG vs Inter", "Warriors", "US Open" expecting the smart result at the top (the little widget that embeds the info I want). Switching to DDG I missed that too much and decided to go back to google.
by benbristow on 5/18/19, 2:06 PM
The thing with Google is that, like it or not, their analytics and their knowledge of you as an individual helps produce better search results for you. Google will always be the better search engine.
That being said DuckDuckGo is definitely getting much better nowadays. Still end up going back to Google after a few days though.
by AriaMinaei on 5/18/19, 3:43 PM
I've had a very different experience. In most queries, I see better or equal results in DDG compared to Google, especially since DDG digs up less SEO heavy pages. But occasionally for certain queries, Google returns better results then DDG. I use the !g clause perhaps once a day.
by anoncake on 5/18/19, 2:31 PM
The fact that Google tends to ignore half the query does make that choice easier.
by klingonopera on 5/18/19, 10:49 PM
I've been on DDG since about November/December last year.
I thought I'd probably change back to the Gman within a few days, but I still use it.
And I only today found out about "!g" (I was literally typing "google.com/search?q=terms" into my address bar everytime).
Averaging about 1 in 5 searches I need to go to Google to get my results. Mostly stuff regarding popularity and currentness, like memes e.g., or (admittingly bad and lazy) natural language queries where Google also has an edge.
by moneytide1 on 5/18/19, 3:33 PM
The privacy aspect isn't necessarily what draws me in, but rather the simple arrow key search result parsing. Google used to have it but I cannot get it to work anymore. Allows me to very quickly skim many results using arrow down -> enter -> Alt+left -> repeat.
Also the ! command is amazing, no more wasted seconds on the homepages of youtube, amazon, ebay (!yt, !a, !e). Now if only we can add arrow key selection to those sites :)
by PorterDuff on 5/18/19, 3:23 PM
I've been using startpage lately and seem to prefer it to DDG, but they both can give inferior search.
At the risk of being repetitious, I think what I'd like is a completely private search engine that uses only a self-curated list of websites. A year or two of googling and using the good results from that would probably fix me for some time. As usual, switch to google if the results aren't good.
Getting rid of the cruft would be a nice thing.
by szatkus on 5/18/19, 8:26 PM
I use Duck on my desktop for about a year, I think. I noticed that Google got worse during that period to the point I switched default engine on my phone to DDG.
The only drawback I see that DDG sometimes returns strange results for local searches. Even with Poland switch. For example if I typed some restaurant's name I most likely would get some restaurant in Warsaw with the same or similar name.
by herodotus on 5/18/19, 2:48 PM
My biggest beef with ddg is that they do not localize my searches. If I search for "Ferry Schedule" for example, I want the nearest Ferry, not San Francisco. My tech related searches are probably fine on DDG, but my personal life searches (movies, transit, theatre, music, events.....) should all use the best available location information.
by quickthrower2 on 5/19/19, 7:46 PM
I’ve started the process:
* move google analytics to stat counter. Might consider their no cookie option.
* moved email to domain based plus zoho. Keeping web inbox zeroed so I’m not to dependent on web mail or zoho
* did a google takeout so I access to old emails of my acc gets shut down.
* Firefox/safari for home browsers
* duck duck go default SE
* ublock origin
In the other direction:
* using material design for a new side project!
by ravenstine on 5/18/19, 2:04 PM
Does anyone know how to donate to DDG? It doesn't say on their site, but I want to contribute to their success.
by tlack on 5/18/19, 2:33 PM
I've been working on a search engine as well. It's screen shot based. That's how frustrated I am using Goog!
Very buggy and can't take much load, but check it out: https://glorp.co/Search/Hacker%20News
by helph67 on 5/18/19, 10:31 PM
I have been using DDG instead of Google but recently became aware of StartPage
https://www.startpage.com/
They state they pay Google for their searches but don't track you.
by sizzle on 5/18/19, 6:39 PM
DDG loads painfully slow on Android chrome browser compared to Google search for me. Does anyone know if this is deliberate on Google part? Is there a way to speed up DDG search? I'm using a vpn ad blocker, I wonder if it's something in my host file...
by Normal_gaussian on 5/18/19, 2:22 PM
I've been using DDG for a year on my desktop, 6 mo. on phone and laptop, 1 mo. at work.
I don't get the people that are claiming worse results from DDG than google - the only thing I can think is that we write our searches differently. But that seems a long shot.
by hi41 on 5/18/19, 2:33 PM
There are some queries that governments would be very interested in knowing who did it. As an example could be the query how to make bomb. Does DuckDuckGo hand over this information to government agencies? Information such as ip address, user if etc?
by tagawa on 5/19/19, 5:42 AM
> I seriously don't know what kind of usage DuckDuckGo has right now
Still growing, thankfully. We make our search traffic public here:
https://duckduckgo.com/traffic
by rmtech on 5/18/19, 3:12 PM
Anecdotally I tried DuckDuckGo and found it really irritating. It is just a bad search engine and seems to not be very good at finding what you need unless what you need is something very common.
Surprisingly, Google seems to listen to what you actually type.
by akarki15 on 5/18/19, 2:45 PM
"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
100% sure any Google alternative is going to be equally "morally bad" if not worse once it gets even 1% of Google's traffic.
by viach on 5/18/19, 2:13 PM
Do you know that DDG is just a sophisticated proxy to another search engine under the hood, which probably has even lower standards for privacy than Google and using DDG you indirectly support it?
by omerh on 5/18/19, 2:26 PM
My default search engine for more than a year.
Mobile and desktop, rarely I use !g bang.
Also, dns are 1.1.1.1 / 1.1.0.0
Browsers are ff and safari.
Email is ProtonMail.
by temp on 5/18/19, 2:35 PM
If it offered results that even began to resemble relevance, I would, but Google's the only one covering my country's market with good results.
by cpv on 5/18/19, 2:25 PM
Aside from DDG, can anyone say anything about other available alternatives, like startpage.com, lite.qwant.com or searchencrypt.com?
by akvadrako on 5/18/19, 2:42 PM
I can't stand DDG because it doesn't have a verbatim mode; I end up having to wrap every word in quotes.
by toncontact on 5/18/19, 2:16 PM
Let’s start using DuckDuckGo all the time.
by jeromegv on 5/18/19, 2:05 PM
Started last week. So far so good.
by ddffre on 5/18/19, 3:12 PM
I started using it recently, but it doesn't feel as comfortable as google for me.
by linuxlizard on 5/18/19, 2:25 PM
I switched to DDG a few months ago. I've found it to meet my needs quite well.
by maverickmax90 on 5/18/19, 2:01 PM
startpage.com
Way better in search and privacy
by cvnyw on 5/18/19, 1:57 PM
I've been using it for a few months and I find myself using !g for like 4 out of 5 requests. Also image search is VERY slow, images load like in a slideshow. I'll end up going back to Google.
I like the idea of DDG and I have a strong dislike for Google but DDG is simply not there yet. Having said that it's better than it was five years ago, when it was simply insufferable. So, maybe in five years? ;)
by haunter on 5/18/19, 2:12 PM
Is the moral basis enough to use an inferior product? So just because Google is "bad" does it make ok to use an inferior product? How does that help me as an end user?
OP's only argument (Google is bad so use DDG) is not really convincing tbh