

Why I use DuckDuckGo and You Should Too - ClifReeder
http://blog.clifreeder.com/blog/2012/02/12/why-i-use-duckduckgo-and-you-should-too/

======
aiurtourist
I tried using DuckDuckGo for a few days. Here's what I found, YYMV:

• Google's results are much better. A handful of times I searched for
something I would think, "Wait, that can't be all there is," and Google would
give me back what I was looking for above the fold.

• Google is much, much faster in returning results for my regular searches,
which are usually programming related or an esoteric Wikipedia topic.

• DuckDuckGo's bang syntax (!jquery, etc) isn't any better than search
keywords built into Firefox and Chrome.

• DuckDuckGo's settings page is like Skyrim -- epic and freeform.

• DuckDuckGo is a very well-executed product. The UI is clean, browser
integration is smart ("You're using Chrome! Click this!" or something), and
it's tailored for my savvy search users.

~~~
vetler
I tried using DDG for a few weeks, and I had the same experience as you. I
frequently found myself doing the same search on Google to see if there were
more results, but the biggest issue for me was speed - both Google and Bing
are blazingly fast, and I found myself being annoyed with the noticable delay
in DDG.

~~~
gnosis
There are typically more results on Google. But the extra results are usually
of a far lower quality (often just spam sites, or other grabage).

I'm very satisfied with using DDG as my primary search engine. And when I feel
my search results aren't finding what I need, I might go to Google and wade
through the garbage to try to find the gem I'm looking for. But it's rarely
worth it.

------
bishnu
I used DDG for a few weeks and I'm glad I did because I'd forgotten just how
good Google is. A few things that DDG made clear was: 1) How useful
personalized search actually is. I like that my search engine knows what city
I live in so when Googling the name of a restaurant I don't have to include it
(that I don't live in an American city might emphasize this). 2) How much
speed and responsiveness matter in web design (not to mention autocomplete).
Searching google is a much, much smoother experience.

DDG is really good at returning a good result for a really general search term
like "C++". However, for me at least, that is an extreme edge case.

~~~
ordinary
I'm a C++ programmer and that's actually the thing I miss most: DDG does not
know the difference between 'C' and 'C#' and 'C++'.

------
crux
People go on quite a bit about the bang syntax in DDG, but is this not a
functionality that's entirely contained within Chrome's (and many other
browsers') search keywords function? When I type 'wik http codes', it takes me
directly to the wikipedia page for http codes, and it's built in. Does bang
syntax do anything else in addition?

~~~
ClifReeder
Perhaps I'm not using the search keywords functionality correctly, but in my
experience, it works in one of two ways.

\- Start typing 'wiki...' and it will autocomplete to
<http://en.wikipedia.org> In order to search that site, I have to left arrow,
space, and then type my query. I found that while usually helpful, the
autocomplete was occasionally unpredictable/frustrating enough to me that it
negated the times it was helpful. Having fine tuned control w/o autocomplete
is preferable to me.

\- Using the omnibox to enter 'wiki http codes', which will pull up google
results. I then have to tab or otherwise use keyboard shortcuts to select the
first link, all of which are a worse user experience than the bang syntax to
me.

~~~
crandles
once you start typing wiki, and the autocomplete comes up, you can press tab,
and it will search using the wiki search. you're able to add custom search
engines (as pointed out by other users), but chrome also picks up on many of
these itself

------
phamilton
I spent a week on duckduckgo and I jumped ship because it was slower than
Google. The queries took longer to return and it took me longer to cognitively
process the page (because I'm so adjusted to Google.)

I'll use it when I want independent search results, but Google's catering to
my interests usually works in my favor. When I search for Ruby on Google, all
of my results are about the language. DuckDuckGo gives me results about the
gem.

~~~
kleiba
I believe to remember a recent discussion on HN where Gabriel seemed to be
somewhat astounded by how important query speed is, even when we're talking
about seconds here, and promised to look into that. I guess we have become
spoilt and now cannot go back to waiting if only three seconds sometimes.

