DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for the past 7 months

I've been using it for a week, I like it.

Health food features: (features that are generally good for you but which you don't notice specifically at each use)

  - Access via https, if you want.
  - Logs deleted quickly
  - Less data about you collected by Google.

Note: For Firefox, if you want to put the https version of DDG in your search box list, use the Add to Firefox link on the DDG page, rather than "Add Duck Duck Go" in Firefox's search box dropdown.

Immediately tasty features:

  - Clean results page.
  - Clean results page URL.
    - (Some Linux distros dirty it up in Firefox.)
  - If not many results, there's a link to the equivalent Google search.
    - This is so polite and helpful it's classy.
  - !Bang notation for alternate search engines.

The !Bang notation is enough by itself to use DDG as your default search box entry. I have alternate search engines in my Firefox search box, but I don't use them much because even "alt-downarrow ..." is just inconvenient enough to dissuade me from using it; then you have to switch it back. "!w" at the front of your query to signal a Wikipedia search is a pleasure.

https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

Well done.

The only thing I missed after switching to DDG was the auto-suggest feature, so I added it on myself: http://nfriedly.com/stuff/duckduckgoogle/

I've been using DDG since the new privacy policy. There are two points I frequently bump into:

1. DDG has a spellchecker, but not a good one. For example, DDG correctly guesses "hcker news", but unlike Google it fails to correct e.g. "hooker news".

2. DDG is relatively good on general queries (like unique names), but not on specific ones (like phrases). Recent example: searching for "r6rs vote" on Google gives ratification votes as the first link, DDG can't find that link at all.

So while I'm not too dissatisfied, I'm not too impressed either.

A few qualms I have after attempting to use it as my default for a while:

- the layout and font of the results page really bugs me. Century Gothic and Trebuchet are a lot harder to read than Helvetica/Arial, and it just looks goofy for something I need to read quickly and dispassionately about 100 times per day. I really suggest something more utilitarian, e.g., Verdana of HN/reddit would be much better.

- The infinite scroll seems like a good idea in theory, but in reality the growing length of the page makes it harder for me to sense the rank of the current link I'm looking at or where I am on the page. Both Google and Bing tried this kind of display, and abandoned it after a while... Could you at least number your result links?

- To add to that, your headings like "In abbreviations and acronyms", "Other Uses" and "Web links" that divide your infinite list are very small, the same color as other text, and easy to miss. The sections that narrow my search look almost identical to the actual web links. This makes me do some disruptive context checking to discern whether I am going to another web page or searching for something else on DuckDuckGo. Note how your and Google's "Did you mean:" statement is bright red, you should apply the same elevated importance to your disambiguation sections.

- I can't search for an address and immediately see a map of the location.

- You don't suggest image results for things that people almost certainly want images for, e.g., animals, celebrities, or landmarks. I then have to switch to another search engine for that which is an extra step.

Overall, I like what you're doing, I just feel like you need to make some serious improvements to match with the UX of Google or Bing! I can't knock your results or your privacy policy; both those things have seemed to be pretty good so far.

The main things I have noticed after using it for a couple of weeks:

- Unlike with Bing, I didn't switch back to google after a couple of days

- The results often include more relevant pages covering the same topic, whereas google seems to try to return the one best page about a topic. If you are researching something rather than looking for something, Duck Duck Go is better.

The second thing is what has so far kept me at DDG.

One feature request: Please allow "!g" to work at the end of the query and not just at the front.

I have been using DDG as my primary search engine at home for several months and I've been happy with it. The !commands are of little utility to me, since my browser supports search keywords and I use them extensively. There's a couple areas I can think of that I wish it would improve:

1. Its ability to intelligently bubble up semantic information is very impressive but not as broad as google's, I think. For instance, it is very good at providing an info box saying 'So and so is a rock band from the UK', but what Google can do that DDG doesn't is provide several related youtube videos at the top of the search, because they've proven to be particularly relevant.

2. It doesn't have any way to quickly put the current search terms through image search. It feels very natural in google to click 'images' if I want to learn more about a topic, and I don't have that option in DDG.

3. Its arithmetic and conversions (I believe it uses Wolfram Alpha) are not nearly as reliable as google's. Google is almost scarily good at figuring out when I'm asking it do some math, or to perform a conversion.

I've been using DDG as my primary search engine for the past three weeks. The author here doesn't discuss the downsides, and I haven't found very many either.

Occasionally (say, when searching for specific error messages and things) I still find Google to be better, but for most things I prefer DDG, and I'll be sticking with it for the forseeable future.

A data point for you:

DuckDuckGo doesn't return anything to me because my browser is sufficiently old that the clever results presentation doesn't work. Bing and Google both work fine, degrading gracefully.

This isn't a complaint, I know my system (on which I do this sort of stuff) is old, but it is what it is, and DuckDuckGo doesn't work on it.

When trying out a new search engine, who here searches for their blog name to determine the "quality" of the engine? It highly ranks both of my blogs, whereas cuil did not.

I am thinking of trying DuckDuckGo for serious use, but I have still never seen it mentioned outside of HN.

It may not be fully rational, but think it is a method many of us use: When you hear about something from two completely independent sources, then it is probably worth checking out.

Nice job, Gabriel. I plan to start using DDG. I also am enjoying your work in progress on gaining traction. Many thanks for undertaking it.

I used it (on home puter) for a long time, many months. But I found myself too often doing google searches after ddg one's to find what I wanted. I gave up using it.

when i search for HN it displays it at 8th place after some irrelevant punk band and an obscure town in Montenegro.

When i search for my name (as i always do to test search engines) it doesn't show my linkedIn profile with 500+ connections at all. Even Bing learned to find it.

Summary: Not usable (yet).

Sounds good, but one thing I'd like to know is if the author of that article has any affiliations with DDG.

This is great, happy to see some valid competition in this space. I'll be giving it a try off and on. So far in my initial tests it's been pretty good.

Unfortunately it doesn't work nearly as well as Google for some foreign language queries.

What happens when DDG gets more popular? Google or Yahoo (or whatever APIs they depend on) could pull the plug, and then what?

Interestingly, DDG (as it is) could never replace its "competitors."

I tried it and on first day basically what would take 1-2 google queries (simple) turned into 5+ DDG + not found what I needed.

I love the idea, features, privacy, but it really does not work for me. Maybe I need some usage tips??

Edit: I'm goona try out this !bang stuff

is there a catch? I feel like i genuninely do not find the things i find in google.

wonder if its just the way I'm used to knowing how to search. is seldom dont find exactly what i'm looking for google. seems like it would be more a waste of time to change my workflow... hmm....