
DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use - braythwayt
https://www.bitlog.com/2020/03/06/duckduckgo-is-good-enough-for-regular-use/
======
burlesona
A few years ago I switched my desktops to use DDG while leaving my phone using
Google. At first I had to !g all the time. Now that’s rare.

Now I’m starting to have the other problem. If I search for a company,
product, person, etc., on DDG it’s the first hit. But on google I just get a
wall of ads and videos, and it’s hard to tell where the actual homepage is for
the thing I’m looking for.

So as of now I would say, google is still better if you’re looking for
something obscure and especially if you don’t know what it’s called. But today
I would say DDG is better if you are searching for something specific by name.

~~~
teekert
My story is the same! Also, when I want colouring pictures for my kids, DDG
just lets met tap them and print them. That is nolonger possible using Google
since some months. I also very much appreciate the code snippets when (already
started typing "Googling"!) Searching for code related things.

~~~
bloodorange
I recently had to search for something similar to this:

march 12 2019 + 366 days

and DuckDuckGo gave me exactly what I wanted while Google gave me not-very-
useful results.

~~~
schoen
The date command can also answer this question:

    
    
      $ date -d 'march 12 2019 + 366 days'
      Thu Mar 12 00:00:00 PDT 2020

~~~
tus88
I starting thinking about the Python equivalent of this and it was disgusting.

~~~
michael_j_ward
This?

    
    
      $ python -c 'import datetime; print(datetime.date(2019, 3, 12) + datetime.timedelta(days=366))'
      2020-03-12

~~~
tus88
Yes.

~~~
labster
Raku is a lot prettier than Python:

    
    
        perl6 -e 'say Date.new("2019-03-12").later( :366days )'
        2020-03-12
        perl6 -e 'say Date.new("2019-03-12") + 366'
        2020-03-12

~~~
jimnotgym
Probably because I have a finance background, I would go straight to Excel.

~~~
teekert
Which makes dates out of things that are not even dates! (Like gene names)

------
chuckgreenman
I think I've figured out what is happening when people tell me that
DuckDuckGo's results "aren't good enough".

What's really happening is that they've been trained to search a certain way
to using Google and because DDG doesn't have all the historical data of your
searches on their platform they can't fill in the gaps as well.

After a couple days using DDG I found the right vocabulary to get good local
results and which bangs to use to get results from the sites that I want. It's
a more effective tool if you learn how to use it.

~~~
whalesalad
A lot of DDG fans on HN blame the user or social conditioning and use that as
a crutch. It’s BS.

You need to provide clear examples of the differences in order to really make
this argument to someone who might switch.

What specifically are the differences? The last time this topic came up
someone told me I was a total noob because I didn’t know how to use search and
that was basically the extent of it.

~~~
hedora
Google gives me bad results. It ignores some of the words in my queries, and
the context boxes are generally spammy and irrelevant. Even if the correct
information is somewhere in the results page, I bounce before I can find it.

From what I can tell from the article, this might be because I type too much
stuff into the search bar, and because Google’s manually curated semantic web
stuff is not relevant to me.

However, I’m really not sure why I can’t use Google anymore. It was better
when I switched away, so I definitely used to be able to use it (I didn’t log
in back then either).

Ddg is fine, and more respectful to its users. I don’t have a practical reason
to figure out what the problem is.

~~~
tracker1
I switched for about a month... for most general searches ddg was as good or
better... when searching for development terms as a programmer, I found that
the ddg results were often worthless to me. The context that google has
associated to you specifically adds value to the results.

Since most of my searches were for technical libraries, components, etc, I
found myself searching again with !g more than half the time... after the
month was up, I switched back. There are a _LOT_ of things I like about ddg
though.

It would be nice if DDG offered search roles, that could prioritize certain
associated terms together for someone that is say a programmer, engineer,
social media person, etc. This could be opt-in to maybe a dozen categories to
skew results on one way or another, but not tied to a person per-se.

Also, a shorter domain name would help.

~~~
mdaniel
> Also, a shorter domain name would help.

I'm surprised your browser doesn't just search from the "awesome bar", making
navigating to the domain a non-event

However, the answer to your question is ddg.gg _(unknown if that 's short
enough, but it's only 3 keys to press)_

------
anderspitman
I switched over to DDG a few weeks ago. I slowly regressed to more and more !g
usage, and finally switched back to GOOG a couple days ago. Then just an hour
ago I searched for "google fiber stadia", because I was curious how well they
work together. The main reddit result opened in an amp page (and of course
reddit pressured me to install the mobile app). I went back to the results and
started scrolling down. I honestly couldn't tell at a glance what was ads,
amp, or normal links. I personally feel like I'm in a bit of a no-man's land
right now when it comes to search, but I think DDG really has a window of
opportunity.

~~~
188201
I found that searching was more difficult nowadays. Result from Google is
becoming worse, filling with content farm and ads. In some sense, that gave
opportunity to become a better search engine without any technical
improvement, but better marketing.

~~~
Rapzid
Search "phrases" are starting to return more and more useless results. I typed
in some phrase as a question and got back a list of news articles about
coronavirus. Can't recall what it was but it had nothing to do with
coronavirus.

More and more often it will drop words out of my search; import words. I can't
help but suspect it's because it has more ads to show me without the most
contextually important bits of my search.

Half the first pages are ads. The next few pages may be shopping results even
though I'm not searching for something to buy.

Something.. Happened on mobile. The search results now have a bunch of BS
"sections" before the actual search results section! WUT.

Seems to be getting harder and harder to craft the right searches to get good
results. I miss the days when people would write articles with headlines of
"<topic> sucks". Was so much easier to find counter opinions to stuff :/

------
speps
It's only good enough when you're in the US, I live in the UK and DDG
consistently returns non local results even though the country is set
correctly, it's especially annoying given how many US cities are named after
their UK counterpart.

~~~
motogpjimbo
Also in the UK. It's noticeable that for many search terms, DDG's top
autocomplete suggestion is the term you just typed, with "uk" tacked on the
end of it. That suggests that many users in the UK are finding DDG's search
results to be too US-centric.

~~~
KuiN
This is _by far_ my biggest issue with DDG. I've been trying to use it for
most of my searching and I'm fine with having to append '!g' to ~25% of my
searches, it's not ideal, but whatever, I can manage.

Having to append 'uk' to 90% of searches after the first results page is full
of useless American shit, for search terms that Google UK handles flawlessly,
gets old, very quick.

~~~
sefrost
Do you have United Kingdom toggled on?

~~~
KuiN
The results did get better after I discovered that setting a while back. But
it's still not close to good enough and I still have to manually stick 'uk'
onto a search to find relevant results for most queries.

------
alkonaut
It’s not. Not even close. There should be some sort of “search benchmark” that
could show this more objectively.

A table of searches with search queries and the _correct first resukt_. In
maby cases it’s clear what the correct result is (Search for a major company
and I want their website index page for example). In other cases the expected
result is “what google does”, e.g when searching for “123 GBP in USD”.

It’s not that DDG doesn’t let me find what I want eventually, it’s that it
doesn’t have the right result as #1 which is extremely frustrating when you
are used to the I’m feeling lucky-click on the first result without reading.

To switch I’d want google quality results with zero added effort on my part
e.g in learning better DDG-querying or accepting a slightly longer time to
browse results. That’s pretty tough to pull off without the resources and data
that Google has.

~~~
igravious
Absolutely. Completely anecdotally I know but I switched to the Brave browser
recently to try it out. It came with DDG installed by default so I started
using it in the omnibar or whatever it's called. Like many here I do some
coding so I've been looking up stuff to do with Ruby, Vue.js. APIs, and the
lambda calculus. DDG results were not very helpful so I've gotten used to
navigating to google.com just like the old days.

As in, I'm so used to ctrl+t and type something to search that I had to train
myself to type begin typing google.com again. Yeah, I could switch the default
search engine but being forced to compare results is a good habit. These
articles about how DDG is hit the front page time and again on Hackernews,
this has never been my experience. I appreciate the privacy aspects 100% so
I'd actually prefer if it was genuinely competitive with the big G but sadly
this has never been my experience.