I've been DDG as my default search engine in Firefox for quite a long time
now, and sometimes I still find myself re-running a query with "!g" - mostly
when I expect to have to tweak my query once or twice and google is just
faster (and still gives better results sometimes).

~~~
rieter
Yet DDG will never be as fast as a real search engine since it relies on
external APIs (Yahoo BOSS, etc).

------
tansey
Why I don't use DDG: they don't even index most of my startup's pages.

\- Google: [https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ix=...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ix=seb&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#sclient=psy-
ab&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp&q=curvio&pbx=1&oq=&aq=&aqi=&gs_upl=&ix=seb&ion=1&pws=0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=8950b9caf62fc784&ix=seb&ion=1&biw=1920&bih=979)

\- DDG: <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=curvio>

It seems DDG even thinks I'm asking about Jose Cuervo-- really?? How many
backlinks do we need before you think I may actually be searching for Curvio?

------
parfe
I gave up on DDG. The !bang syntax fails, for me, in a pretty annoying way.
"!django modles" sends you off to django's search page (as it should), but now
I'm trapped in an inferior search engine.

searching for just "django modles" returns pretty bad results, including what
could kindly be described as a linkedin blog entry.

Now try the same search on google. (I made sure to try this logged out in case
google personalized my results.)

search for "django modles". The first result matches DDG. The next three are
Model field reference, instance references, and how to make queries. All
highly relevant! I work with Django, and I think these are good results.

DDG in general has provided dissatisfying results and I suspect it is from not
knowing what I don't know when searching, so I can't identify bad searches as
they happen. But not knowing is why I search to begin with, so that is Why I
don't use DuckDuckGo, but I don't care if you do.

~~~
bdg
Sounds like a really specific need rather than a broad issue, why not tweet
them about it?

~~~
parfe
It's not a specific need. It's a specific issue. Figured I'd offer up a
concrete example rather than gushing or hating on the service.

~~~
bdg
Sorry if you took offence to what I said, I simply interpreted you listing all
the issues searching specifically for django and how you work with django,
then claim that they are generally a bad service.

Your complaint was very specific, yet you claimed it was a general issue.

All that being said, your complaints were entirely targeted towards meeting
your needs. Hence, specific need. I can't even conceive of how your complaint
wasn't about a specific need, or how this is so drastically different from a
specific issue.

~~~
parfe
>Your complaint was very specific, yet you claimed it was a general issue.

My complaint was a specific example of the general issue I wrote about in the
last paragraph of my post. Did you ignore the last paragraph from my original
post on purpose?

Let me spell it out for you.

 _DDG in general has provided dissatisfying results_

follow by _I suspect it is from not knowing what I don't know when searching,
so I can't identify bad searches as they happen._

So I clearly say in general I am dissatisfied and posit a reason why that
might be the case. The point of the example is, for the curious, something
they can go try or talk about, but thanks for the nitpicking!

Your only other comment on this story is an "It works for me!" So thanks for
contributing nothing but fanboi garbage.

~~~
bdg
> but thanks for the nitpicking!

> Your only other comment on this story is an "It works for me!" So thanks for
> contributing nothing but fanboi garbage.

Are you done?

------
alagu
I loved DDG because it was a one person champion fighting a giant. And the
attempt was very sincere and determined.

I tried switching to DDG for a week. But went back to Google.

Reasons:

\- Relevance: Google gives me high relevance, very high. Restaurant:Food-
Quality::Search-Engine:Relevance.

\- Speed: Google works in milliseconds. Instant search + search intents also
add value.

\- Gives me rich map results. Also switching to Maps/Image searches with same
search term help. DDG doesn't.

Positives of DDG which are actually not:

\- Not bubbling up. I WANT the search engine to know that I'm a hacker. When I
search for ruby, it is a programming language. I see value in bubbling up.

\- Keyboard shortcuts - Good value. But I don't go for more than 3 results in
Google. So just a single tab and enter works.

\- Bang syntax - Chrome's search keyword replaces it.

Definite plus:

\- User experience : DDG is much cleaner than Google.

~~~
tessellated
> \- User experience : DDG is much cleaner than Google.

Well there's still Google's mobile version around to feast your eyes on.
Currently I'm using this to search fast and clean:

<[http://www.google.com/pda/search?q=%s&ie=utf-8&oe=ut...](http://www.google.com/pda/search?q=%s&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&pws=0&safe=off&filter=0&hl=en>);

A big hosts file, privoxy, and Opera's Adblock & Ghostery plugin take care of
the rest.

