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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

I have serious issues about DDG search results when it comes to accuracy.

For example, when I want to search for the documentation for the Ecto library in Elixir, I search for "elixir ecto" on Google:

https://www.google.com/search?q=elixir+ecto

Top result is what I want. Second result is the Github page. Third result is the wiki on Github.

Perfect.

This is what I get for the same search result on DDG:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ecto+elixir

Totally irrelevant results. Why isn't DDG able to deduce what I'm actually searching for?

Even when I search explicitly for "elixir ecto docs" I still don't get the results I want:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ecto+elixir+docs&ia=web

So yeah, DDG is basically unusable for me, at least for these types of use cases. I get the privacy benefits but IMO if a search engine is failing at its core job then everything else is pointless.

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Yeah I mostly try to use DDG but I find that if my query has any implicit grammar (eg phrased as a question, or contains verbs) and not just independent search terms, then Google will get it and DDG won't find it at all.

Lots of !g and I don't try to use it on mobile yet.

I'm confused. When I run your DDG query, the first result is the github page, and the second result is the docs. So same top two as Google, but flipped. I find that acceptable. Maybe one of us is in some A/B bucket?

This is what I see: https://imgur.com/gallery/wMoC0IF

Both on computer and iPhone.

https://imgur.com/a/Lak3LZx for me.

Very interesting. I see almost what bgaluszka sees, but the first two results flipped. I know they basically blend a couple search engine's results together, so they must experiment with different combinations.

Here is what i get clicking on your second query. https://i.imgur.com/2ZfvuDh.png

I expanded the boxes in the top right, but it seems clear it gives the "correct" results for me.

I wonder why the results are so different.

This is the reason I've somewhat recently switched to Searx - I've not had to run any !g searches, as I did when I was using DDG, but my privacy remains intact.

"elixir ecto" on a public Searx instance: https://www.searx.me/?q=elixir%20ecto

Exact same reason here, I kept getting irrelevant searches on DDG while getting better hits on Google or even Bing. So !g and !b kept occuring...

Searx is much more liberating, I can do searches multiple searches in one - and also do code search on github, gitlab etc.

This is where !g comes in handy. In my experience how you search ddg is a bit different from how you search google and it may require some time to get used to but for me what ddg offers is far more interesting than what google does e.g. consistent results, privacy, ability to forward my search request to other search engines.

Consistency? Another commenter (greysonp) says he got different results with my query.

How is that “consistent”?

That is interesting, although I seem to be getting the same result as him (I've replied to your other comment).

I see the same thing as the other two posters so I'm very curious as to why you get what you get.

I tried the query several times and got a few slightly different results, at one point getting something similar (but not identical) to enraged_camel's results. Most of the time it shows me what everyone else is reporting, but "consistent" might not be a good description here.

There's also !s, which will search using startpage -- all of the google results and none of the google creepiness.

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