------
duncan-donuts
I’ve been using ddg for a little over 5 years. Those first few years of use I
found myself using !g a ton, but I think ddg’s results are actually better
now. Not that the search is necessarily better, but I don’t have to wade
through a bunch of ads. I know this is a tired position around here but
honestly there’s very little I get out of google’s search that I don’t get
from ddg.

~~~
CivBase
I've been using DDG for about three years now and I still use !g a lot, but I
really shouldn't. Google practically never finds what I'm looking for if DDG
can't.

~~~
beckingz
90% of the time I use !g, google doesn't have anything in the first few pages
either.

------
Grimm1
To my knowledge duck duck go uses Bing's search API to get their results. To
me Bing and Google have not been sufficient for my searching needs and the
needs of a large group around me for a long time now.

On a separate but related issue because DDG is using Bing the overall
experience is lackluster, as other user's have noted things like very slow to
re-index new results, new information climbs up to the top very slowly and
often times I have to switch off their search with a ! command to get my
results because they just aren't working. But if I have to do that I'd rather
be on that other search site entirely.

To be fair google also for the last few years has also started providing a
very lack luster search experience and using dark patterns around their
results to get you to click ads.

They all kind of suck.

My opinion is biased though because I'm currently working on a new search
engine to solve these things.

~~~
josefresco
It's actually Bing+ other sources, there's a page on their site that explains
it.

And I had the same opinion as you, until I started using it every day. My
habit was as follows: When I didn't get good results, I would switch back to
Google and run the same query. Over time I found more "purple" links in Google
indicating DDG was giving me almost the same (sometimes better) results.

~~~
Grimm1
That's an interesting process, I'll have to give it a try ;)

I mentioned it above but Google has also been giving me worse results in
recent years so I genuinely believe there's a better way to do these things
and do them in a way that is also more respectful of the users.

------
orthoxerox
I use DDG as the primary search engine on my own devices and Google at work.

DDG is still worse than Google in the following aspects:

\- autocompletion is crap, DDG thinks that "lyrics" is a word that improves
every search

\- DDG is worse at searching SO/Reddit/GitHub. Just a few days ago I was
looking for a solution to an issue with my 3D printer, and DDG missed the most
useful Reddit post

\- a filter bubble is often a good thing, I don't search for political news,
but Google knows I usually search for technical issues, so where DDG is happy
to return results about tabletop games, rock formations and corrosion, Google
knows I am looking for Go, Nim, Crystal and Rust.

------
irrational
I’ve been using DDG exclusively for years. People talk about how hard it is to
switch, but I’ve never had any trouble getting exactly the results I’m
searching for. I sometimes wonder what makes google search results so amazing,
but not enough to risk it.

~~~
magicalhippo
Guess it depends on domain. I've changed the default in Firefox a few weeks
ago and find that for "regular" searching DDG is enough that I don't go to
Google.

But for specialized searches I frequently reach for the Google override, and
sure enough Google has significantly better results. Like searching specific,
weird errors messages and such.

~~~
irrational
That’s the thing. The vast majority of my searches are development/coding
related. I always find what I’m looking for in the first few returns. I
sometimes wonder if I’d get even better results on google?

~~~
magicalhippo
In my experience yes. But as I said, often the DDG is good enough.

------
wycy
Agreed. I tried it a few times over the years and found the results to be
pretty poor, but I tried again recently and found the results to be good
enough to fully switch both my computer and phone to DDG.

Although I'm fully switched over, there are 2 drawbacks:

* Since DDG tracks you less, the results for local searches may be worse. If you're in Boston, TX you'll probably want to search for "boston, tx restaurants" whereas I'm guessing Google could handle "boston restaurants" if your location is in Boston, TX.

* Finding brand new results seems a bit harder. I found this especially true when searching for election results. Searching for, e.g., "nevada election results" was showing me results from 2016 and 2018 on the day of those elections this year. Now the DDG results seem to correctly point to 2020 results.

~~~
onychomys
I live in Rochester, MN, and that's how I can say with some certainty that
google doesn't do a good job of using your location in their search algorithm.
If you just search for something simple like "Rochester library hours", it'll
default to Rochester NY. Everybody in my town has learned that we have to use
"Rochester MN library hours". I get that the one in NY has ten times more
residents than we do, but it's not like we're some backwater here!

------
ebg13
I'll believe this when the third result for "filled torus" isn't "Cum Filled
Pussy Porn Videos" unless safe search is enabled. DDG's contextual awareness
is abysmal.

~~~
auiya
Maybe you just under-estimate the prevalence of porn searches on the Internet?
Once could easily argue that your esoteric geometry search is likely not
nearly as common as the results they returned you on what they surmised was a
porn search with a typo for instance.

~~~
kazinator
Maybe they should simply re-label their settings, for starters.

The safe search has three levels: "off", "moderate" and "strict".

I would call this the "Adult content" setting, and the choices would be
"prefer", "neutral", and "suppress". These would just map exactly to the
semantics of the current three choices.

Transitioning to the "prefer" option could require some dialog or check box
tick-off to state that the search engine will emphasize adult material, and
the user must confirm their adulthood to enable this mode.

Thus under the "Adult content: prefer" setting, you would then be getting what
you asked for. Your queries are interpreted as searching for porn, and "filled
torus" behaves accordingly.

Since the very presence of such an option might be seen as offensive, or as
promoting pornography (i.e. that DDG is effectively a porn search engine since
it has an option for preferentially finding adult material), that option could
itself be hidden somehow. To access the option at all would require confirming
through a dialog.

Also, there should be a "kid friendly" version of duckduckgo at an alternative
URL, with immutably safe settings and and possibly altered search behaviors
for even greater safety. Parents could point at that, and block/redirect the
main one.

With that idea, what if simply one had to go to adult.duckduckgo.com to be
able to search with safe-search "off", regardless of their settings? I.e. if
you go to duckduckgo.com, then "off" is treated as "moderate". Only at
adult.duckduckgo.com is it actually "off".

~~~
clarry
> I would call this the "Adult content" setting, and the choices would be
> "prefer", "neutral", and "suppress". These would just map exactly to the
> semantics of the current three choices.

I honestly think a better idea would be tagging all results. A lot of the
irritation with search engines seems to come from the fact that words can be
so overloaded and ambiguous. It's unreasonable to expect that any search
engine could return what you want in the first 20 results if there's no way to
narrow down results by tags and categories. Porn shouldn't be the only
category that gets special treatment.

For example, sometimes I want to search about how to make foo, and I get pages
and pages of results about... crafting foo in games. At that point I'd like to
turn off all results that have to do with games or fiction. Or enable
categories about.. actually making stuff?

And speaking of games, it's fucking irritating that the results aren't tagged
so when you try to look up information about a game in a series, you get tons
of results about more recent sequels and it can be really hard to filter those
out.

------
vesinisa
I don't know. I am using DDG from outside the U.S. but with English as the
primary search language. The Google's localized results are just an order of
magnitude better. I end up re-doing almost 10-20% of my searches in Google
after being dissapointed with DDG results. Most of the time Google results are
sadly superior.

And don't get me even started in searching in my native language (Finnish).
DDG is close to useless there, since it can not parse the different, obscure
word forms we use (although I type word X in form A, I want my searches to
include results in of word X in semantically related forms B and C). Google
did not initially parse Finnish very well, but it eventually became amzingly
good something like a decade ago.