~~~
mintplant
Feast your eyes, ladies and gents, on the beauty of the "Bad Request" page.

~~~
lywald
<http://www.google.com/pda/?q=wat>

------
dylanz
I switched to DDG, and a couple days later, I find myself running searches
while at Google headquarters, feeling... a bit awkward.

Seriously though... I switched back a week later. Speed was one thing, but I'd
rather take the latency hit and support DDG. The biggest issue I had was
relevancy. I would find exactly what I needed using Google, while I'd have to
scroll down quite a bit to find what I needed in DDG. Also... the format of
search results in DDG is a bit too big for me (seems like too much centering
and spacing)... I'd like a lot tighter layout.

I'd really like to use DDG. Until some of my qualms are fixed, I'll stick to
Google. That said, I'll definitely be revisiting and retrying DDG every few
months.

------
pranjalv123
I've been using DDG for the past 2 weeks or so. First, the bad: 1\. It's
really slow. Latency is usually on the order of seconds, as opposed to 100s of
milliseconds on Google. 2\. Results could be better. Roughly 80-90% of the
time I find what I'm looking for, but the rest of the time Google does much
better (note: it's possible that DDG is getting queries that Google misses).

Now, the good: 1\. The one-box is really, really good. A lot of the time, I'm
searching for domain-specific queries, especially when I'm coding. DDG brings
up a one-box with something like a stack-overflow link and often has exactly
the code snippet I'm looking for. 2\. I don't have to give more information to
google. Admittedly, they already get my email and stuff, but at least this way
I'm spreading my information so no one has absolutely all of it.

Finally, the things that are in principle useful but I don't use much: 1\.
Bang commands. Seriously, I'm not going to type !cplusplus to search
cplusplus.com, I'll just click the first link. I also can't remember all of
them. I do use !g, !image, and !video, but mainly because they take me to a
better search engine. 2\. The search suggestions in the top right. It's a good
idea, but I don't have the cognitive capacity to keep track of those in
addition to the search results.

~~~
codesuela
to search cplusplus.com just type !cpp <query>, to look for videos use !v or
!yt, to look for images use !i or !gi

------
8ig8
As explained, the author is not really using a search engine as most do.
He/she really is just using DDG as a bookmark for searching a specific site.
This works, but how would you then discover that a better information source
is available?

When would you stop asking Jeeves or HotBot and switch to Stack Exchange?

------
kevinpacheco
The author is using Chrome. He could set up search engines to use in the
Omnibar instead of visiting DuckDuckGo (e.g. ama[TAB] to perform a search
directly on Amazon.com).

[http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...](http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95655)

~~~
ClifReeder
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I do use DuckDuckGo via the omnibar, which
would be necessary for any of the efficiency gains I refer to.

~~~
kevinpacheco
No, it wouldn't. You can just as easily perform searches on those other sites
directly from Chrome's Omnibar without having to go through a middleman like
DuckDuckGo.

------
Karunamon
Why I don't use DuckDuckGo:

Worse results than Google (and even Bing) for most of my everyday searching.

"But we're not Google!" is not a real selling point.

~~~
yabai
I have done some side by side comparisons between Google and DuckDuckGo.
Google seems to produce more relevant results than DuckDuckGo.

I really want to like and use Duck Duck Go...I will keep trying!

------
mike-cardwell
I _want_ to use DDG, and it has been my default search engine for a while now,
but most days, I need to fall back to Google for at least one search because
the DDG results simply aren't good enough. When I fall back to Google, I go
via Scroogle though: <https://ssl.scroogle.org/>. DDG has a bang command for
Scroogle, it is "!s"

------
zecho
I think it's funny that people argue Google's more relevant. One of the
reasons I got fed up with Google was the constant link spam in it from the
content mills like Demand Media. Which is why I gave DDG a go. Maybe things
have changed at Google, but they lost me as a heavy search user. Habits have
completely changed.

I've been using DDG for quite some time (months) as my main search engine and
it's been great. I'd say I only need to hit Google once every 50+ searches.

The inline results from Stack Overflow, Youtube and Wikipedia are excellent.
That and the keyboard shortcuts are more natural to me (specifically j/k) than
Google's (tabs and arrows).

