Ask HN: Which search engine do you use, and why? - dustinty
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stfwn
DuckDuckGo. I went back and forth between DDG and Google a number of times
before I managed to stick with DDG. I rarely go to Google at this point, only
in cases where the search is _extremely_ specific and it really needs Google’s
omnipresent eye. DDG’s results have gotten a lot better in the last year or so
and the !bangs are super handy.

Meanwhile Google is experimenting tirelessly with AI that ‘corrects’ my
searches, pushes mentally draining and content starved hype sites to the top
and redirects me to buggy AMP versions of sites that were fine previously.

~~~
hungerstrike
I was using DDG on iPhone to escape Googel AMP pages, but now both !g and !ge
take me to www.google.com instead of encrypted.google.com.

Hopefully someone from DDG will see this because I have no clue where to send
feedback.

~~~
stfwn
encrypted.google.com is being deprecated by Google.

[https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7631341?p=encryp...](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7631341?p=encrypted_deprecation&hl=en)

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willio58
Google because I need the best results in the least amount of time. I’ve tried
switching to DuckDuckGo and I just find myself using the !g way too much to
justify the switch.

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rocgf
Unfortunately, I think your results will be heavily skewed in a place like
Hacker News, which may or may not be what you want.

So far, half of the replies are about DuckDuckGo, which doesn't even account
for 0.1% of all searches globally.

Personally, I've switched to DDG about 2 weeks ago and it's been pretty much
seamless. This depends mostly on what I search for; if it's something very
specific, Google will provide better results. However, a lot of the time I
simply search for standalone topics that do not require a lot of context, like
'Japan GDP' or 'blue shark'. In these cases, DDG is just as good as Google,
given that you simply open the first result anyway.

I'd love to see more people switch to DDG, but most people simply don't care
or are not tech savvy enough to understand how much tracking Google does.

~~~
newscracker
Most people don't know that there are other options. Even among those, most
people choose Google because they believe it's good and because they're are
used to it. Google being the default search engine in many browser deployments
across platforms and countries also cements its position further among the
common crowd.

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kaptain
Saerx.me because it uses other search engines add a proxy, giving me the
privacy I desire. Also, I live in China where, arguably, the best engine is
blocked. Searx.me also gives me access to it without firing up a VPN.

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whitepoplar
Google.

I've tried to use DDG several times in the past, and while the product works
well, Google has the "familiarity effect" baked into its search. I've been
conditioned for nearly two decades by Google's layout and visual cues. At a
moment when I'm uncertain of something and am searching for an answer, the
last thing I want is to be uncertain/unfamiliar with the search tool itself.
Those stacking of anxieties, however small, is why I think people continue to
use Google.

~~~
newscracker
This probably may not help, but I'm just putting it here so that anyone
reading this may benefit from it. If you use Firefox, there's an extension
called Stylish [1] that lets you change the look of any site (Stylish is to
CSS what GreaseMonkey is to JavaScript). The site userstyles.org has community
contributed styles for many sites. Here's the list for all the themes
available to style DDG. [2] There are even styles for a multi-column result
page.

This can only change the look of the site by using the content on the page,
but cannot provide missing features. Whether that's a UX improvement or not
will depend on the style and the user.

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/stylish/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/stylish/)

[2]:
[https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=duckduckgo](https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=duckduckgo)

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NewEntryHN
DuckDuckGo and Google, although I barely use any search engine.

I use Firefox search keywords to emulate DuckDuckGo's bangs (and much more),
download, browse and search documentation on disk when possible, and use the
location bar's immediate search on history and bookmarks to its extreme. I
notice people have no idea how faster it is to actually wait half a second for
the suggestions on bookmarks/history to load and quickly skim them and find
what you're searching, although it only works if your history dates back to 7
years and you basically have half the web in your Firefox history.

When I really need a search engine, my algorithm is the following: do I just
want the link to a specific site/page I'm thinking about? Yes -> DuckDuckGo.
No -> Google.

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jlarocco
DuckDuckGo, but half the time I use the "bang" keywords to specifically use
another site. I like the simple page layout, that they don't track people and
that it does what I ask without trying to guess what I really mean. I don't
know how it compares to Google, but most of the time I find what I want in the
first page of links, so it's good enough for me.

