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Comment by harha | Hacker News Reader

I actually think the results on DuckDuckGo are better than on google for many topics especially technical:

- there’s less ads (you can turn them off completely, but I’ve only seen one ad on the front page at most which is ok for me)

- not as SEOed (still not great though)

- the box on the side is often more useful, e.g. Wikipedia instead of shopping ads

- on mobile Safari I use the bangs [0] which have a sort of Omnibox experience

[0]: https://duckduckgo.com/bang

(Edited formatting)

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As much as I would like to agree, as a user who has DDG as the default search engine, this is not my experience... DDG consistently gives me useless results when I search for less popular languages results (searching Dart, or the search-friendly dartlang, gives me crap every time, while Google finds stuff easily... sure, Dart is by Google, that may be a factor, but if I remember correctly, results for Groovy and very new languages like Unison are a lot better at Google) I unavoidably have to use !g to turn to Google. To the point where when I am at work and cannot afford wasting time, I use Google by default.

I agree. I find myself using the !g bang any time I’m looking for software related queries.

I found this to be the case a few years ago. But nowadays it's uncommon that I need to switch to google, even if searching for technical things.

Good point, it's possible to send a request to add a bang, but it would be better if there were an interface like in Chrome or Firefox to set up own searches.

I do prefer not leaving all my data with Google though to combine with other activities of which I may or may not know of and I think it's good to use alternative services as much as possible, especially when I use Google just as an interface to surface information from site like Wikipedia or Stackexchange.

(note I'm not affiliated with DDG, I just also went through the process of De-Googling after Inbox was shut down)

What do you search? When I search "string dart" the first link is to api.dart.dev.

PS uh, rather the whole page is related to dart.

Does anyone know of a Firefox plugin that automatically adds a "!g" upon a gesture on mobile?

I'm asking because adding the "!g" takes about 6-7 screen touches so it's quite inefficient, and it basically keeps me from using DDG.

When I use a mobile I usually type G! instead of !g because of autocorrect, and it works just the same.

I'm sad to have to agree. I tried ddg as my primary search engine for about 3 months. By the third month I was just adding !g by default because I just wanted results without testing quality first. Then I realized how silly it was to use it for almost every search, which I'd been doing for about a week, and switched back.

I just searched for "dart" on ecosia and the programming language showed up on the first page of results. I also have bad luck with duck duck go, but I think ecosia proves that the only reason bing is bad is because Microsoft is incompetent

Cannot reproduce this -- Searched DDG for 'dartlang' and all links on the first page relate to dart programming language.

Also google having more results you are looking for sometimes doesn't mean you can't have DDG as your default search. Just enter 'dartlang !g' when you want to search google.

Just searched for "dart", got the programming language as the second result + the right-side Wikipedia box.

Don't you guys use an ad blocker? I barely see any ads since I started using uBlock. Occasionally I browse without an ad blocker and the experience is horrible and intimidating. Actually ads and propaganda were the reasons I quit TV around 10 years ago and I have never regretted it. So much time and mental energy is freed up to do constructive and fulfilling things (e.g. reading books, sports, socializing, musing etc).

Threw away TV 15 years ago, zero regret.

Yep! 15 years too. Had DirecTV with multiple DirecTivo's, then moved to Sausalito and lost LOS to sats. Never considered Comcast, and that was that.

I got rid of cable tv. Was spending $80 a month ($960/year) for something that’s mostly previously taped.

Best decision ever!

The problem, is that during a pandemic or crisis, you sorta miss the cable news. Local TV broadcasts are not as sufficient, but at least I can get some good digital signal coverage for a few channels.

Been avoiding internet ads and tracking for 15 years now. I feel like the unibomber. Facebook and google probably still have a good fingerprint on me, though, due to iOS not letting you use good ad blockers.

Something uncanny happened recently in terms of the ads I do see that gave me quite a bit of paranoia. My SO recently bought a distinct pair of leggings. How am I seeing ads for that same exact pair of leggings, on my phone? I don't think I've ever typed out the word leggings on the internet before this very comment.

But you live in the same household, and probably use the same internet connection, as someone who did likely search for and buy leggings. They use this information when correlating.

If you were both using home WiFi, you shared an IP address. That's enough to co-localize the two of you.

Unabomber not Unibomber, not that it matters. Ted Kaczynski, the man you are referring to is a fascinating man, try to ignore all of the recent hype and delusion following that Netflix series. I encourage everyone to read his book "Industrial Society and Its Future", he is without a doubt a luddite but presents some very compelling reasons in the book, if nothing else it will give you some insight into a rather notorious but perhaps unfairly represented character.

The dude killed three people and injured dozens others and nearly brought down an entire plane. Hes not unfairly represented, he's a terrorist.

