
Announcing Duck It, a new way to search - epi0Bauqu
http://duckduckgo.com/blog/duck-it.html
======
DanielStraight
I love it. If you're looking for an article on a particular topic, this lets
you skim them basically before deciding which one to read. A good sample is:

[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=c%23+custom+controls&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=c%23+custom+controls&v=d)

A quick browse lets you pick the article that seems closest to what you're
actually trying to do.

Google still owns on being able to find absolutely anything (Duck Duck Go
still seems limited to somewhat mainstream searches), but Duck Duck Go is
seriously starting to own on sensible search features that actually improve
the search experience. So many people are trying to build the next way of
searching, and a lot of what they come up with is insane. I really don't want
a 3d cloud of search results. It's not about looking pretty. It's about
finding what I want. Duck Duck Go gets this like no one since Google.

~~~
lhuang
I like the preview feature. I wish this had more features though. It would be
neat to divide the search results into some higher-level buckets, so I know
which links are blog postings, mainstream media, forums, etc.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx for the suggestion, which I also heard from several beta testers. I think
this is a great idea, but we wanted to release something sooner than later.

~~~
lhuang
No problem. Great site. I always welcome better search technologies.

In regards to the filtering I think allowing the user to do a bunch of cross-
filters would be of immense value. Factors like type of website, author,
creation/update date, etc. help bring the results down to another level of
granularity.

This won't be useful for all searches, but would really help optimize certain
types of queries (e.g. seeking an answer to a specific problem).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I often restrict searches by date on Google but rarely use the other options.
It might be nice to have a refinement by focus of the site - is it a site
mainly on the topic I'm searching for or is it a general site.

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falsestprophet
I think your user interface is great, but you could probably figure out a
better brand.

~~~
tybris
Google was once a really silly name.

~~~
stjarnljuset
When I first saw Google, I thought someone made a typo.

~~~
spydez
Someone did...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google#Name>

~~~
logjam
Interesting. I always thought "Google" was just a clever mix of "googol" (a
huge amount) and "Go Ogle", (go look/search/etc).

</disillusionment>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Yeah, I assumed a trademark-ised version of Googol.

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ErrantX
I have to say: some great stuff going on there.

 _but_

Too jittery, too complicated results page and too many bright icons for me.

It might produce awesome results but at the end of the day search is about
_information_ not a fancy UI. This is one reason Google are so successful -
because there is nothing daunting about viewing their results page.

~~~
jonnytran
Duck Duck Go results pages actually have less on them than Google results
pages. I think we're just so used to Google that we don't see 80% of the stuff
that's there.

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rauljara
Very very impressed. You do a search for droid, it asks you which meaning of
droid, including the cell phone, the star wars characters, and three other
meanings I didn't know existed. That questioning of which meaning of the word
your looking for is an incredible innovation right there. It's also so simple
a concept, too. Like so many simple ideas, I'm smacking my head that I hadn't
thought of it myself. I wonder if they use wikipedia for the disambiguation.

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orblivion
Man, props to you guys and Cuil for trying, but this has got to be an
incredibly difficult market to break into these days.

~~~
jmtulloss
There are a few differences here, I think.

It's very difficult for Bing to gain any traction because it does pretty much
the exact same thing as Google. The differences aren't compelling enough to
switch.

Cuil is really cool, and wants to be different, but it's been hyped up too
much for how much it improves. It's a big-budget startup that needs to
actually gain traction in order to be successful.

Duck It, from what I can tell is a low-budget engine that brings a slightly
different twist to searching (more context). Since it's low budget, it doesn't
need to be a home run hit to be successful (like cuil), and it doesn't need to
be better than Google at being Google (like Bing). All it needs to do is be
good enough at providing context that some small group of people goes to it
when the search term's appropriate. If they can get that and build on it, then
they can be a niche player. Being a niche player is a success, and at that
point they can look into strategies for breaking out of the niche.

~~~
rikthevik
Agreed! I don't think world domination can or should be the goal of every
company. There's something quite respectable about doing great work for a
devoted group of customers / users.

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sant0sk1
I love what you guys are doing, but the gray color of your default text is a
little hard on my eyes. Could you darken it just a tad?

~~~
webwright
Black. Readability should trump aesthetics (especially on search results).
Maximum contrast, plz.

~~~
roc
It was my understanding that dark grey was actually better than black for
readability? Granted, much darker than Duck Duck Go is currently using.

Also on readability: I find the search result synopsis far too wide for easy
reading.

~~~
ryanb
I've noticed that the increased width can make it a little awkward to read,
too

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Nekojoe
Looks interesting.

[Edit] Is there anyway to make safe search the default like most search
engines do?