~~~
benhurmarcel
For the same reason I find DDG very useful when I don’t want localized
results, which is hard to get with Google. I currently live in Spain and
Google returns mostly Spanish results, even on unrelated queries like
programming or a device review.

~~~
vesinisa
Be sure to set your search language to English. It will still return localized
results, but in English.

------
onychomys
Like the author, I switched over when the google ad thing happened, and for
the same reason. But instead of DDG, I decided to try out ecosia (
[https://www.ecosia.org](https://www.ecosia.org) ) which is a wrapper over
Bing. But they'll take all the ad revenue and use it to plant trees. So I get
decent search results (bing isn't quite as good as google, but it's pretty
decent for what I need) and also get to save the earth a little bit.

------
typpo
To add a little data on this thread, here's a list of queries that I
subsequently !g'ed over a 30 day period. Maybe Duck/Bing developers will find
it useful:
[https://gist.github.com/typpo/605a7cd9da88c3be061c6958a31fa2...](https://gist.github.com/typpo/605a7cd9da88c3be061c6958a31fa2ed)

Aside from a limited set of head queries where they've added their own custom
stuff, DDG is a wrapper around Bing. The results are identical and any
webmaster can tell you that Duckduckbot is not crawling the web like
Google/Bing.

In the same way that "Google is an advertising company", I see DDG as a
marketing company. They've done a good job marketing Bing results with a
privacy wrapper. I recognize the value, but it's different from competing
directly on search.

------
Thaxll
I strongly disagree, especially when you have all the Wikipedia / contact /
google map embedded into Google search, with one click it can call phone
number from a restaurant.

Edit: To add more, it's all those details that makes Google better than other,
search engine are not just for searching things it's all about the display and
relevance.

~~~
brann0
Mmmh, if you search for a place in the maps tab instead of the general one you
usually have a telephone url you can tap to start a phone call.

I still find that you're using a very specific use case of a search engine to
completely dismiss not using a different search engine.

~~~
PunchTornado
it's not a specific case. if I type federer on google I get a list of all his
recent matches and live scores so it is easy to follow. A lot of my searches
on google are like that. I don't even have to click on any links.

------
Jaxkr
No it isn’t. I try to switch every few months, usually sticking with it as my
only search engine on mobile and desktop. The results suck, and it is
completely lacking in information about real-time topics.

Just compare the results for a live sports game across DuckDuckGo and Google.
Or the query “democratic primary”.

In both of these google presents relevant accessible information while DDG
does not.

DuckDuckGo wastes your time but protects your privacy. At the moment Google‘s
results are so much better that I am willing to give up privacy in exchange
for convenience.

I will continue trying DuckDuckGo every few months. Hopefully someday I will
not feel drawn back to Google.

------
cpascal
DDG is my daily driver and I do not miss Google Search in the slightest. I
rarely need to !g and its often futile because Google returns nearly the same
results.

However, my favorite feature of DDG is it's native dark theme.

~~~
jamespullar
I just decided to try DDG out because of this post and am so happy there's a
native dark theme. Now if only Github would release one!

------
pricees
I recently switched to DDG after giving it a shot 2 years ago and finding it
wanting.

Good, bad, or indifferent, I land on the same 5-10 platforms (or did Google
only promote those platforms??) for 95% of my searches. This makes
DuckDuckGo's !bang commands more efficient than a Google search.

Google wins for completely agnostic default searches and rich map
functionality. For everything else, I am very satisfied with DDG.

------
elagost
Most people, I believe, could be served just fine by most "Free" alternatives.
Many people, I believe, wouldn't notice if you replaced 1) their desktop OS
with GNU/Linux, 2) their browser with Firefox, 3) their search engine with
DuckDuckGo, 4) MS office with LibreOffice or FreeOffice, and 5) their various
smartphone apps and social media services with webapps and/or Free
alternatives.

How is this surprising? As long as it "just works" most people are going to be
fine and won't really notice a difference.

I !g occasionally in DDG (which I've been using full time for over 4 years)
but have found that Google's results aren't better, just different.

------
pnako
It's not. I'm not a big fan of Google the company, but Google the search
engine finds what I'm looking for.

If I type "the two magicians from TV" in Google, I get what I'm looking for
(Penn and Teller). It's way down the list in DDG.

I suspect DDG is a glorified regex, whereas Google is able to infer
connections and figure out what I meant.

------
bprasanna
Switched to DDG 3 years back! Only to check if Google lists anything
different, checked it rarely. DDG is very GOOD imho. Since, you see organic
results mostly based on the ranking rather than preference to mobile sites,
AMP & advertisers, it feels refreshing and good.

------
metastart
I care about true privacy and transparency...so I use the Epic Privacy Browser
and their ad-free and transparent EpicSearch.in.

The claim in the blog post and by DuckDuckGo "They do not collect or share
personal information" can not be true depending on how you define personal
information since search ads are localized on DuckDuckGo. Incidentally,
DuckDuckGo refuses to disclose what data they send to Bing/Yahoo to retrieve
search ads (forget about open source, they're not even transparent). This
claim is further in question as their search ads link directly to Yahoo/Bing
so they direct your IP and personal information directly to them -- while one
can see those links while hovering on the links, it's not plainly disclosed
(especially for non-technical users). Fundamentally their business is built on
sending your personal information to Bing.

The results in EpicSearch aren't as good as Bing/Yahoo/DuckDuckGo nor as
Google...but they are quite close to any intuitive idea of being private and
are as good or better at times at least 80% of the time...so from there I'll
click on to Bing or Google if I need more results.

------
newscracker
If we are comparing anecdotes, like in this article, DDG is still not good
enough for me for certain kinds of queries. My default search engine is DDG,
but even today I had to switch to startpage (!s) for some searches. IIRC,
these were just some searches related to some themes and features of Ghost
(the publishing platform), Hugo (static site generator), etc. In my daily use,
I still rely on startpage, and the next level, which is Google (!g), to get to
what I need.

Forget about instant answers and similar things. DDG’s index of the web is not
as vast as Google’s...or maybe it is but it’s unable to figure out relevance
as well as Google does.

I still recommend DDG to people and tell them about a few bang commands. But
as of today, DDG is not something I can totally rely on within the scope of
its search results.

The new Edge browser from Microsoft uses Bing as the default search engine. It
works better than DDG for several cases (for me), but whenever it doesn’t, I
miss the bang commands that make the act of performing the same search on
another engine so quick and easy.

------
alex_young
I switched for a month and went back to Google.

DDG is about 95% there for me, but that missing 5% is the crucial on point
results for technical questions I rely on.

In these cases DDG point me at useful stuff, but not as useful as Google, and
that edge costs time spent traversing and sorting information.

I’m happy there is a good competition here and I’ll try again, but for now I’m
happy with Google results even with the ads.

------
mcyukon
I've been using DDG for about the last 2 years. The only thing that throws me
for a loop once in awhile is that some local businesses only have their open
hours entered with Google. Searching for that business in DDG will show their
address but not their open hours. Their hours are also not listed on facebook,
Yelp, or TripAdvisor. Where as on Google, it's right there in their little
knowledge panel on the right.

A business where this is happening: Pho 5 Star Vietnamese Cuisine - Whitehorse
Yukon

Other than that, most of the time DDG gets me better results than Google. I
work in the trades and look up a lot of tools/tool reviews and google results
are a dumpster fire of bad results full of these odd adsites that all look
similar, have obvious generated URLs, and clone amazon descriptions and
reviews. They are also ranked high on page 1 of Googles search results, and
the trust worthy sites are getting pushed down or even to the next page.

------
yingw787
I switched from Chrome/Google to Firefox/DDG three months ago, as part of a
larger switch from macOS to laptop Ubuntu. There are things I don't like about
DDG. DDG continually offers to play YouTube videos in its own window due to
privacy concerns, and it's not clear to me when it redirects and when it
offers its own window. Some searches don't work well; for example, "weather
22203" returns weather for Arlington, TX instead of Arlington, VA in the DDG
modal, and for things like precipitation I still need to g! the query.

These minor concerns are all peanuts compared to the benefits though. I've
found I'm very much a "live free or die" kind of guy, and I like how both
Firefox and DDG care about the user. I also like how they work well without
too much configuration out of the box :P

------
scarecrowbob
I moved away from Chrome and Google about 6 months ago.