Terrorism is always wrong and always hurts the causes it attempts to advance. Thus, even when committed for a good cause it's counterproductive.

If Kaczynski had good ideas, he did them a terrible disservice by resorting to terrorism.

> iOS not letting you use good ad blockers

I use 'Adblock Fast'. Seems fine, but I admit I have nothing to compare it to.

I switched from android to iOS and that’s the biggest thing u miss, ad blockers and addons in Firefox.

Just this week I installed NextDNS and it brought back my ad blocking glee. It’s fantastic.

I use 1Blocker for iOS and macOS - I see far less “chatter” in the DNS logs than with uBlock Origin.

Of course I had to pay for it - which I am more than happy to do.

The search results are quite often ads, in my opinion. They're heavily geared towards ecommerce and other "side" areas separate to actual information.

One more use case:

The result for copying the link of a search result item for e.g. "git book pdf"

from DuckDuckGo: https://progit2.s3.amazonaws.com/en/2016-03-22-f3531/progit-...

from Google: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

from bing: https://progit2.s3.amazonaws.com/en/2016-03-22-f3531/progit-...

I use Google don't track me for that

DDG results are okay until you need to look up something non computer science related, like results for your local country.

Actually that’s better too, I like how it’s possible to switch countries easily to get local results or choose global results.

Some non technical searches are more difficult though.

DDG’s definition of “global” is essentially “American” though. Presenting results exclusively for Worcester, MA, when I search for “Worcester” from a UK IP address (near Worcester, Worcestershire) isn’t being global, it’s being dumb.

It comes up every time DDG is discussed on HN and I don’t understand why they don’t fix it. It’s the main thing that keeps me using Bing on my phone.

Worcester has a higher population than England's Worcester, and as such probably has more backlinks to pages related to it. That is global. Expecting global results to be regionalized is silly; just use regionalized results.

That's a very engineer-focused way of looking at it.

I don't care about backlinks or population or whatever weighting DDG uses: I want relevant results. DDG is a user-facing search engine, not a tech demo. Showing a UK visitor three pages of results about Worcester, MA is simply bad UX.

No, it isn't. Non-localized search should ignore the geographical origin of the query, by definition.

Then use regional results! I, personally, am not an engineer. I'm a person who has an actual use for 'global' results, and my main reason for using DuckDuckGo is the ability to not have regional results.

If you want relevant results, don't use the global weighting. Use the UK weighting. That's why it's there. Literally so people with your preference of localized results can have localized results.

I set the region to Slovakia: it shows me a map of the UK Worcester and mixed results mostly about the US one:

https://i.imgur.com/i6fb6sz.png

Now I set the region to the UK, I would expect the more relevant results. It shows the map for the US Worcester and mixed results again, but differently mixed:

https://i.imgur.com/OdhCQg9.png

This doesn’t make much sense to me.

When I do it from the UK, with localisation on I get a whole page of links on the UK Worcester, with it off the hits are mostly the US one, but the Wikipedia page like is still UK.

YMMV, of course, but this search works fine for me.

For me all results are worse, computer science or not.

DDG completely ignores my country or when it doesn't, the results are misclassified. And you can forget about local searches, DDG being worse than useless for those.

What strikes me as odd is that DDG is worse for computer science results too.

DDG often ignores search terms that Google doesn't. And which terms it ignores is a complete guess, so you do this back and forth putting relevant query words in quotes to try and force it.

I use DDG as my default search engine, but there's no point in denying the obvious. UI might be nice, but UI is unimportant.

That’s odd, because from my experience, it’s Google that’s constantly ignoring my search terms. With Google, I often had to quote “every” “single” “keyword” when it came to searching for computer science stuff. With DDG, not as much.

DDG returns mostly Norwegian results when I set the region to Denmark. I get that our languages are very closely related and thus hard to tell apart, but it does get annoying.

That is funny. The thing that annoy me most when writing in Norwegian on DDG is that most results are from Denmark, often including did you mean "Danish spelling for the same word"

Just add region:se (replace as appropriate) to your search.

DDG is good for mainstream. But once I search something in Hungarian I have to revert back to google.

Same for Slovak.

P.S. Bojler eladó.

Not been my experience either. I use DDG as my main search engine and I am obliged to fall back to google almost every time.

DuckDuckGo is just Bing, with the optionality of geolocation by country.

I use DDG as my default, and I do like the bang syntax - in fact, it wouldn't be my default otherwise.

I find when searching for manuals on devices, for example, there are lots of garbage results or PDF spam sites that I would not recommend people click.

The other night I searched a question (I forget what) and the entire first page was Quora links to possibly the same question over and over, and not the question I asked.

tldr: I use !g, !i, and !usps a lot.

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