~~~
aiurtourist
After Panda and a few other search ranking improvements were implemented, the
spam you're referring to has pretty much disappeared.

~~~
Drbble
It's still pretty bad for mailing list archives. Archiveorange, ugh. Markmail,
nabble (the one that is actually decent), the fact that I can name these sites
from memory proves how truly badly deeply Google has let these duplicate
content sites infect results.

------
ddrager
Another reason to use DDG - they don't "bubble" you with their search results,
and have a strict privacy policy. See: <https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html>

I have them set to my search engine and I would say about 90% of my searches
hit productive results. For the other 10%, I consult with Google via their
handy link or just via Google directly.

You can't compete with Google for breadth of web search, but I find most of my
searches don't utilize that for accurate results, eg finding a company page.
When I look for a specific error message or help with a code snippet, GOOG is
still king.

~~~
valugi
Actually this is the only reason.

------
xpose2000
I tried DDG, I found myself doing queries that I knew worked just fine on
Google, but came up a bit short on DDG.

Quite honestly, I don't see a need to switch now.

------
secoif
Ugh, another link to w3 schools? It possibly only ranks so high for JS
searches because everyone is linking to it as being an exemplar of horrible JS
information. Please stop linking to W3 schools.

------
unicornporn
I would prefer a Seeks Project public server setup by the HN community.
<http://www.seeks-project.info/site/about/>

I like everything about DuckDuckGo except for the search results. I so often
wind up re-googling what I searched it isn't worth the effort. And this is
with a unpersonalized Google version. I am not logged into any Google account,
I run Ghostery and I clean cookies at every browser shutdown.

Many times a search time yields zero hits in DDG and I instantly find what I
search for with Google. Sad but true. And yes, i use "" around all words and
phrases in Google.

------
jwwest
Personally I found results from DDG to be inferior to Google results most of
the time, so I had to switch back after a week or so.

The functionality being described here is something that I actually use Alfred
for these days.

------
meow
I tried really hard to get used to DDG for an entire week. I changed my
bookmarks to DDG, learned hashbang syntax etc.. But at the end of the week I
just came to know how much more google does than DDG. I kept missing:

Auto complete (suggestions) - I tend to type a lot of things wrong, integrated
image search and unfortunately some times quality of the results too..

I'm not saying every one has to stick with google.. just saying DDG isn't a
viable alternative for most people used to google search (but its a lot better
than bing)...

------
pg_bot
If you use google chrome you can do a faster search by using the omnibox. For
example if you want to find a youtube video type youtube.com into the omnibox
and then hit 'Tab' then enter the search terms of the video you are looking
for and it will automatically point you to the results page of youtube. This
works for almost any site that google can find a search box for (wikipedia,
ebay, amazon, hacker news, airbnb, etc.) You can also customize this in the
settings of chrome if it doesn't find a site you are looking for.

------
edwardy20
I love the !bang searches and use them daily. Even on a regular search, the
zero-click gives me what I want quickly. I'd like to see DDG improve on the
following things:

-Instant Search: maybe I've been spoiled by Google, but DDG feels slow in comparison

-Foreign language searches: Have you tried them? They're absolutely horrible.

-Ads: They're not relevant _at all_.

------
shaka881
In this age of SEO'd dreck and machine-generated content, I'll happily take a
few "bubbles" over a static (read: gamable) ranking system.