I'm not keen on seeing NSFW links like Encyclopedia Dramatica appearing when
I'm searching from a work computer.

Most searches make you turn safe search off to get NSFW sites.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Yup, click settings at the bottom.

~~~
Nekojoe
Sorry. :) You replied why I was editing my reply to make it clearer. Shouldn't
Safe Search be the default? Normally users have to opt out of Safe Search to
see NSFW content.

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anigbrowl
Impressive results, and unlike others I like your branding overall.

Minor complaints: it is a bit garish, color-wise - maybe dial down the
saturation and white a bit. Fonts are too big, I prefer more info and don't
need to read from across the room. On Chrome, as the page fills it starts
gently scrolling down and search box slides of the screen...oops. The 'web
links' section is getting kind of lost and most people won't notice it exists.

Finally, I don't like 'Zero-click Info tm' - I hate 'TMs' and you don't have
one on your logo, so why here? Second, it's a service mark, not a trade mark.
Third, it's only an element in your service, and branding it strongly competes
with your primary DDG brand and creates pointless confusion for the user.

but overall I really like it, and think the quality of the results is very
high. I will use and recommend regularly. If you are going to commercialize it
with ads or the like, do so early so people don't call you a sellout later.
Excellent job!

~~~
aristoxenus
Seconding the wish for smaller presentation -- think you're a bit below the
sweet spot on the info-per-square-inch curve. I feel pretty hampered.

------
amix
I have gone through my search history in Google and compared it to Duck Duck
Go. The results are pretty good for most queries and really good for some
queries. Some good results:

* [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%09dragon+age+review&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%09dragon+age+review&v=d) (Drago age review)

* [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=surrogates+&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=surrogates+&v=d) (surrogates)

Great overview for reviews and the engine knows that "surrogates" can mean
different things.

Some lacking results:

* [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=python+unix+time&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=python+unix+time&v=d) (python unix time)

* [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=Marc+Cohn+-+Walking+in+Memphis&...](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=Marc+Cohn+-+Walking+in+Memphis&v=d) (walking in memphis)

"python unix time" does not return any matches. Google's video results are
superior when searching after "walking in memphis".

------
tokenadult
I don't know how you're doing it, but you are vastly superior to Google for
certain topical searches that are totally spammed up over there.

[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=H1N1+flu&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=H1N1+flu&v=d)

[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=flu+vaccine&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=flu+vaccine&v=d)

------
maxniederhofer
I like your focus on improving UI but I think you need to do some customer
development work. Figure out whom to target and fulfill their search needs.

E.g.: We need search for hardcore search users. 100 results above the fold.
Clear ways to influence the algorithm. Shortcuts to search for specific meta-
data. Etc, etc.

------
iamwil
of the limited searches I did, it seemed to have worked. I think the best was
when I searched for "schema migration django" and it came up with South at the
top, whereas google has South at #4. I think I'm biased in these results
because South was mentioned in the article about how django devs said no to
including South, and not any of the others,which makes me think that it's the
canonical one.

This is the first time I'd consider using duckduckgo for my searches, since
they had a better showing on some searches I cared about, which makes me
wonder what else they'd be good at. To be honest, I'm surprised.

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coffeemug
I think the design, the branding, and the result layout have some problems
(certainly nothing insurmountable, just needs polish).

However the results blew me away - I consistently get _far_ more useful
results than Google (at least for some technical searches). Congrats on this -
the product has great potential, and with the declining quality of Google
search results (and crappy competition), you have a good shot at breaking into
the market.

Good luck!

------
stjarnljuset
I needed a while to get used to the colorful interface, but I like that it
includes favicons.

I don't think it would replace Google search for me, but since I found it to
turn up good results, and it had "Add to Chrome" links everywhere, I made it
my default search engine in Chrome and I'm willing to try it out for at least
a week. Unfortunately, that means giving up auto-complete in my search bar.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thanks. I'd really appreciate you emailing me the results of your tryout.
Auto-complete/suggestions are on the short list for new features.

------
maryrosecook
1\. I use the arrow keys to scroll in Firefox. You have made them move me up
and down through the set of results. I see what you're trying for, but it's
too jerky and confusing for me.

2\. If I hold down TAB and click on an item in the Zero-Click Info section, my
current tab still gets redirected to the linked page. This is now how links
normally behave in Firefox.

------
ruchi
I like the 'take a peek' feature. It reduces the number of times I've to
return to search results.

One suggestion, on the results page, when I click the "Duck it" icon on left
corner, it takes me to homepage. It's a bit confusing since I expected it to
toggle my 'normal search' results to 'duck it' results.

