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When I moved to DDG, it took me more than a week to tune my searches for it. I was completely trained to the google interpreter and ddg works different. Now I use slightly different phrases, or ordering and it is great. I only use !g for very specific technical searches, like obscure errors.

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Do you have some hints on effectively using DDG, based on that experience?

I would also find this interesting, I switched from DDG to StartPage.com (proxied Google results) for this reason.

Just use it. There are no special tricks or hints needed, it is that good.

Biggest differences to me is that Google seems to handle natural questions like "how do i..." in a "smart" way whereas ddg seems to be more altavista like in that your keywords have higher weight rather than trying to outsmart you. Another difference is that Google is much better on local search thanks to its strong bonds with Google maps, like checking opening hours. For anything not maps related DDG has been my default for can't even remember how many years, over 5.

If you want to directly search other sites without having to choose a different engine in Firefox: if you search through DDG, you can put !g before or after your query and it’ll forward you to google.

There are a bunch of these. !a forwards to Amazon, !w to Wikipedia, etc.

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