There are two places where I find DDG to be better:

\- when I know specifically what page/site I am looking for, but don't know
the address

\- when I am looking for results that are heavily monetized (like, say, which
pedal steel guitar amp might be suited to my project)

I still find myself using g!, especially when the first couple of results for,
say, a cryptic log message or esoteric programming term aren't giving me what
I want.

If I know it's a hard to search term, or a specific image result, I will just
default to g!

But even if, say, 60% of the time I'm using g!, I still feel better because I
feel like DDG is a less "creepy" system and using it as a default at least
leaves some amount of a hole in one company's records of my activities.
(admittedly, that's a goofy and questionable reason).

------
tjakab
I switched over from Google to DDG back in 2013 and never looked back. I use
it heavily on a day to day basis ranging from obscure java error messages for
my job to just general searches and once in a great while I have to throw a !g
in front of the search, but that's really it.

------
mneubrand
I switched a few month back and it's still painful for me. Plain search
results are OK but Google is so much better with deep integrations.

Some examples:

\- I google a sports team, it shows me most recent results

\- I google a flight number, it shows me flight status

\- I google.g. nyse djia, it shows me the current stock value

Unlike the author of this post I very much miss these. Now this means having
to click through and find this info on flightaware, ESPN, some finance page,
etc. instead of just immediately getting what I want

------
roryokane
I switched to DuckDuckGo not for privacy, though that is nice, but to get away
from a horrid misfeature Google introduced a year or so ago that moves links
out from under my cursor right as I try to click on them. Specifically, it's
Google's "People also search for" links.

Those links used to appear as just another box in the search results. But then
Google made them appear when you click a search result and then navigate Back
to the search results page. When I go back, usually I am planning to click on
the search result below the one I had just clicked on. But right as I move my
mouse to where the next search result was and click, a box expands under the
link I had just visited with suggested searches. Whenever that box appears, I
always end up clicking one of the suggested search links instead of the search
result I was aiming for.

Google's testers probably don't notice the problem because they are slow to
acquire targets with the mouse. They probably click on the Back button with
their mouse instead of using a keyboard shortcut like I do. But I'm sticking
with DuckDuckGo, because it doesn't ever shift the search results around on
the page while I'm looking at it.

------
guerrilla
Funny you should ask. This morning I was apparently talking in my sleep,
angrily saying "Don't delete my fucking search terms!" I've been using DDG for
about 5 years but I feel it's actually been getting worse in that it more
often randomly deletes terms when whatever I'm searching for is too specific
for it's heuristic. On the other hand, Google does the exact same thing.

------
madoublet
I use DDG, but do not currently recommend it to others. I think you still have
to be cautious about the results it surfaces b/c it doesn't have the same
anti-spam mechanisms in place that Google has. For instance, I recently
searched for holding mail for the USPS and the first result was a scam site
that looked pretty convincing. So, I like the idea of DDG but still do not
fully trust it.

------
greenimpala
Switched 6 months ago on all devices, I actually prefer the experience, I have
discovered a bunch of really interesting small independent websites and blogs
through it too (wasn't that the original idea of the internet!?).

Once or twice a week I need !g to search for a programming specific query.
There's still some improvement needed when searching for all the weird
characters we use in software.

------
Dkastro92
At the moment it's pretty good if you want to fact check something, for almost
everything else google is way better (especially for news).

~~~
mnd999
Agree, news search is the thing I go back to google most for.

------
giantrobot
I switched to DDG soon after they launched. I've been using search engines
since the days of WebCrawler and out of habit still search today like I did
back then. I don't do natural language queries, I search for keywords and want
to use logical operators to narrow down my search. I also usually know some
sites to search for things so I regularly limit searched with "site:...".

For most of the past decade Google's support for the way _I_ think about
searching has sucked. They got obsessed with tailoring results to users and
linking everything to their profiles. They also went nuts with natural
language search, filling results pages with bullshit, and letting paid
placement overtake meaningful search results.

For me this was all made worse because I don't stay logged into accounts and I
don't use GMail as my primary e-mail. When I need to log into account I do so
in a private browser window. I also use ad blockers and have for decades now.

This all adds together to make Google useless for me. I'm sure plenty of
people like their features but they don't do me any good.

It's aggravating to me because for a while in the 00s, before the DoubleClick
reverse buyout, Google's search was vastly superior to the competition. Where
all others were inundated with keyword spam and other early SEO bullshit
Google returned germane results for just about everything. Their search page
ads were even relevant because they were looking at _what I had searched for_
instead of some historical profile.

DDG is closest to what old Google search used to be. I don't want to ask
questions in an NLP search box most of the time. When I do I'll go to
WolframAlpha. I'm really interested in just a full text search of the web with
good result sorting. This is what old Google did fantastically and current DDG
does well enough for my needs.

------
lostgame
Very strange timing on what is unfortunately a horribly inaccurate title based
on my personal experience.

I tried swapping to DuckDuckGo yesterday on my iPhone as the primary search
tool and reverted unfortunately back to Google after only two hours.

It’s hard to define all of the reasons the ‘mobile’ experience is so
unbearable, but I’ll try:

1) No video or image results at the top of the page when that is most
relevant.

2) No IMDB/overviews for movies, music, books, etc.

3) I am used to one of the first results in my search consistently being
Wikipedia. This was the case about 1/3rd of the time vs. Google.

4) Results often appeared extremely out of order in terms of relevancy vs.
Google, with the actual relevant like often being on the second(!) page.

5) Personal taste, but super relevant - In terms of UI/UX, the interface feels
dated, actually harkening back to the days of AltaVista - I’m unfortunately
honest when I say I feel like I’m using something designed 10-15 years ago.

6) Autocomplete seemed to have significant issues, and, for some reason,
sometimes even taking several seconds to appear.

I couldn’t express my disappointment enough. I _really_ wanted to give up the
ghost, and just move on from Google - but I am so used to so many of the
apparently fantastic nuances of Google, I believe it will unfortunately take
4-5 years before I can even get past enough of these significant issues to
make it worth using.

On Desktop - the experience seems to be significantly better. I can’t even
point out enough reasons why it’s so poor on mobile, it could unfortunately
fill several blog posts and I don’t have time to point out the myriad of
issues and inconsistencies here at this time.

If there’s jobs available at DDG - I’d love to help, in all seriousness.

~~~
psweber
It's not going to be convenient to get off any Google product. If privacy and
escaping algorithm bubbles is important enough to you, DDG can probably be
"good enough".

~~~
lostgame
Unfortunately I need a search engine to be functional. The trade off privacy
is certainly not worth it, and the algorithms aren’t half as good, at least in
terms of search results. It’s a damn shame.

------
VikingCoder
It's Lent, so I just searched for "Fish Tacos" and clicked on Map. It showed
four places, none of which are anywhere near me. I click on Directions and it
takes me to Bing.

Do the same thing on Google, see a dozen places in my neighborhood, and I get
Google Maps navigation.

What do you get in your searches for Fish Tacos? Do you have a better
experience with DDG?

