
DuckDuckGo is top result for "new search engine" - pclark
http://www.google.com/search?q=new+search+engine
======
petercooper
And you know how they got that ranking?

They promoted a widget - <http://duckduckgo.com/karma.html> \- a little while
back that when you install it on your site it uses backlink text of "new
search engine" to link to their front page (rather than the page with the
widget).

Sadly I don't find their actual search engine very useful at all, but the
widget is excellent! It shows you your karma count / popularity on a handful
of Web services including Hacker News.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thanks for using our widget! There is also a similar profiles one:
<http://duckduckgo.com/profiles.html>

If anyone needs/wants any help getting it set up (doubtful on HN), or,
needs/wants other services added before use (more likely), then please let me
know...

------
jacquesm
I'm all for diversity, let's hope this duck doesn't go the way of the dodo!

If anybody out there wants to pit their might against google then I wish them
good luck, as long as you find that your relevance for 'new search engine' on
your competitors website is of major importance I think you have a ways to go.

Coincidentially duckduckgo gives 'cuil' as the first result for 'new search
engine', I'm not sure how to interpret that :)

~~~
thorax
Now that you mention it. Am I the only one seeing this?

For the past month or so, Google has been less satisfying in their search
results for me. I've been an avid Google search addict since 1998, I really
sense a palpable drop in result quality since before the holidays.

Maybe it's a bad index refresh? Maybe they've got some little issue? Maybe
it's my discomfort with the invasion of the top search results with "Did you
mean BLAH" results?

Or I'm losing my mind? Or maybe they're losing a bit of their touch?

Recently I had 2-3 technical search results that returned much better hits
from Yahoo and Live than from Google. This almost never has happened for me--
certainly never before did I start to think "maybe I'm missing out by using
Google exclusively".

For a business perspective, I believe this might be adding to why we're seeing
increased traffic for our error search engine (<http://bug.gd>). Our search
results differe substantially from Google's because we optimize for errors
across our own web index, our community results, and BOSS. Google used to do a
better job of finding these errors in haystacks, too.

Is anyone else feeling this drop in Google search results quality lately? Or
is it just me?

~~~
mojonixon
You're not alone. I think it's the suggested search results. Almost never
useful. I've switched over to yahoo in my toolbar. I think the top search
engines are close enough in quality that their results are only
distinguishable by interface (there's been research, though I can't remember
where). When they change the presentation with that "did you mean" they do
more damage to the brand than improvement to the results. It's Google's
version of Clippy.

------
vaksel
how many people would go to Google and search for a term "new search engine"?

I'd figure a person would use the term search or search engine, and for those
duckduckgo is not even in the top 10 pages

~~~
axod
"new search engine": Approx search volume January=18,100. Approx search volume
average=22,200

(From google adwords tools).

For comparison, "people search" gets 68,000,000 January, and average of
30,400,000

~~~
fallentimes
Sort of off topic, but is the adwords tool the best one to use to find search
volume?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
If you have a point of reference, I find Google trends useful as well. By
point of reference, I mean you have some keywords where you know the actual
click volume from personal experience, i.e. you rank 1st on that keyword.

~~~
fallentimes
Yeah I've used Google Trends and Insights a lot, just wanted to see what
everyone else out there is using.

------
mattmaroon
This site is going to have to change it's name to get to the next level. I
can't ever see anyone saying "just duckduckgo it".

~~~
prakash
would you be talking about it if the name was something else? Brand is a _BIG_
part of any new search engine, one portion of it is remembering the name --
kinda hard to forget one with the name DuckDuckGo.

~~~
axod
Very easy to forget IMHO, and hard to remember if it's duckduckgo, duckgoduck,
gogoduck, duckgo, goduck, etc etc

~~~
iron_ball
No, it's easy to remember, if you remember the childrens' game "Duck Duck
Goose." If you don't know the game, then yeah, the URL is just pretty
nonsensical.

~~~
axod
Ah. Is this an American game perhaps? Never heard of it. Thanks for
explaining. May hamper global adoption :)

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Yeah, it's an american thing: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Duck_Goose>

I think pretty much all Americans know it instantly. I'm sure some will pipe
up here not knowing it now...it's their queue :)

~~~
wheels
I knew the game once being reminded of it, but I didn't immediately make the
connection reading about Duck Duck Go.

I'd throw another hat in the ring of, "Yeah, a better name would help."

------
truebosko
DuckDuckGo gets some interesting results on an ego search compared to Google.
I wonder how it ranks results compared to other search engines.

------
tokenadult
"We label official sites, and always put them on top."

How would we torture-test this product claim?

This claim is a lie as to an ego search on my own name. There is an "official"
page (one I maintain), but it's not the top result. Do we consider Paul
Graham, to give a familiar example, to have an official site?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
paulgraham.com, which is labeled Official site at
<http://duckduckgo.com/Paul_Graham>

Sorry if our text is a bit unclear. We label official sites (that we know
about), and always put them on top.

------
markessien
Speaking of new search engines, is there any search engine that just returns a
single result for each query typed in?

~~~
mkuhn
yes, google. The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is your friend :-)

~~~
breily
Also, you could set the num parameter:
[http://www.google.com/search?q=asdf&num=1](http://www.google.com/search?q=asdf&num=1)

~~~
markessien
What I'm thinking of here is a search engine that returns a single result per
item, and then if the result answers your question, it ranks higher in the
search result, meaning it answers other peoples questions too. You can click a
button to get rid of the current result and view the next. This way, the
search engine always gives the best possible reply.

~~~
gojomo
Was thinking of something like this, also.

I could see it working, but mainly for queries that have one clearly-best
result, or where the 'snippet' itself answers the query. So perhaps for
'answers' search more than general web search.

The implicit user feedback created would be great... but uses might be
frustrated by not being able to scan many results quickly. (I always set
Google to return 100 results...)

~~~
markessien
At the start, it would suck, but if the search engine reached 98% accuracy
rate, you don't need more results. The engine could even learn when results
are in order - for example, asking "where is mongolia" will give you a single
answer, but "tv review sites" will give you a list of search results.

~~~
gojomo
So bootstrapping is a challenge. Will users wait out the 'training' period?

(Or similarly, if a forward-thinking group is willing to help train, are their
choices representative enough of what the impatient masses eventually want?)

I think it's a promising area for experimentation.

~~~
markessien
I am going to model this mathematically soon, but with a very small sample
size, you can quickly reach a pretty accurate result. And in general, most
results are pretty clear - number of states in the u.s will always be the
same, no matter how forward thinking you are.

Such an engine has to start small and be trained for a few months, otherwise
users will think it sucks. As it grows, it adapts.

I bet one could actually do this very easily using yahoo BOSS. Want to take a
stab at it? If anyone wanted to work on this, I'd help, so long it was written
in python.

------
sgman
Interesting that you used google to search for a "new search engine".