------
john_horton
The first link to DuckDuckGo on the page is a link to Google's main search
page. Typo or some joke I'm not getting?

~~~
ClifReeder
Doh, definitely a mistake. Fixed!

------
marshray
I just switched my search box over to DDG after Google changed something and
now the results are clicktrackers instead of actual URLs. They'd done this
before but I'd been able to opt out of it by changing my User-agent string.

Wish me luck.

------
emillon
Surfraw is a tool that exposes a similar interface to bang patterns.

<http://surfraw.alioth.debian.org/>

------
mrschwabe
As others have pointed out, with !bang you can just "!g search whatever" and
voila you're searching Google.

So typically, I set my browser default search to DDG and try to use DDG as
much as possible. Certain terms or things I know Google will find better I
just throw in the "!g" before the query.

------
zalew
I don't know who actually goes to google.com and types the query in. I simply
CTRL+L to Firefox bar and write "wiki http codes". the same number of clicks
as going to DDG and typing the 'bang' query. I'd probably save one click when
having DDG as main Firefox search and CTRL+K and 'bang'

~~~
ClifReeder
If you are directly going to google.com/duckduckgo.com, you are correct. You
get the zero click benefit by using DDG as the default search in Chrome or
Firefox.

------
fedd
using duckduckgo for not to be tracked by google (as one of the reasons), but
with chrome by google?..

~~~
mintplant
I'm sorry, what? Chrome does not send your info back to Google, unless you
have the anonymized usage statistics (not sure what it tracks) option turned
on, or are using Google as your search provider with Suggestions enabled as-
you-type.

------
shaggy
I switched to using DDG exclusively when I got fed up with the poor privacy
practices Google was continually enacting. I haven't missed google at all
since I switched. DDG provides great results, has lots of cool goodies and
best of all doesn't track you at all.

------
Sephr
If Google implemented !wiki → wikipedia.org they'd be facing a possible
antitrust lawsuit (even though they can't be a monopoly as you don't have to
use Google, US officials seem to think they are). Wikipedia isn't the only
wiki.

------
biafra
I switched to DDG about 3 Month ago and use Google only for image search and
when I am not happy with DDGs result. More often than not Googles result are
not better so I have to change my search terms :-)

------
AznHisoka
I like DuckDuckGo but Google just indexes way more pages than it, and as a
result I am able to find more quality results there... If DDG can index more
of the web, I would definitely switch over.

------
codesuela
one really important aspect of DDG is that I use it to route my google
searches. To search for german google I have to go to google.de (type the
whole url). With the bang syntax I can just type !gde and it takes me there.
Same for Amazon, !a takes you to .com !ade takes you to Amazon.de. I have used
DDG for a while now and by now I've got a feeling of what DDG will find and
where I should go to Google so I rarely do duplicate queries.

------
jaequery
the bang syntax is the wrong way to market this product. i was a fan of ddg
until i read about how this bang syntax is the almighty saviour to search
engines. the reason why i like google is because i can just search anything i
want in plain english w/o any query-language/search-filters. all i'd want from
DDG is the ability to get rid of all the fake landing page sites from my
searches and i'll be sold from there.

~~~
gnosis
_"the reason why i like google is because i can just search anything i want in
plain english w/o any query-language/search-filters."_

It's not like DDG prevents you from doing this!

You can search DDG using the exact same "plain english" you use in Google.

DDG's bang syntax is an _additional_ feature. If you don't want it or don't
like it, don't use it -- just use regular search.

Personally, I don't use DDG's bang syntax myself. I like to create my own
custom searches within Firefox.

But I love the high quality of results DDG provides, and the lack of spam/scam
results compared to Google. Not to mention DDG's commitment to privacy, which
is very important to me.

------
pan69
I switched to DDG a few weeks back. The other day I needed some Lorem Ipsum
and I typed in "lorum". Got a nasty surprise there...

~~~
bdg
"Lorum ipsum" and even "Lorem ipsum" worked fine for me.

------
g3orge
I'm using Launchbar to jump easily to site searches. It's the best feature
ever.

------
tony_le_montana
Why it redirects me to google.com when i search for !ruby?

------
valugi
The only reason for me to use the DuckDuckGo is the privacy. I am a little fed
up of feeding my search patterns to google. And until they will do the same
thing, I will use them as 95% of the searches are ok even with Bing, who's
behind them.

------
Craiggybear
I do use DDG and I like it. Oddly, and unlike most of the comments thus far,
it does seem to actually find results which I'm actually more interested in
than either Google or Bing (although DDG uses both). I do use them too.

------
josh33
App store link: [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/duckduckgo-
search/id479988136...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/duckduckgo-
search/id479988136?mt=8&ls=1)