~~~
calderarrow
I'm a die-hard DDG fan, but for some things -- particularly mapping related
issues -- google maps is so superior. I append a !gm to my searches for stores
and it automatically opens in google maps.

~~~
ce4
Google Maps has a number of features that contribute to that:

* maps timeline (location recording)

* maps "local guides" status with

* Gamification for POI data enrichment

* Google Survey app with payouts per survey finished

------
weystrom
I find myself using !g more than I'd like to, even before I even look at DDG
results. I just don't seem to trust it with complex queries and go straight to
google. But it has gotten better, that's true.

Side effect - I started using built-in Firefox wikipedia and Stackoverflow
search way more, skipping DDG and Google altogether.

------
stiglitz
Anyone got a specific search term that gave poor results on ddg compared to
google or vice versa?

I see zero specific examples in the comments right now. For all I know, you
people are searching for “howbakecarrotsovengsgshd”. In my experience there’s
no difference in quality worth talking about between any of the popular search
engines.

------
tomxor
> Most of my searches relate to my job, which means that most of my searches
> are technical queries.

Recently I've found google infuriating for technical searches because it has
started automatically searching for "what it thinks you meant", which when
using technical terms or program parameters etc are always wrong.

------
TheRealPomax
It really isn't. It was great for a while but has become progressively less
useful and more nonsense filled in its results over the last 2 years to the
point where today I still have it set as default search engine, but for almost
everything immediately go "oh ffs" and research with !g added.

------
microcolonel
It used to be that Google would handle unstructured queries better for me, but
lately things I'm looking for are, without explanation, invisible, or demoted
to the fifth or sixth page.

For me at least, the average search result quality from DuckDuckGo for me is
better than Google.

I think there three main difficult scenarios remaining with DuckDuckGo:

1) If your query is very abstract, and you don't know what to call the thing
you're talking about, DuckDuckGo will less often be able to figure out what
you're talking about.

2) If your query is not in English, Chinese, or Russian (and probably a
handful of other languages which they/their vendors support well), it may have
a hard time making your query general enough to return results.

3) If you really care about local results, you may not be satisfied unless you
provide location information in the query, and maybe not even then.

------
bonsai80
I agree. I have switched and used to feel like the switch was failing when I
had to use Google for some things, but realized that's just fine. I also
occasionally use Wolfram Alpha for things too. Both there if needed, but
otherwise getting great results from a company that respects me.

------
thethethethe
I use DuckDuckGo as the primary browser on my phone so I don’t accidentally
search things on my corporate Google account and I can say the DDG is
demonstrably worse in many situations.

If you have no idea how to spell a complex word, you can type absolute
gibberish into Google and it will know what you meant. DDG will figure it out
sometimes but less frequently.

Google also has better answer cards than DDG. Try searching “Facebook revenue”
on DDG and Google. Google gives you the answer and DDG shows you nothing.

The notion that DDG is better than Google, which is only ever evangelized in
these HN threads, is delusional idealism. Sure, DDG has some nice features
(namely not being Google), but suggesting that it is better than Google and
that the billions of unwashed masses are wrong about Google is silly and kind
of elitist.

------
gerash
Can somebody explain why anyone should use DDG instead of Google when they are
both free and ad funded?

I just issued my last Google query (some Mac OS troubleshooting) and the
results were not even close. I understand that they try to differentiate by
claiming they don't store previous queries and are stateless and not
personalized in a sense which is a bug IMHO not a feature. Yet they sell it as
privacy.

If one doesn't like their search queries stored remotely the real private
solution is for the search engine to run locally which sounds technically
hard/infeasible or some differential privacy magic to obscure individual
queries (I'm not sure how exactly) but DDG doesn't seem to have any benefit
over Google in a meaningful way.

That said, extra competition is always good for consumers

------
wickerman
I use DDG as my main search engine - for most things it works just fine, when
I can't find what I'm looking for I go to google. I find it hilarious that the
image search function works a lot like Google used to in the past - I'm
constantly looking for reference when drawing and more often than not if you
type something innocuous like "man with hand in front of face" you'll end up
with a first page full of porn in DDG whereas it's all SFW in Google, even
with all restrictions off. Luckily DDG offers a nudity filter which works
pretty well - even if it still fails to catch the odd gore picture.

------
realradicalwash
i've been using DDG for a few years now. i generally like it a lot. however, i
have decided to stop using them for image search. their filters are just not
good enough.

two examples: I've searched for some kind of speedo (jammers?) and got to see
a really problematic image I thought of reporting to the police. and just
recently, i image searched 'martin from the simpsons', because I came across
his name and forgot which character that was. near the top of the results were
some really wtf images (now removed). I don't want to see that stuff - so if
anyone at DDG sees this: please up your image filters.

------
mdrachuk
I have ddg setup as default on my laptop, phone and iPad for over the year.
I’m using google fallback almost half of the time. In particular, non-English
queries and software development queries are way better in google.

------
TomVDB
I switched to DDG for my desktop, laptop and phone a few weeks ago.

I'm on the fence about switching back: I find myself using g! all the time to
get (better) Google results.

I want anything related to soccer (national competitions standings, live
results, match results, ...)? DDG doesn't have it.

Anything where I know up front that the result will be in some forum? DDG
almost never has it.

Some kind of local news event, whether recent or not? Don't count on DDG.

Typo correction is worse. Relevance of the result is worse. Contextual
understanding is close to non-existent.

Only for the most basic search operations, DDG is fine for me. Other than
that, it's g!.

I wish it were different.

~~~
dmode
Soccer is a great example. Searching "Chelsea" in Google vs DDG demonstrates
the differences between the two.

------
marssaxman
DuckDuckGo has certainly been good enough for my regular use for several years
now. Switching the search engine to DDG is part of my standard new-browser
setup, along with resetting the "new tab" content to blank and installing
uBlock Origin.

I may have had an easier switch because I never used a google account, and
thus never had to deal with personalized search results. I also never liked
the natural-language style of search query - too fuzzy - and have continued
using the same kind of keyword-based searches that worked when the web was
young.

------
astatine
I have DDG set up as the default search engine and it works quite well. I
would think that I don't need to use g! about 75% of the time. When the result
is from wikipedia or stack overflow or some similar popular site, DDG works
alright but seems to miss specialized blogs. So if I don't find the answer on
the mainstream sites I find myself doing g! more often.

75% is not bad at all and if you approach with that perspective then DDG works
just great but if you think you should never have to use Google, then please
wait - not sure how long.

------
almstimplmntd
A bit tangential but related: has anyone else noticed an increased frequency
in the desired result of a Google search being the first one on the second
page?

Particularly for things involving reviews or booking, I have noticed an uptick
in the (subjectively) “right” result being kept off page 1... it seems almost
like some post processing logic to favor specific sites/companies. The fact
that the “right” result in these instances is almost always the first result
makes me think the true Ranking function knows the result’s actual value.

------
topherPedersen
DuckDuckGo actually does a better job of indexing all of my blog posts than
Google does. I discovered this when attempting to use Google to search for one
of my blog posts using a domain specific query("site:myblog.com") and was
unable to find the post I was searching for. However, I was able to easily
find my blog post using the same query on DuckDuckGo. This made quite an
impression on me as it was the first chink in Google's armor that I've seen.

------
computerex
I have tried to do this a couple times and have always had to resort to
switching back to Google. As a software engineer I use Google heavily and do
dozens of searches a day. In my personal qualitative experience Google seems
to return better results for technical queries.

For day to day use I think DDG is more than sufficient however. I think DDG is
certainly usable even for my work related searches but it simply takes longer
to arrive to the answer in my experience.

------
Wheaties466
I've been using DDG on my one browser for the past 3 years and the amount of
things I have to search twice, once through DDG and then again in google is
absurd.

------
k_bx
What's interesting, for me, a Ukrainian guy, it became better than Google as a
default. Google ignores my settings that set to only Ukrainian and English
results and constantly throws Russian at me, be it Russian Wikipedia (horrible
place) or Russian version of MDN articles and similar things.

DuckDuckGo is "ok", and often times when you think "omg, results are shit,
Google would work here", Google shows same results.

------
habosa
I am really trying to use DDG more but I dunno, it's not very good in my
experience.

Specifically these use cases fail:

    
    
      * When searching for local business / places.
    
      * When searching for something I want to buy.
    
      * The news index doesn't seem very real-time.
    
    

However it has some things I love:

    
    
      * !twitter to search Twitter!
    
      * Sometimes non-personalized results help me find something outside my bubble

------
Semaphor
DDG is great for anything that has many results. Obscure errors? They decide
to ignore half your query and show you pages of completely unrelated results.
Even when there is no result, I wouldn’t know with DDG. For normal searches I
never need !g, for obscure problems I always do because DDG (or maybe Bing? I
don’t know how the integration exactly works) for some arcane reason
deliberately breaks their own search.

