
DuckDuckGo is growing - jeffmiller
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/10/duckduckgo-is-growing.html
======
MatthewPhillips
Congratulations Gabriel. DDG is invaluable for those of us who do not want our
searches logged into a database, who do not want search results sorted by
whether or not an acquaintance has "liked" a page. I wear my DDG t-shirt out
and have been asked about it a couple of times. I wear it happily.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
For what it's worth, I've seen absolutely no indication that Google takes
social data into account when ranking results. They only show it as metadata
on items within the original ordering.

~~~
efsavage
Actually I saw an example of this twice earlier today. I did a search for some
relatively common terms ("api debug" or something like that) and a friend's
companies API came up on the first page. Hopped into incognito mode, was not
to be found in the first several pages. Same thing happened not too long
after, a friend's blog came up for a term, tried incognito, it was gone.

~~~
nl
That could just be personalization (as opposed to social graph leverage).

Personally, I don't think social graph leverage is bad though.

------
patja
I tried switching to DDG, but found that I was really missing Google's date
range filter. Especially for troubleshooting searches where you can get
results that are relevant to the search terms but have obsolete old content, I
almost always hit "past year" or even "past month". I know about the sort by
date feature in DDG, but I really want date as a filter on the whole result
set, with a sort by relevance within the filtered results.

~~~
jvehent
I support that ! This is the feature I miss the most in DDG. Most of my
searches during the day relate to tech stuff, and recent content is one of the
most relevant criteria (usually, I filter to get the result from the last 12
months).

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx! This is something we've wanted to do, but don't have great data for yet.
If you use the sort by date feature (for timely pages) there is a date
displayed. You can get to that by selecting it in the drop down next to the
search box or by typing sort:date or just s:d at the end of the query.

You can also quickly get to the google ranges (when needed) via our !bang
syntax: <http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html> \- e.g. just add !gyear !gmonth etc
to the end of your query.

------
Sodaware
The !bang syntax is definitely one of DDG's best features. Being able to
access a few hundred site searches with a keyword is incredibly powerful, and
saves time on creating quick searches in Firefox.

(The full list of !bang commands <http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html>)

~~~
pkamb
Did it mess any other programmers up, thinking "NOT youtube"? Don't search
youtube, search the rest of the web...

~~~
deno
Being used to Google, I would first try “-site:youtube.com .”

------
dmfdmf
What I like is no zooming car ads blocking content like on Yahoo or the
unhelpful auto-entry and auto-guessing features that gets in my way like on
Google (e.g. searching for what Google thinks I meant instead of what I
actually typed, did Google buy Microsoft Bob and Office Assistant Clippy?)

~~~
DanBC
It's particularly annoying when Google substitutes words without telling you.
Or when they silently drop words and you only realise when a ctrl-F through
the web-page says nothing found.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
That's what the "+" before a search term is for: this is exactly the word I'm
looking for, and every result must have this. Otherwise it tries to find the
most relavant page that's closest to what you typed. It makes sense to have
that by default: do you really want to miss the exact page you were searching
for because you used the term "graduate" instead of "graduating"?

~~~
5hoom
Pretty much, yes.

Or you could do any number of things to communicate that there are more
results using an alternate spelling. But please don't silently drop search
terms I explicitly typed into the search bar.

+ing terms is a nuisance & usually has to be done after you've searched and
missed "the exact page you were searching for". Maybe I'm in the minority but
I find this awkward compared to Google search of old.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
Oh I completely agree, there should definitely be some indication or link to
process the search exactly as typed from the results page (or a user
preference to make one the default). That's how spelling suggestions work, so
there's already precedence for it.

------
jmarbach
Gabriel is taking on a challenge that extends beyond Google's reach, the
filter bubble. Luckily he's been able to implement several human curation
strategies to make a better search engine based on reliable search results. On
the flip side, Google has been fostering a limiting perspective on the world's
information due to their personal relevance algorithms which drive more ad
clicks.

------
snarfy
I was always impressed with the speed of response by the ddg team. I'd report
an issue, and within minutes (sometimes seconds) I'd have a reply from the ddg
team. Broken queries were fixed in days, sometimes hours.

~~~
slowpoke
I can support this. Even trivialities like a (slightly) miss-categorized !bang
got fixed in hours.

------
forcer
I think its a good move. In my opinion you can only play the one-man-band card
for a while and then you need to come up with other reasons why press should
write about you. DDG has innovated quickly and been able to address user's
needs at the right time when they were discussed in the press, picking up the
loyal users on the way...