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robobenjie
Seems nice, but I need a "did you mean" spell check. I simply can't spell well
enough, and have been trained by google not to care. When I misspell something
on duckduckgo it doesn't even warn me, it just gives me low quality pages
created by people who also can't spell.

------
Freebytes
I tried it myself, and I must agree with some other people. The branding is a
bit cheesy. While some people considered Google to be cheesy in the beginning
as well, the name was a bit more consistent with the brand. While almost
anything can turn into a brand name simply by being unique, the names that
already exist for search are traditionally derived from what Yahoo! started.
Bing, Google, etc. are all expansions of this. Duckduckgo.com is easy to
remember, though. As for the search, I think it is fantastic. It is very slow,
but the results seem to be very good, and the interface is clean. I would
actually switch to using it if the results were obtained faster.

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kevinholesh
Possible tagline: "If you can't Duck It, fuck it"

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bcl
I've been using it for the last several weeks and at least for me it has been
returning much more valuable links than Google. Part of that may be that they
aren't big enough to have indexed all the lower quality sites.

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stjarnljuset
"Duck It builds on the core idea of Duck Duck Go that search results improve
when you get useful, readable content in addition to links."

I don't understand the difference between "Duck It" and "Duck Duck Go"

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Duck Duck Go is name of the search engine. Duck It is the name of the new
search view (one of 4 avail from home page).

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tybris
Hooray, thanks for showing that search isn't done and Google is stuck.

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vincentchan
Who is the targeted audience of this product? The UI reminds me a little bit
of Ask.com

While I don't understand why people need this search engine, I am impressed by
the traffic this site is getting.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
It's a general purpose search engine, designed to be a drop-in replacement for
the majors. However, it does have features that should appeal in particular to
schools, homes, and people doing a lot of what is x searches.

Traffic has grown steadily over the past year. While there isn't strictly a
need for a new search engine, some decent % of people who try it out like its
unique features.

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jamesbressi
Just as impressive duckduckgo team, a search engine startup from the
Philadelphia are -- not the most likely of locations to see this technology
come out of.

Kudos and keep up the great work.

------
aik
So far I've found better results.

Few complaints: 1\. The results are a little hard on the eyes to scan. The
gray may be too similar to the background, and the consistently large
text/different size/color of highlighted words, possible overusage of icons, I
find distracting.

2\. I did a search and for some reason it picked shopping as default. Not sure
why? I later realized the logo had a shopping cart on it and redid the search
for the type I was looking for - and my results were great!

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axod
I don't see a compelling reason to use this over
google/wikipedia/dictionary/etc.

Is there a compelling reason?

edit: Also this page
[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=computer&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=computer&v=d)
just seems like bad flow - "ERROR!". If I want to search for computer, I want
to search for computer. If the results are not what I expect, I'll modify it.
At least show the results in a standard layout _every_ time.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I tried to lay this out as succinctly as I could in the post :)

The primary reason and goal of Duck Duck Go is to get you the information
you're searching for faster, and with less mental effort.

This new view in particular does that by reducing the clicking back and forth
between results. It pulls out _good_ info from pages where it exists. Often
you click to a page and then search for your terms within that page, only to
find they don't exist or only exist in a cursory or unrelated fashion.

By displaying paragraphs of readable text, you should get a much better idea
whether that page has what you want. And I hope that in some cases you won't
actually have to click. The take a peek feature (hover over magnifying glass)
furthers this hope.

Another way to look at part of it is we are saving you (at least partially)
from the myriad of interfaces that exist on all the sites on the Internet. We
pull out the good parts, via Duck It or Take a Peek, and standardize the
formatting for you.

~~~
misuba
But: "Duck Duck Go knows Computer can mean different things." Isn't this a bit
braggy/evident/confusing? Why not just "Computer can mean different things"?

~~~
axod
And at least still show search results for 'computer' like the user asked for.
Otherwise the page is completely useless.

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diN0bot
you guys are doing interesting stuff. i think your interface needs a lot of
work. i'm not a designer myself, so apologies for the lack of constructive
criticism (as a user, it's prolly wrong anyway). i can say that i just felt
overwhelmed and hard to read....i didn't want to read the results...maybe too
wide....

anyway, i wanted to point out carrot2, which is a clustering engine with a
beautiful and engaging interface. i really like the carrot2 website. gives me
good vibes.

i have to be honest, though. when it comes down to it i just use google. like
someone else said, when you're searching for error messages....

otherwise, i'm usually searching for something easy that presumably everyone
gets, and certainly google gets so why do anything different.

occasionally i have "un-google-able" phrases (!), either because the words i'm
searching on are super overloaded and common, or because i have a vague notion
of what i'm looking for. in those cases, i try to remember to use carrot2, and
possibly duckduck....but yeah.....would be nice to have an extension that
identified when i was having search trouble and automatically did a look up in
other search engines for me....