------
mason55
I tried switching a bunch of times over the years but finally in the last six
months or so I've found DDG to be good enough to use full time.

I probably went three or four months without even using the "!g" command. I
actually just yesterday ran into some issues and had to use "!g" \- for some
reason DDG struggled with the concept of "fish shell" and kept bringing me
back results about seafood.

~~~
davegauer
Strange, my top three DDG results for 'fish shell' are for the friendly
interactive shell. Maybe you just have really good seafood around your area?

------
artursapek
How sad is it that this is the best way to make a substantial announcement on
Twitter. A pixelated image of text. Twitter should work on some less-
frequently-used tweet mode that allows for more characters for stuff like
this.

[https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1220768243318571008](https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1220768243318571008)

------
jccalhoun
I wish DDG all the best but for me, "good enough" isn't enough. I don't care
about tracking so that isn't a real incentive for me either. I use Bing for my
main search because they bribe me with points I can use to buy Amazon gift
cards. It regularly isn't good enough so I regularly end up at google.

I want more competition in search so I'm glad people use DDG but it isn't for
me yet

------
uk_programmer
The only thing that Google is significantly better at than google in location
based searches in the UK i.e. local businesses. DDG map search is wrong for me
about 50% of the time.

Everything else is pretty much the same as google or better in some cases
(google seems to de-rank certain things). The code snippets when just quickly
searching "How do I do <X> in <programming language L>" is quite nice.

------
JackMcMack
I love duckduckgo, but for some reason my home ip address (new-to-me but
fixed) seems to be banned on at least one server, and I have to flush my dns
cache often to be able to reach duckduckgo.com . I've tried reaching out to
info@duckduckgo.com but only got a generic "thanks for the feedback response",
and I don't have twitter. Is anyone from duckduckgo reading this?

------
ara24
I have been using duckduckgo on all browsers, including mobiles, for 2-3 years
now. There are occasions when I don't get good results. But when I try the
same query on G, the results are equally useless. So, I have since stopped
using anything else.

Although, I should say, bing was equally good when I used it before
duckduckgo, until they added that horrendous news feed in the bottom.

------
vstuart
Non-Docker Local Installation of searX on Linux |
[https://persagen.com/2020/02/02/searx.html](https://persagen.com/2020/02/02/searx.html)

searX is a free metasearch engine with the aim of protecting the privacy of
its users.

    
    
        * searX does not share users’ IP addresses or search history.
        * Tracking cookies served by the search engines are blocked.
        * searX queries do not appear in search engine webserver logs.
    

In addition to the general search, the engine also features tabs to search
within specific domains:

General | Files | Images | IT | Maps | Music | News | Science | Social Media |
Videos

Notably:

    
    
        * Each search result is given as a direct link to the respective site,
          rather than a tracked redirect link as used by Google.
    
        * When available, these direct links are accompanied by “cached” and/or
          “proxied” links that allow viewing results pages without 
          actually visiting the sites in question.
    
        * The “cached” links point to saved versions of a page on archive.org, while
          the “proxied” links allow viewing the current live page
          via a searX-based web proxy.
    

Tip: I do a lot of technical searches (StackOverflow …) and in my preliminary
use of searX

I find that selecting “General” (only) as the Default Category (in
Preferences) gives the best results.

------
SirLotsaLocks
It really is, I've been using ddg for a few months now near exclusively. The
bangs, though I still haven't gotten particularly fluent in them, really help
sell it for people who aren't sure (like I was). Now like others in this
thread have said, for more obscure things like when im bug fixing I use google
but for most things ddg is sufficient.

------
crashbunny
Everyone is talking about the quality of results, but how much better is it in
terms of tracking and sharing data?

ATM I'm using quant.com, a french company bound by European privacy laws. It
has its own index and I rarely need to use google.

I have no idea who is better in terms of privacy but I'm preferring the french
company over the American duckduckgo atm.

------
rudolph9
It’s gotten better! I still use google for very obscure things but the vast
majority of my searches these days are duckduckgo

------
GoofballJones
Been using DDG now for over a year and I would say, for me, it's about 95%
accurate in finding what I want found. It's rare now that I go to Google to
search for anything.

DDG is the default search engine on Firefox and Safari for me. I no long use
Chrome (it's not even loaded on this computer) and rarely Google.com itself.

------
ufo
Does anyone know if there is a way to emulate DDG's bangs using Firefox search
engine keywords?

I tried forcing myself to use keywords but apparently they only work on the
address bar (and not on the search bar) and also only if you type them at the
start of the query. DDG bangs also work on any part of the query, including at
the end.

------
zszugyi
I've switched to Qwant a few months ago at home. Aside a few usability issues
(like hijacking the space button), the search results are fine both for random
searches and for programming-related ones (aka. SO, JavaDoc, cppreference
search). Their map search is not great, so had to switch back to google for
that.

------
SubiculumCode
I will give DDG in a similar try, but I am more like the HN crowd than the
average user....lots of searches for statistical and programming
functions/ideas that most people have never heard or think about :e.g. "model
selection among non-nested fractional polynomial mixed level models"

------
jug
I noticed the same. It wasn’t fit for my use a few years ago but I think the
user uptake has helped somehow, or inspired their devs. Now I feel like it’s
more about not being quite used to the results. It’s just a matter of
unlearning the old though, with Google’s overly strong echo chamber results.

------
jryb
I exclusively used DDG for the past couple of years but gave up on it
recently. I never kept track of how often I used the "!g" google fallback but
in the past year or so it started to be the overwhelming majority of searches,
even for simple things like the name of an organization.

------
mkchoi212
Feel like DuckDuckGo has been good enough for regular use for awhile. Search
results are decent and what seems like an absence of ads is great.

The only thing I miss from Google? The giant cards that show up with an answer
if I ask something like "How old is [Insert Celebrity Name Here]"

------
samatman
The main thing I still use g! for is "wolfram lite".

I just tried "3 watts * 4 hours" on Google, it gave me the answer in joules
(which, I think situationally watt-hours would be the better unit, but...) and
DDG gave me a top hit of a site that could do the conversion for me.

------
rykuno
DDG is fantastic and now my preference. I tried it a couple years ago and was
constantly second guessing their results.

To have come this far as to it now becoming my daily preference, the team has
come a long way and has instilled great confidence that they will continue to
improve the platform

------
calderarrow
Question for google search users on HN: Do y'all use adblockers? I noticed
less of a difference in my one-off searches after I had been using an ad
blocker for a while, so I wonder if using an adblocker would be a way for
people to transition away from Google.

------
nkingsy
DuckDuckGo is a for profit company. There are no guarantees it will not seek
more profits at a later date. See: Google.

That being said, competition that hurts Google’s bottom line would likely
result in better behavior.

Ddg has a long way to go to be an impactful competitor in the market, though.

------
vzidex
Agreed, I've switched my work computer to use it by default and the only place
I've noticed it falter is when searching domain-specific niche technical
information. Otherwise it works fine, though I still need to switch all my
personal computers to it.

------
rcarmo
I switched six months ago and never looked back. I will occasionally use other
engines deliberately (Google when I’m looking for more obscure things that
warrant wading through pages of ads and Bing for image searches), but it is
now my default on most devices.

------
ryanmcbride
I switched to DDG pretty much as soon as they were on the scene and it's been
awesome watching them grow. Several of my team members have switched to DDG
after watching me use it for so long too. I can't recall the last time I had
to !g.

------
stubish
I'd go further than damning with faint praise and say that it is _more than_
good enough for regular use.

Common wisdom is that it isn't as good as Google, but whenever my results are
bad and I fall back to a !g search, those results are also bad.

------
insulanian
The only thing I miss in DDG is number of results. I use it often to check for
the right way to compose a phrase. If there is a significant difference in
numbers between the two alternatives, it pretty much indicates what's the
right one.

------
tyteen4a03
The only reason I am not using DDG for everything is because location based
search simply suck. I live in Europe but all the search results default to US.
I wish I can tell DDG that they _can_ use my rough location for search
queries.

------
staticassertion
I've been using DDG for years. It's perfectly fine. What I've found is I don't
use general search engines much in general anyways - I use ddg macros like
!rust to search rust docs, or other common places I search.

------
ct0
Ive been using it for 4 years and rarely need to try google. Set it as your
default!

------
kjgkjhfkjf
If you ask a question at work, and the answer is in the first page of Google's
search results, then you risk being ridiculed.

Saying "I looked on DDG" will not help you in this case; it will likely make
the ridicule increase.

------
incanus77
Google search was an unfortunate period in my life between my otherwise great
search history bookends of AltaVista and DuckDuckGo. I think I’ve been on DDG
for probably 5-6 years now. Results are absolutely good enough.

------
woofie11
I've been using DDG forever. I do !g once in a long time, but not often. I
think the most common use case is Google's excellent calculator. DDG is buggy,
and when it works, just isn't as good.

------
LegitShady
I switched to ddg because google is acting politically and I no longer trust
them to act as responsible stewards of information and search.

But ddg isn't as good as google and just barely qualifies as good enough.

------
anonu
I don't know. Ddg is my default but I still !g most of my searches after not
getting what I need in the top 3 items. Beyond that I need to scroll and I'll
probably try a different query

------
Ardia
They should shorten the name - DuckDuckGo.com is too long to type out.

