Not because DDG got better, but just because google got worse.
google is still better for site-specific searches, and google scholar still has minimal AI slop
ive been using it consistently for the past few years. it works well for me, but sometimes ill go to other engines just to see what they come up with, or when results are lacking. sometimes they are better, sometimes they are worse.
meaning ddg is probably good enough nowadays, at least for me.
You probably already know this, but you can use search “bangs” to search other websites from ddg.
For example, to search google, you would put !g or !google at the start of your search.
i do! it transformed my address bar, i sometimes use other engines through ddg now. its the main reason its my search provider.
I’ve been using DDG since 2016 and never felt it was worse in terms of “search quality” than Google.
Especially nowadays I hear friends whine near weekly about Google, but it’s still somehow “better than DDG”.
Honestly people just make excuses not to change what they’re use to. Even if what they’re used to has changed around them for the worse.
My only real complain I have is I wish ‘search by date range’ was less finicky use and also worked in the image tab like it does in Google images.
Don’t you mean DuckDuckBing ?
I just typed “african mouse” into both bing, and ddg. I got EXACTLY the same results. Which I kind of expected . Same order, everything. However, my understanding is, that DDG obfuscates the user, and doesn’t track. This is my hope, and why I use it.
It’s just as good as 2008 google, which is all I want.
I do not think so in my experience. I’m a software developer and a lot of my job is searching solutions to problems. Every year or two I’ll try DDG because I love the concept but it never works as well for me. Putting the same search query into Google yeilds actual results for me more often than DDG does.
I have the same situation. DDG has a feature where you can write “!g query” and search for “query” on Google. I use that as a fallback whenever DDG fails to yield good results - it’s super easy!
I did not know that!
You can do a lot of sites! https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
Duckduckgo mostly uses Bing for its search results. It also uses yahoo, yandex, and it’s own crawler, but for the most part you’re getting Bing.
So what you really want to know is if Bing is just as good as Google. If you think it is, you should definitely use ddg because they’re the least intrusive.
It’s much better than Bing.
Yes, I switched back in 2023 and noticed it was already better than google.
All major search engines feel like they’re either filled with AI slop results, or just only returning major corporations’ sites anymore, though. DDG just falls into the latter, while Google is mostly the former.
You seriously can’t type whatever dae means?
DAE is a fairly common acronym on online forums, often used in titles such as these. You could have used Google (or DuckDuckGo) to learn its meaning 😊
It’s simply “does anyone else.”
I did, my comment stands
It’s clearly not that common.
Never saw that abbreviation before, but my assumption is it’s “does anyone else” since I can’t think of anything else that’d make sense in this context
Yes, that’s accurate. My point is that typing that out isn’t hard and opens the post up to all who know English.
I’ve been online for almost thirty years and have never - knowingly - seen “dae” as an abbreviation.
I don’t believe you. DAE has been an extremely common abbreviation for well over a decade at least.
TIL I’m a liar…
I didn’t say you lied, just saying that there’s no way you’ve been on the internet for 30 years and have never seen DAE anywhere before now.
Well now you have two people you are calling liars.
Maybe, and hear me out: you’re wrong.
You seem like a young man so that’s not something anyone has told you before, so what I would recommend is reaching out and finding a stable position to hold on to for 30-60 seconds. once you’ve recovered, your brain will automatically go to work trying to find out why you’re actually right, actually, like for real. Suppress that feeling for a moment and accept that yes, your life experience is different from others. And then find a nice therapist because let’s be honest after that shock to your system you’ll need one.
You people are so intent on projecting the idea that I’m calling you liars despite the fact that I never once said nor implied you were liars, that yeah, I’m going to just go ahead and say youre fucking liars now. Have a good day.
I didn’t say you lied, just saying that there’s no way you’ve been on the internet for 30 years and have never seen DAE anywhere before now.
“I’m not saying you lied, I’m just saying the thing you stayed as fact is clearly a falsehood aka lie”
This is the second “you’re wrong” in a day, I hope your evidently fragile ego can handle it.
I can. Be nice and I might.
Creep
If you wish to be understood, choose your words more carefully. If you wish to be treated with kindness, drop the defensiveness, learn to process feedback objectively, and take communication seriously. No one is being unkind or unreasonable here, except you.
That initial comment is quite pointed…
Yours is pretty over the top as well, lol.
“No one knows what the heck dae means you lazy bum. We invented words for a reason, try using them. If you’re illiterate then maybe try a YouTube video essay. “
If someone said that, sure… but no one did. Perhaps the Original Poster needs to take communication more seriously and less personally.
I think you’re making a significant deal out of something that is quite minor, personally. It’s okay, though. It’s minor, so we can agree to disagree. Cheers!