My biggest complaint is that it doesn't index many forums and mailing lists,
so it can be difficult to find answers for really specific questions. It does
look at StackOverflow, but there's a number of communities (Linux users, some
niche language developers, etc.) that don't use StackOverflow much. In that
case I'll often use "!g" to get Google results.

------
thismyusername
Searx because its good in both local results and in other categories. I feel
like Google has been focusing too much on local results and so their other
results are kind of odd now, they don't make sense anymore. With Searx I get a
mix of everything, its perfect for me. Right now I use searx.me but I've been
looking around to see if its the fastest instance. There's a page where they
sort all searx instances by ping (can't find it on mobile). Maybe I'll run my
own public instance one day. Would be a nice project if not too costly.

------
ggregoire
Google because it works. I don't remember last time I had to visit the second
page to find something. Also it's fast, and obviously well integrated to
Google Chrome.

------
trumped
DuckDuckGo because I get good results and also because I want to give them
more data so that they will have a better chance at staying competitive.

------
newscracker
DuckDuckGo about 60% of the time, followed by StartPage and Google. The main
reason for choosing DDG is privacy. And it's the same for StartPage too. I
never search on Google when logged in, and I try to isolate browser activities
in different ways (on Firefox, I clear cookies with Cookie AutoDelete, use
Containers, etc.).

I usually start my searches on DDG, and move on by modifying the same search
query with a !s prefix (for StartPage) or a !g prefix (for Google).
DuckDuckGo's date search is comparatively limited. DDG still isn't adequate
for me for tech related searches, though it's gotten better over time
(StartPage, which is a proxy for Google, and Google itself, are much better).
Image search also has more refinement options on Google than on the other two.

I also use DDG to search Wikipedia (!w prefix) and IMDB (!imdb prefix, which
is a bit long to type though).

DDG has a bang search keyword for almost every site you may want to search on.
[1]

[1]: [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

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gfredtech
Duckduckgo, because I don't memorize rarely used git commands/language and/or
library features, and so when I search for how to do something, it gives me
the answer instantaneously without having to wade through stackOverflow pages.
I use Google rarely for very specific things(like to check the date a TV
show's latest episode is going to air)

------
yellowsir
duckduckgo because i love of the bangs !gh !npm !yt !gm but also !g sometimes.

~~~
coatmatter
For those who might assume that setting up custom browser searches is the same
as using DuckDuckGo's !bangs - it isn't.

DDG's bangs work across multiple browsers (provided that DDG is the default
browser), and it takes less time to just do that than to set up thousands of
custom searches. It's much faster than using the site: suffix too.

For example, the Arch Linux wiki is simply !arch <search term> and naturally,
!hn, !reddit and !twitter (or !tw) are also covered.

[https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

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driverdan
I've been going back and forth between DDG and Google for almost two years.
When I first started using DDG it wasn't great. It'd often be missing what
you'd want or have worse results than Google. Over time it has improved
dramatically while Google's quality has declined.

Today DDG is on par with Google. My biggest complain is that they _both_ have
bad results for many searches. I don't necessarily fault them since search is
a Hard Problem.

One thing they both do that's quite annoying is prioritizing ecommerce results
over original source product pages. For example, if you search for a specific
product you'll often get Amazon as the top result rather than the
manufacturer's site.

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bouvin
DuckDuckGo, because it gives me the answers I seek (if I'm not satisfied, I'll
throw in a !g, but the efficacy of that has declined over the past years, as
DDG has improved). The one exception is Google Scholar, which is still
unmatched.

~~~
contravariant
Google scholar is indeed amazingly useful, but oddly enough for me DDG is what
makes it easy to use. I have no clue how to get the scholar results from the
google page. If I'm honest I don't even know how to access google scholar
_without_ using DDG, although I imagine I could probably figure it out if it
ever became necessary.

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lazycouchpotato
Google on PC, DDG on the phone.

I use an extension on Firefox to be able to view images directly and reverse
search images on Google Images since they removed that feature.

None of those extensions worked for Firefox Android, so I've just made DDG my
main search engine there.

~~~
jlpom
What's the name of this extension?