------
Freebytes
One more suggestion... The feature to see the content that the search engine
sees (I think that is what this is. It loaded so slowly that I could not quite
verify.) should be on a separate page for advanced users. Basic end users
neither care nor need to know about this information because most users will
not be concerned with search engine optimization.

------
char
I just played around with it for a few minutes, but I really enjoyed the web
icons on the left allowing me to immediately identify if I was looking at a
video result from YouTube, a news site, etc. I also like that you let me
choose the meaning of the word I searched for.

I love the name, too. But I also love ducks and making duck sounds, so perhaps
I'm a bit biased.

------
natmaster
Am I searching for the wrong thing? All my custom searches did not produce
good results. In fact, some were just embarrassing. None of them had the 'zero
click answer' thing. Props for trying, but all the major search engines have
their own 'instant answers' as well as results that are reasonable most of the
time.

~~~
stjarnljuset
What were you trying to search for?

------
philfreo
When I searched for my own name, I thought it was cool you recognized my own
website as the "Official Site". Then I searched for several other key phrases
[cityname web design] and didn't like how it said something was the official
site, just because it has the keyword phrase in the title and domain name.

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wensing
The design feels very clunky. I could be wrong, but my gut reaction is that
the spacing seems off, colors seem off, font-sizes seem off, and the visual
hierarchy isn't immediately apparent. Fix those minor quibbles and I think
you've got a winner, since, most importantly, the results look very good.

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brianlash
As others have mentioned here the search returns fantastic results in some
highly-specificed domains (e.g. "schema migration django" according to user
iamwil). There may be an opportunity driving a wedge into a niche,
establishing a beachhead, then expanding with what momentum it affords you?

------
shrikant
Didn't Apple come down on Google with a legal hammer for the dock-like icon-
zooming behaviour on their front page? (Can't seem to find the reference at
the mo..) Also, "I'm Feeling Ducky"? DuckDuckGO seems to like walking those
legal thin lines, eh?

That said, at first glance this seems better than Cuil :-)

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mark_l_watson
Fairly good search results, except for one thing: it seemed to me that the
highest ranked results tended to be "aggregation sites" that contain links to
the original material. I prefer to be pointed to the original sites.

This comment is based on only 5 minutes of experimenting, but is hopefully
fair.

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JMiao
this guy is winning me over. keep doing what you do.

------
axod
>> "We try to free you from "search yo-yo," the endless clicking forward and
back between links."

FWIW, I don't think many people do that any more. If they're not sure, they
just open a few results in new tabs until they get the one they wanted.

~~~
webwright
If by "people" you mean "people like you", then you MIGHT be right. If you did
$25/head usability testing with normal people, I'd wager less than 5% would do
this-- or even know that it COULD be done.

~~~
axod
yeah sorry you're probably right. Seems most people don't really mind clicking
back if they clicked on the wrong result.

------
SapphireSun
I like this concept and I felt happy using the site. I was a bit surprised to
not see any ads though! How are they monetizing it? Also, I was a bit confused
with how "Duck it!" was different from normal search. Are they synonymous?

------
misterbwong
Small usability nitpick: please make the search box wider. On more specific
searches, the search box does not show all the search terms, forcing me to
select text/drag cursor to make sure I spelled everything correctly.

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gommm
I would prefer you to show the full url, because it offers more info on the
link.

For example, when looking at blog articles, the date the article was written
is part of the url...

------
jmtulloss
One problem I noticed: When a youtube video popped up in the results, the
summary was a warning about having JS turned off and not having flash.

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quizbiz
I would use this with a slightly improved UI. The bright color scheme with
pink for keywords doesn't really work. But the results were spot on!

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zaidf
I felt a little overwhelmed. Kinda like not knowing what is going on. But may
be I'm in a tiny minority going by the other comments.

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idleworx
the name really doesn't matter. if it's useful and people like it it could be
named almost anything. good luck breaking into the search engine space guys.

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hyyypr
Ghostery blocks the display of zero-click search results.

~~~
dcancel
Not sure what this means. I am the author of Ghostery.

Can you explain what you mean?

~~~
hyyypr
Hi, first off thanks for ghostery :). It's just that when ghostery is enabled
and blocking duckduckgo tracking, the second part of the search results (Zero-
Click stuff)are not showing up. Whereas when i un-block duckduckgo, it does
show up.

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FreeRadical
I love this

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clistctrl
It really surprised me, the searches gave extremely relevant results, I might
say better than Google.