The basics of human communication is nothing important at all. 🤡
Chill out, man. This isn’t parliament. Everything doesn’t have to be communicated as if we’re drafting laws.
Communication styles vary greatly, and tone is dependent on setting. What OP posted was completely fine. No need to throw around clown emoji 😝
It’s an abbreviation on the internet. Do you act this way any time you see TIL, wtf, eli5 or other. Or are you just sour you don’t know this one
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
…Oh, sorry.
Hell no. If anything, it’s gotten worse.
In their defense, however, it’s probably largely not their fault. In my admittedly one-person-sample-size experience, 90% of the searchable Web is either Reddit threads or articles, and with Reddit going officially with Google (meaning DDG doesn’t catch as many Reddit threads as they used to), that leaves most of the searchable Web being articles. Because SEO has to ruin everything.
So, it’s not really that DDG is shitty (mostly), but that all searches are shitty. Though, with the whole Google-and-Reddit thing, I find Google’s results are noticeably less shitty (though still shitty).
I feel the same except Google is worse due to higher number of ads in results and most SEO prioritizes Google over Bing meaning more Google results are AI spam articles.
I feel the same except Google is worse due to higher number of ads in results
I generally don’t see ads due to uBlock Origin. Or am I just not noticing them? Lol.
and most SEO prioritizes Google over Bing meaning more Google results are AI spam articles.
I will give you that. But I find that’s the case with DDG too which is why I’m having to rely more and more on search operators like
site:.I generally don’t see ads due to uBlock Origin. Or am I just not noticing them? Lol.
I’m talking about the results as ads(paid for result ranking). Not as much a thing in DDG but google, they’re awful and you get maybe 2 results a page that aren’t paid promotion.
Freya Holmer did a good video on AI/SEO i think touches a little on this…
Oh that.
Yeaaaah that gets kind of annoying I imagine…
Yeah I really tried with DDG, switched my phone to it for 2 months. I was using !g so often it made the whole thing pointless.
Google sucks, but right now nothing is better. This is why they’re able to push their AI bullshit results so heavily, because just like with YouTube, ultimately there is no real competition.
I agree. Monopolies/oligopolies are terrible for the consumer.
The killer for me has to be that it doesn’t support searching for phrases within websites I need. Latest example: github. I can be on the project page, copy a phrase from the code and search ddg with it in double quotemarks, and get 0 results. Copy - google.com - paste - enter - loads of results.
Also the search function broke for about a day, a few days ago
That’s a bit surprising, given DDG uses Bing, Bing is Microsoft and Microsoft owns Github.
Did you try the same search with Bing, or have an example to share?
I’m on it, I’ll do a test based on your suggestions
To be honest with you, I didn’t even know that was a feature. (Unless I’m misunderstanding you.) Sounds cool!
If I need to search a website, I use either Ctrl+F or the
site:search engine operator.Yes, I’m so glad that operators like site: and before: are supported. Necessary for weeding out a few bad results aha
Yeah, I’m still salty that Google and most other search engines have cut out some of the boolean operators over the last decade or so.
Good enough for me, although there are times I need to use google.
I use QWANT but I have the same feeling tbh. Or maybe Google search has been worsening I’m not too sure…
I really tried, I set duckduckgo as the default for my second browser (I use it a lot) to slowly get used to it, but every time results are so bad I get mad and switch to Google especially for images
Naw. I use Kagi (paid) now, and get much better search results.
I feel like its better than google. I switched to DDG a couple years ago. 6 months ago I did a trial run with a self hosted search that only used google as a back end, the results felt like garbage
Eyeing the replies, does not one other person here get results constantly flooded with content farms? They’ve gotten significantly worse
But then, I don’t use Google so maybe this is still better than Google Search?
It started maybe three years ago, around the same time as LLMs became usable for this, but I’m pretty sure >50% are human-written still. Probably the LLM generates the structure (saves any time they’d have to spend coming up with plausible-sounding texts) and someone from a low-income country is contracted to make it look more legit
Of course, queries for topics that have a Wikipedia page get Wikipedia first, recipes get tons of big-name recipe sites, products get stores. But when there’s no obvious market around a topic, 3~4 out of 5 results are content farms pretending to have useful information to show unwary visitors ads
(As an alternative, I still have to try Kagi properly. It seemed on par with DDG when I did a few searches last year, but then their payment processor refused me trying to load my account, support was unhelpful, and I’ve gotten sidetracked since)
On ddg? Only one or two, which I can filter out.
Google always will return a content farm though.
The problem with DDG is that when it doesnt find much it simply throws random shit at you. It’s infuriating.
I also get those content farms constantly. I don’t want to use google but lately I’ve been using it over duckduckgo more often.
The other annoying thing is the air summaries. I’ve disable AI features but that’s still on. I hate it so much
