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Comment by markbao | Hacker News Reader

Upon recommendation from users on HN, I replaced my Chrome default search engine with Duck Duck Go. I haven't looked back since. Results are excellent, the zero-click data is amazing, and the semantic analysis ("Java can mean different things. Which one? (Some meanings grouped into sections Animals, Computer science, Consumables, Entertainment, Geography, Plants, and Transportation.)") is incredible.

When I searched for my own name, immediately my official site, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and blog (among tens of other profiles) appeared. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=mark+bao&v=

This is the kind of chatter that should be going on when we're talking about a "Google killer"—Duck Duck Go is more of a decision engine than Bing claims to be. Amazing work, Gabriel!

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I'm going to take the contrary. I switched to DDG for a few weeks, but since have switched back to google. DDG is fine with general things ("Java", "Vim tutorial", and so forth), but fails with the specific (programming errors, how to set up esoteric programs, etc).

So DDG could do the job for about 60-70% of the searches I would make, but it sometimes would just turn up absolutely nothing and just say "why not try google?" It was cool to see DDG admit they aren't perfect, but I started wondering (as it happened more) why I wasn't just using google anyway. So I switched back. Really, using DDG so much has made me appreciate google more for being able to really scry into the crannies of the internet and 5 year old forum posts for the answers that I need.

Thanks. This problem should start going away now. I just added Bing as a live backup, so if I find nothing through my various indexes/channels, it should back fill with a modified Bing call.

Why did you choose Bing?

Because I'm already using BOSS for some things and it will probably become Bing at some point. I'm open to others.

You would be surprised but the choie of SaaS search APIs is really small -- even if you are prepared to pay.

Yahoo BOSS (which probably will disappear when Yahoo pulls out of search) and Bing API, basically. I don't believe Ask has an API.

This is a current issue for projects I am working on

Ask does have an API. It's just not open to the public, but is accessible via private agreement.

I have to say, I'm really impressed by how accessible you are. I mentioned a problem on a Reddit thread a while back and you fixed it immediately as well. Keep doing what you're doing, and don't forget about the little guys when you get big :)

Hah, thx! I can't even begin to express how invaluable feedback has been. I of course want to respond quickly, but it also has the benefit of getting a larger conversation started.

I was quite surprised the other day when someone committing to one of my projects mentioned that they had contacted you about a !clojure search option that does syntax search "better".

As a developer, your accessibility is something I value in a product/project/service. Companies talk about being "agile", but all that means a lot of the time is that they respond with incremental improvement and encourage feedback, only to stonewall most of its momentum throughout the process.

Kudos again. Love your work.

This pretty much sums up my experience. I really really really want to use and love DDG but the results just aren't nearly as good as google, especially for specific phrase searching. I LOVE the not storing searches, simplicity etc. but I can't love the search yet.

I know running a mail server is probably a pain in the ass, but if the owner of DDG made it so people could have @duckduckgo.com or @cuiler.com or whatever he's using now I think that would help spread the engine immensely (that and making it better).

Why do you think adding mail would be such a boon? Just a forwarding address?

I think it helps solidify the brand. Makes it seem more like a services company that won't go away over night. Not a bad idea.

Hell, just offer an extremely tiny "DuckMail" beta with 8 users and never take it public -- it's the thought that counts IMO.

as he said, solidifying the brand. specifically: i get the feeling a lot of developers here want to be all knowing of the "cool new thing." many of them think thats DDG, and a DDG email address would be a badge they show off. I know for sure if I switched from my gmail address a TON of people would ask me why and what the hell DDG was.

Mail and calendaring and maps and web hosting and machine translation are all cool services, but they don't have a whole lot to do with being a good search engine.

I disagree. You can search DDG with !scala {}{}{}{}{syntax-laden thing}{}{}{}{} and get results. Google doesn't really have anything that compares to language-specific search functionality.

The 60-70% of things I don't find on DDG immediately, I don't find immediately on Google either. Creative queries win at the same rate on both sides of the equation IMO.

I use DDG as my default and won't be going back just out of principal. I think DDG has a fantastic search engine in the works that could rival Google's "relevant" ad-laden results within the next year and a half.