~~~
NoGravitas
Try "duck.com", or "ddg.gg".

------
jaggs
General day to day searches? DDG is great for me Niche or deep dive searches?
Still !g I'm afraid

Big plus is that DDG is getting better every month. Google seems to be getting
worse (ads, fluff etc).

------
smeeth
My primary work use of search is looking for academic papers. I understand its
a rarer use-case but DDG just isn't there yet unfortunately. Looking forward
to when they are!

------
ancymon
For query "malesia bus conections search" DDG gives me porn results (I have
safe search disabled). That doesn't make me thin it's "good enough".

------
Andrew_nenakhov
I'm on DDG on all my devices for more than a year. Tried to use Google
recently on a friend's computer, was shocked by horrible UI and lack of links.
Not OK,Google.

------
ibic
Similarly, ecosia is now my daily search engine with little search on Google
for comparison. It's good enough and (quoting Peppa) "it's for a good cause"

------
mjh2539
I tried using duckduckgo for a period of about two months.

It's great that it's not monetized through ads, but it's main function,
search, is not best in class.

I do not use duckduckgo anymore.

------
tonfreed
I've been using it for about 18 months now. I find myself barely using !g
anymore, and usually it's when I'm looking for something really specific.

------
phaedryx
I think what finally sold me was the bangs. For example I can search "Array
!mdn" and get right to the MDN docs and not worry about w3schools stuff.

------
eddhead
Switched to Bing a while ago and have stayed put. Never needed Google cos the
results are garbage nowadays.

DDG isn't there yet, but Bing reminds me of Google 5 years ago

------
ablekh
I'm wondering about why, unlike Google, DDG doesn't display the number of
results for a particular search query. It's quite frustrating.

------
boynamedsue
I've been wondering how much value a privacy-focused search engine has when
the links in its search results are full of privacy-invading trackers.

------
einpoklum
The author does not remove ads. That skews the comparison relative to my
experience.

Anyway - in my experience, DDG is good enough for most of my searches, but not
all.

------
urtrs
I exclusively use DuckDuckGo mostly because google results got worse. What
worries me though is that I get different results when I browse with tor.

------
Pmop
It'd be awesome if they had an mirror that starts with "go", so we can reuse
muscle memory and browser's url autocomplete.

------
syphilis2
I'd really like to see people post screenshots comparing Google and DDG
results for cases where they consider one better than the other.

------
nice_byte
this is most likely not true. i keep trying ddg every now and then - last
attempt was ~ 6 months ago - and every time i have to return to google search
with renewed appreciation. i have no idea why it's so bad - i think my queries
should be very easy because most of the time i google referential material
(e.g. information on a widely used api) and not something obscure.

------
thsealienbstrds
It has been for a while. I occasionally need to do !g when I'm searching for
obscure errors, but it doesn't happen often.

------
kuon
I have been using DDG for years and did not know the !g I copy paste search
often when DDG results are lacking, I feel so stupid.

------
k_bx
What I don't get is why DDG has no "google it" button. I mean, typing !g is
not convenient, esp on mobile.

------
zeta0x10
For people complaining about worse local results:

You can also use the `site:` argument on TLDs. E.g.

"kino dresden site:.de"

If you can guess the TLD obviously.

------
rognjen
The article is about how the results are worse but the author doesn't like the
way things are shown on Google.

------
bgrohman
I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for years now. It’s great. I probably use the !g
fallback to Google a few times a year.

------
unixsheikh
I think I switched to Duckduckgo about 3 years ago and I have not done any
searching on Google since then (with a very few exceptions just to compare).

I have been very happy with the results Duckduckgo provides.

The only exception, which is something I find really annoying, is when you
want to limit the search to something specific using quotes and it ignores the
quotes and provides results that are completely useless.

Startpage.com respects the quotes.

------
kaonashi
I still end up reverting back to google a lot, especially for more natural
language question-type searches.

------
rovr138
My only issue is with some of the operators. Sometimes they break the results
in really weird ways.

------
parski
Startpage is falling apart. DuckDuckGo is good enough by virtue of being the
only option.

------
patricklovesoj
Switched to the duck 3 months ago. Don't really feel any pain really.

------
mindfulgeek
I switched over to DDG + brave about 6 months ago. Haven’t looked back.

------
bluntfang
i just recently switched to DDG as my primary search. It's not as good as
google, especially when it comes to software engineering documentation and
maps, but everything else is fine.

------
leed25d
Of the google bangs, I find myself using !gm (google maps) the most.

------
encoderer
I tried it when I switched to FireFox.

Switched back after 30 days. Still in Firefox.

------
MichaelMoser123
recently i found myself switching to yandex.ru when i can't find it on google
- and it worked. I guess it's better not to be too fixed on any single search
engine;

------
Bombthecat
Sooo, when do you guys think Google will pull the plug from ddg?

~~~
Kiro
You mean Bing?

------
paul7986
Would any other DDG users like to see

\- DDG Mail service

\- DDG News.. i still use Google News begrudgingly

\- a DDG Video site.. Youtube replacement (not easy to do with Youtube having
so much content)

Personally, I'd drop all Google services if such were available. Maybe others
would too?

------
sedatk
No, it's not. I've tried DuckDuckGo countless times, it only works for common
search keywords. For the rest it fails spectacularly. I'm tired of typing the
same keywords with !g in front of them.

------
svnpenn
I would like to take any chance I can to avoid Google products, but I dont
agree with this.

DuckDuckGo is using the infamous "More Results", essentially infinite scroll.
Until that changes Im not using DuckDuckGo.

~~~
burkaman
You can turn that off in the settings:
[https://duckduckgo.com/settings](https://duckduckgo.com/settings)

~~~
svnpenn
No you cant. You can turn off auto loading, but you cant set it so that
results are paginated.

~~~
CmdrKrool
This is true. Unfortunately DDG is flatly not interested in offering paginated
results, if this 2 year old post by the staff member 'moollaza' on Reddit
still applies.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/757gde/how_to_m...](https://old.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/757gde/how_to_make_search_result_paginate/)

My post there as 'the_minion_in_red' details how turning off "Auto-Load" works
inconsistently depending on how you scroll, anyway - a behaviour which I see
is still present and incorrect today.

And the 'lite' and 'html' views I suggest for the benefit of another poster, I
don't much like because they're doing something to make the address bar URL
not change so I can't easily bookmark a search.

------
drivingmenuts
So, DDG is good enough - but, is it better than Google?

------
jefurii
> DuckDuckGo is good enough for regular use

This is news to people?

------
tylerburnam
No, it's not

Edit: this is coming from someone who wishes it was

------
stuaxo
I am a regular user.