~~~
lazycouchpotato
It's Make Google Images Great Again.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/make-
google-i...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/make-google-
images-great-again/)

------
acconrad
I use StartPage as my primary. If I don't see results I want, I'll fall back
to encrypted Google. If you're looking for more alternative search engines,
PrivacyTools.io is what got me onto StartPage

~~~
karmakaze
Sorry the 'encrypted' qualification for Google gave me a slight smile since G
uses this 'private' information more than anyone else would.

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elorant
Google, because when it comes to localized (aka non-US) content every other
search engine pretty much sucks. That's why in Europe Google dominates the
market with market share in search north of 90%.

~~~
ktosobcy
Polish guy living in Chile, using DDG as a main search for something like 2
years ago now. on the occasion (once every week maybe?) I switch to Google (!g
+ search) if DDG doesn't give me good result, but with Google recently almost
every time I have to switch to verbatim mode as normal one returns garbage...
rest od the searches are rather ok, but I'm mostly searching in English and
Spanish. in the latter case I sometimes have to force local results (toggle in
the search pageof DDG) as it returns results from different Latin countries.

------
qubex
I used Yahoo! in the earliest days. Then I tried HOTBOT. Then it was
Altavista, and it’s Raging derivative as soon as it launched in 2000 or
thereabouts. I’ve used Google almost exclusively since 2001.

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thismyusername
Does anyone know how searx gets around the Google captchas that trigger after
too many searches at once (or by using a shared VPN). IP Rotation maybe?

------
MrMember
I've mostly switched to DDG. Google gives much better results in some cases
but for the vast majority of my searches DDG works fine.

------
4d47
!DuckDuckGo, switched from Google in 2013. In beginning I was !g a lot but now
never. What I prefer is the straight-forward results, same results for
everybody, instant answers, etc. And the fact they open source a lot (looked
to contribute but ugh. failed, even i like Perl)

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jatins
My default is DDG, but I append !g so often that I am practically using Google
at this point.

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panarky
Google.

Results are far more relevant than DDG or Bing.

And I trust Google more than Microsoft to keep my data secure.

~~~
karmakaze
Do you mean by intent, competence or both?

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plmpsu
startpage.com as a proxy for Google results.

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ishansharma
Duckduckgo. It's good enough now, I am slowly moving away from Google products
(only Gmail left). Rarely, I will use !g to go to Google but it has gotten
lesser and lesser recently.

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dsparkman
DuckDuckGo has become the search engine of choice. Again I agree that HN is
the type of audience that will skew the results, but personally I have DDG a
more than capable search engine.

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mancerayder
duckduckgo w/ Firefox for personal things, and Chrome+Google for tech.

I find the duckduckgo search results for tech problems far inferior for some
reason.

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snarfy
I use Google. Too many times I'm searching for something so specific that even
Google doesn't return a full page of results.

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sokoloff
Google. Inertia and "good enough" SERPs.

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khedoros1
Usually DDG. It's improved in the past year or so; I find myself falling back
onto Google less and less frequently.

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sidcool
Mostly Google. I am yet to find a search engine that gives better results for
technical queries. Google just works.

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Gargoyle
Bing, because it's good enough and it's not the Google monoculture.

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bhnmmhmd
well, certainly not DDG, since it's blocked in Iran. :/

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kome
I used DuckDuckGo for years: it's really nice.

Since December 2017 I am using Qwant: it just works.

I am using them because I want to keep the Internet interesting and full of
variety. For me internet is more than google and facebook.

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HillaryBriss
all of them because i want to spread the wealth

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anotherevan
startpage.com (Google proxy)

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NoCanDo
searx, because I can use google, bing, ddg and startpage in one go.

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DataWorker
Bing because google is evil.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
When I started becoming a bit more privacy-conscious, a couple of years ago, I
started using uMatrix. I used it, amongst other things, to disable javascript.
I thought DDG didn't work with javascript disabled (then I realized I had mis-
configured uMatrix) and because of that I used Bing for 1yr+.

It's actually quite good. Very rarely I need Google.

After I managed to get DDG working without JS, I moved to DDG. Also quite
good.

I think Google is no longer miles ahead of the competition, and I suspect
hasn't been in a while.