------
binarymax
Thanks for building and growing DDG! Have been using it for awhile now as my
default search engine and I love it.

------
skrebbel
I love _all_ of DDG, except its speed (might be latency, I'm in Europe)

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx! We should be getting some European servers in the short-term. We just
added some in Singapore, and Europe is next.

~~~
skrebbel
Happy to hear that!

------
steveh73
I quite like DDG but from my region (NZ) it's just too slow compared to
Google. I look forward to when you're big enough to have datacentres in
Auckland or even Sydney.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
We just added some servers in singapore that should have speeded us up for
your region. Have you tried it recently (last couple of weeks). If it is still
slow would love to continue debugging at <http://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html>

------
DanBC
I go to "goodies" and "zero click info sources". I see this line:-

Language SE - quint in quintessential

So I clicky the link, but it appears to have nothing to do with Stack
Exchange. Some of the others work - Numote Big Bang Schedule has a nice box at
top of the search results.

ALSO: Do you have a printable cheat sheet for all the bang syntax and extras?
A4, mono, please!

~~~
epi0Bauqu
At the top I see a blurb from the English Language StackExchange linking to
[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2/where-does-
the-...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2/where-does-the-quint-in-
quintessential-come-from#12) \- is that not coming up for you?

~~~
DanBC
Nope :-(

I get this: \---

Did you mean quintin quintessential?

Welcome to Quintessential Filter Tips Ltd. Quintessential Tips Ltd. Makers and
Purveyors of Fine Quality Environmentally Conscious Smoking Products.
quintessentialtips.com

Quintessential | Define Quintessential at Dictionary.com adjective . 1. of the
pure and essential essence of something: the quintessential Jewish
delicatessen. 2. of or pertaining to the most perfect embodiment of something:
the quintessential performance of the Brandenburg Concertos.
dictionary.reference.com/browse/quintessential More results

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Weird - would you mind sending a screen shot to help@duckduckgo.com?

------
bull
Is there a way to get google results instead of yahoo results? I don't mean
using the !g syntax, but getting actual google results in the format of
duckduckgo.

I love the site, but alot of the time, Yahoo's results are weak.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
No, but we use other results besides Yahoo's (including our own). I'd
appreciate specific examples when they come up:
<http://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html>

------
startupcomment
Congratulations, Gabriel! I am very happy for you. DDG is my default search
engine, and I suggest that friends and family use it. Just wondering why you
don't use https as a default setting. Also, sometimes I find the continuous
scrolling of search results makes it a bit more difficult to keep track of
where I have been than with Google's default 10 results per page.
Consequently, sometimes I find it easier to quickly scan Google search
results. I wonder if there is something further that you could tweak in this
regard? Keep up the great work!

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx! We don't use https by default because it is noticeably slower to connect.
Also noted on continuous results -- our non-JS versions do have some
pagination.

------
white_devil
So what's the plan for making money with DDG?

~~~
maximusprime
They got investment. Who needs profit these days?!

~~~
mkr-hn
If you're running a company in an industry that's being encroached on by
Google, throwing some money at a serious competitor like DDG might be a good
investment.

------
suking
I quickly used DDG for the first time for some searches and you guys place WAY
too much emphasis on exact query match domains. Also, including .com.au
addresses in a local search when I'm in the US is probably not a lot of help.

Best of luck.

~~~
gurraman
This is biting me as well - I use search in place of the address bar a lot.
Now, in DDG, searches like "asoiaf reddit" does not find the root-site.

I think I'm not alone in using the address bar less and less.

While I'm at it:

\- I would probably change the color of the address in the results to make it
easier to distinguish from the excerpt/description.

\- Remove the green background that is displayed on hover. I find it hard to
scan entries with that big green blob hovering :)

Edit: formatting

~~~
pkamb
+1 for changing the URL color. I'd prefer it directly under the title as well.
And maybe find a way to emphasize the important parts of the URL, cut out the
random numbers.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx -- we cut stuff out of the URL now, though perhaps could cut out more.
Note you can change the color in the settings:
<http://duckduckgo.com/settings.html>

We've also experimented with moving it around (including where you suggest).

~~~
gurraman
Don't give me so many options when you can, with a little research, make the
right decisions for me! :)

(the N % that do not agree with you can probably perform some magic to bend
the site to their liking)

------
dbbo
DDG is a great search engine. I was stoked to see that the Midori[1] browser
adopted it as the default search engine. However, if I can't seem to find
something there, I try Scroogle with SSL[2]

1 - <http://www.twotoasts.de/index.php?/pages/midori_summary.html>

2 - <https://ssl.scroogle.org/>