Is there a way to report bad search results ?

------
tus88
Was it not yesterday or the day before?

------
bobbylarrybobby
To people who use DuckDuckGo: how do you deal with its inability to answer
simple queries with factual answers? Things like “distance from Los Angeles to
New York”, “Joe Biden age”, “knives out cast”, “capital of South Africa”, etc.
The time it takes to click a result on DuckDuckGo and navigate to the answer
is so much longer than just getting the answer at the top of the results page,
as google (and even bing) provide. This is the main reason I can’t use
DuckDuckGo, as much as I’d like to

~~~
Normal_gaussian
Either it appears as part of the first result or one of the top results have
it. This is the case for all of your queries, and the result to select is
obvious - normally wikipedia or imdb.

This is arguably harder (+1 click and page load).

However for capital of south africa this is arguably more correct. My google
test shows no distinction between the capitals, whereas the wiki page does.

Of course the wiki page is accessible on google as well.

I'm wary of cases when these facts are incorrect. Google declares them while
trying to hide the source. This was very important recently when a friend
googled for caucus winners and recieved an incorrect fact at the top of
Google, something that would have rang alarm bells when seen on its candidate
affiliated source page

~~~
kube-system
You don't need the extra click and page load. Try these:

"joe biden !w"

"Los Angeles to New York !wa"

"knives out !w"

"south africa !w"

"ddg bangs !hn"

------
objektif
In the last couple of months my experience With DDG has been very good. I
consistently got better results than Google.

------
kylebenzle
Same, DDG works better for me.

------
amelius
According to which benchmark?

------
sandes
Engine search global market share:

Google 92.54%

so, who cares?

------
osehgol
I switched after Google's redesign too, this time it's good enough for good.

~~~
bramjans
Indeed, been using DDG for a couple of years now, and since Google's redesign
I've been using a lot less "!g".

------
hestefisk
If you’re in US yes.

------
babypistol
I have used DuckDuckGo a couple of years back, but, after some more
consideration switched back to Google. Apart from privacy I never really liked
the direction DuckDuckGo was going in (more below). Just recently I decided to
search for an alternative search engine once again.

Things I want to consider are:

1\. _Reasonable privacy_ \- I don't want the search engine to take super
invasive steps to track me (but still keep in mind that I need to send my
queries to someone, so there's really no expectation of full privacy)

2\. _No personalization_ \- I want to be sure that only obvious parameters
affect the ranking of search results (e.g. manual language or location
selection, manual time selection, ...). Want to avoid personalization and a
search bubble at all cost.

3\. _No results processing_ \- I want links to original sources, not processed
or aggregated information with little or no references to sources.

4\. _Independence_ \- I'd like to support a search engine that can operate as
independently as possible. A search engine with it's own crawler seem far more
resilient to external influence than a meta or proxying search engine.

Google falls short on 1, 2 and 3. But holds up very well on 4.

With Bing or Yandex I don't have much experience, but expect something
similar.

DuckDuckGo heavily advertises 1. I guess 2 follows from it but didn't find it
mentioned as an explicit goal. On 3 and 4 it falls short. If I remember
correctly DuckDuckGo was one of the first to offer processed results (Instant
answers). I'm not sure about the situation now, but I believe it started of as
a meta search engine and proxied most searches to Yahoo, Bing or Yandex.
[https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
pages/results/so...](https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
pages/results/sources/) still lists Bing prominently.

Startpage.com seems to get me 1 and 3. But 2 is questionable since the results
are still tailored by Google (not to me personally, but it's still not clear
what factors into ranking). And 4 obviously doesn't apply.

To find a better alternative I started looking for search engines with
independent web crawlers. So far I found mojeek.com, beta.cliqz.com and
qwant.com. mojeek.com looks good on 1,2,3,4 but results aren't quite good
enough. With Cliqz I'm not sure about personalization, but otherwise looks
good.

I finally settled on Qwant.com for now. It promises privacy and no
personalization explicitly. Has an independent crawler. Sometimes it tries to
provide a processed answer card, but so far I managed to ignore that. Results
are surprisingly good.

------
jordache
no it was garbage for my use case of searching programming questions, or
searching a business (where it links me to open street map, instead of google
maps).

------
valleyjo
So is bing

------
qwerty456127
Indeed.

------
dredmorbius
DDG crossed this threshold for me years ago, and I've been using it
consistently since 2013. (With fairly frequent statements to that effect on
HN.)

For much of that time the principle justifications were 1) It Is Not Google,
2) results are roughly comparable, and 3) an improved privacy impact.

Over the past year or two, the rationale's shifted: results _and most
especially experience_ are markedly better.

Google's polluting the SERP with advertising, bringing to mind the environment
_into which Google first emerged in the late 1990s_ , with what many at the
time considered a mature search-engine environment, is most especially
notable.

My use of console browsers and commandline queries ( _not_ a typical use case,
though extraordinarily convenient) is another huge factor.

 _Google is now utterly unusable in console-mode browsers._

By contrast, the default DDG site _works_ , and works well, and the "lite"
site is ... amazeballs:
[https://duckduckgo.com/lite](https://duckduckgo.com/lite)

As a Bash/bourne shell function:

    
    
        ddg () 
        { 
            /usr/bin/w3m "https://duckduckgo.com/lite?q=$*&kd=-1"
        }
    

As of a few weeks ago, DDG added "region" and "time" selectors to the lite
results page, matching the capabilities recently added to the default DDG
site. The fact that "lite" not only works but is actively maintained speaks
volumes.

The search box is one tab away (it's 12 in Google).

 _Search results are directly clickable._ I don't know what new idiocy has
infected Google, but when I view a Google results page in, say, w3m, _I cannot
click the links_ :

[http://www.google.com/search?ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&source=hp&b...](http://www.google.com/search?ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=why+is+duckduckgo+so+much+better+than+google%3F&btnG=Google+Search&iflsig=AINFCbYAAAAAXmKtKTsHJSquuU_BZU0CxEcmhMULfqFg&gbv=1)

(This is beyond the "the links are redirected for tracking", not the case on
DDG with a URL parameter, but _Google has broken its own search links_.)

I can only assume Google are telling advanced users that they are no longer of
interest to the firm.

In a graphical browser, results are crammed with ads and filler, annoying,
hard to parse, and quite frequently _just not very good_.

There are occasional exceptions:

1\. For date-ranged search, Google (and specifically desktop) is the only
option.

2\. Some older content isn't accessible on DDG. Generally this is pre-2005 /
pre-2000 content.

3\. Some obscure content only appears on Google, though to a _vastly_ lesser
extent than was true only a few years ago.

Also, again, DDG's bang searches are hugely useful, with at least a couple
dozen in frequent use by me.

The broader picture, though, is that _Web search seems generally less useful
than it was 5-10 years ago._

That seems to be a mix of far more crap online, as well as black-hat SEO
winning over Web search companies (death penalties really ought to be a
thing), _and_ far more "traditional" content (books, scientific articles,
other published sources) now being accessible online.

I'll hit up Wikipedia, search for references, and follow those, or go to
Worldcat and run a subject search, _then read books, magazines, or articles
directly_ (through Library Genesis or Sci-Hub), rather than waste my time on
Web glurge.

Yes, there are still some good voices out there, but between crap content,
crap Web UI/UX, and general web annoyances, it's become a net negative.

AdTech and Surveillance Capitalism destroy everything.

------
forkexec
I've been been using DDG since 2012. No significant complaints. And !bangs
(shortcuts to search on other sites) are awesome.

One major annoyance for me is the keyboard shortcuts don't work on iPad
external keyboards.

------
allovernow
I think this is more of a reflection on how far Google results have fallen.
But I really glad to see someone gaining at least some ground against Google
while at least claiming to be privacy focused.

------
iamaelephant
It's not

------
fiatjaf
You can't get direct links to images when using Google Image Search, but you
can when using DuckDuckGo Image Search. That should be enough for you to
switch.