My only complaint? Color scheme and logo. It just seems IDK, sort of... McDonalds? Gabriel, can I change your logo, please? :)

Hah, you can have a go it, sure! I can't promise I'll use it though :). I love the Duck but am less psyched on the lettering.

I will add some themes though, so if you have any theme ideas I'm all ears. Actual CSS/color changes/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

When I searched for my own name, immediately my official site, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and blog (among tens of other profiles) appeared.

When I searched for mine, 6 people and places (that aren't me) came up. I had to click a second time on "Try Web Links" and had two entries at #15 and #27. On Google I have 3 results in the top 10.

For a search that actually matters I did "ruby blog." Ruby Inside was #2 but junk results contaminated positions 1,3,4,5, and 6. In Google, all top 10 results are relevant and high quality. From what I can make out doing various searches, Google's "trick" has been to rank popular/high traffic sites higher, whereas DDG doesn't have the benefit of Google's DNS and Google Analytics data.. if DDG somehow weeded out the results with very poor Alexa (or better) scores, though, I suspect the results would be stronger.

Kudos to Gabriel for doing a top notch job though. DDG has a long way to go before I could use it instead of Google (who are too far ahead right now), but it's the best alternative I've seen for sure and competition is good.

Thanks. I appreciate the detailed feedback. Certainly some queries are better than others. Your name hit a disambiguation page, which currently gets treated completely differently than other names. I should merge these in some much more useful way, but I haven't done this yet.

The ruby blog results do suck. Sorry about that. Better blog results are currently in process.

You are solving a ridiculously difficult problem, so I don't want to seem like I'm ragging on you at all, but yeah.. on the disambiguation pages, I'd love to see the first set of Web links appear below regardless (a bit like how Google does with its new-style "Did you mean" results) - it just aids instant scannability.

Yeah, they will load automatically if you do the scroll wheel now or down arrow, but I agree I should just show them initially. Another issue is those Web links aren't triggering the name-detection code, which pulls out the social profiles and such.

Out of curiosity, do you like these ruby blog results any better: http://tmbg.duckduckgo.com/?q=ruby+blog (staging server) ?

I actually dislike the zero-click data. I think it's impressive from a technical standpoint, but ultimately it just gets in the way of my searches. When I'm searching, I already have a general idea of what I'm searching for, so the zero-click info isn't very useful, and also leaves less room on the page for search results.

To give a concrete example: I was following a discussion online about a show called Archer, and someone said it was basically Frisky Dingo except not as good. So when I do a search on DDG for Frisky Dingo, the zero-click results didn't do me any good. I already figured it was a cartoon show on Adult Swim, I wasn't interested in "American animated television series distributed by Madman Entertainment Category" or "More related topics", I wanted something more relevant. I have to wonder how often people click on any of the links in the zero-click box.

Edit: you called it a "decision engine", which is both accurate and why I don't like DDG as much as Google. I want a search engine that reads my mind. When I do a search for "django", I want the framework, I don't want films/musicians/etc. Google reads my mind and DDG doesn't.

Thanks for the feedback. I think it's very hit or miss for people. A lot of people really like the 0-click. Our results are different too, so it would be good to give people like you the option to get to them quicker. I'll explore a setting to turn off the 0-click.

I was just thinking about my "django" search results, and I thought about why the Django framework ranked so highly. The type of people that write about Django and link to sites covering Django, they could be the same sort of people who know SEO better than the site operator for a tribute page to a jazz musician. So that might not have been the best example.

That's exactly right. However, I should take into account the popularity of the different ones and put the most popular on top. This happens in a lot of cases, but not in this one, though doing so is on the list.

I liked trying it, but localization is an issue when considering switching default search engine. With localized settings zero-clic data is still in english and links to wikipedia are to the english one for example.

Thanks. Yeah, the other wikipedias have not been integrated yet. Do you think it would be better to just not show them at all for other localizations, or is english better than nothing?

I think it's definitely better than nothing!

giving it a go as my default chrome search engine too. nice work gabriel! i love the infinite scroll.

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