Comment by unicornporn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unicornporn | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: how do you people even cope with the crap results?

I'm a StartPage user, but decided to try DDG for some time after the System1 debacle [1]. The Swedish localized search results are downright unusable compared to StartPage/Google. I'm really trying to give it a chance, but I keep reaching for SP in every other search.

[1] https://reclaimthenet.org/startpage-buyout-ad-tech-company/

Because they aren’t crap for me the vast majority of the time. I often hear about local results, but flipping the "Germany" switch gives me great German results.

There are 2 cases when I need to use !g, both of them are when there aren’t many results:

1. Rare error, simply not in their index

2. Ambiguous term and I need to force a part of the query to appear. Because DDG thinks it’s perfectly fine to ignore the user sometimes and show you completely unrelated things even if you tried your best to tell them what you are looking for and it’s in their index.

Sadly recently google started doing that as well. Not as bad as DDG, the first few results are still an answer to my query, but then they decide to spam the results with useless sites that don’t have the term.

edit: formatting

Use !s instead, it will take you to startpage which are essentially the same results as on Google, without having to go to Google.

Completely honest answer, not trying to be dismissive -- DuckDuckGo gives me fine results for most of my queries. I don't reach for Google that much unless I'm doing a deep dive into a problem that's hard to search in general, in which case I often find I'm aggregating results from multiple search engines.

I find Google better at some results -- occasionally Google "gets" what I'm trying to search for better than DuckDuckGo does and zeroes in more specifically on the topic. Sometimes I find that DuckDuckGo does the same. I particularly think that DuckDuckGo's smart cards are just (to me) obviously better than Google's. DuckDuckGo's news is really bad for me, I guess -- I pretty much always use Google News for current events.

This comes up pretty much every time that DuckDuckGo comes up, and I have seen it come up so often, that when I step back and try to come up with a semi-impartial reading of which engine is better, the only conclusion I can reach is that a lot of people have different opinions about how a search engine should react when they search. I think different search results are an acquired taste, and there just isn't an objective right or wrong answer to which engine is better.

So it's a little like if someone was recommending eating vegetables, and you asked, "but what do you do about the crap taste of spinach?" You have a real problem in that I want to help you find foods you like, but at the same time, I'm not trying to "solve" the way spinach tastes. I don't agree that spinach is "wrong", it's just not what you want.

From that point of view, having multiple, diverse search engines is good, and we'd all be served better by using multiple search engines. I don't want DuckDuckGo to just be a Google clone; part of the reason I use it is because of their different results. I do want it to improve and get better, but I disagree that morphing into Google 2.0 will accomplish that for me.

If you like Google's style of search results, then what you really need is a trustworthy replacement for Startpage. You need Google but without the tracking -- and DuckDuckGo isn't just Google without the tracking. I think you're justified in telling anyone who says, "just use DuckDuckGo" to shove off, since DuckDuckGo isn't solving your problem. But I don't agree that DuckDuckGo has bad results, it has a different flavor than you're used to.

So in other words, use Startpage if you need Google without tracking and DuckDuckGo if you need Bing without tracking.

> I'm a StartPage user, but decided to try DDG for some time after the System1 debacle

I haven't kept up with the most recent news, but I assume OP would still be using SP if they could trust it not to track them. What they need is a StartPage equivalent that they still trust.

I too use DDG first and I'm just willing to suffer a bit 'till I use Google. Using DDG first at least keeps Google honest and they are only a click away on Firefox.

The thing that's saddest is not only are DDG results not as smart but they also seem dumbed-down in the fashion of Google - ie, too much "your search" --> "what we imagine you really want" --> "here's our curated list of things like this (and screw your actual keywords)"

I use DDG as my main search engine and I agree localised results are subpar ( I'm Brazilian ). I end up resorting to the !g bang most of the time but since these kinds of searches are a just small subset of my queries, it doesn't bother me that much.

If you find issues with localized search be sure to report them with examples of what sites would give better results locally!

I honestly can always find what I want with DDG or I can’t find it in DDG or Google. If I end up searching Google it’s essentially the same results, but it also depends how you search.

I’m either searching for something straight forward and Wikipedia (or some other obvious site) suffices or its so niche that neither Google or DDG work.

I also wrote my own search engine that works well for my niche topics (better than either IMO). Mostly for discovering interesting aspect though.

Some searches work well on DDG and some don't, which is why nearly everyone falls back on !g for some types of searches.

My guess is that you more frequently search for things in the fallback category compared to users that find DDG's results to be non-crap.

Swedish non-localizes search almost certainly falls in that category.

The bang operator is pretty amazing once you get used to it. It gives you control over what you're searching for again.

I use !w (Wikipedia) !yt (YouTube) !d (dictionary) !rhyme (rhyming dictionary) and !gsc (Google scholar) regularly.

Honest answer: I don't really search that much but my ddg results aren't crap

I love DuckDuckGo and use it by default but the results do suck. They are improving, however.

It's not just you. I sincerely believe in DDG's mission, but the sad truth is I just can't find what I want with it. Unfortunately there seems to be no good way to use Startpage with Safari either.

I'm not alone! Get Firefox and chose whatever search engine you like.

DDG isn’t as good at indexing various forms of social media, but is decent otherwise. I find it depends where my results live

Eg, Reddit, forums, stack overflow (sometimes), YouTube, etc

Maybe it's just my searches, but I'm able to pretty consistently find what I'm looking for with DDG, and the number of times that Google has helped in those situations is basically nil. I think it's a really subjective thing, and it may take a while for DDG to work as well for all users as it currently does for some.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com