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Comment by glesica | Hacker News Reader

I switched. For 80-90% of my queries it gets me to the same place as Google just as quickly, or more quickly in some cases. For the other 10-20% there's the !bang syntax, which also lets me search images and maps right from the Chrome address bar without ever hitting the mouse.

Use the tools that make you most productive. For me, that's DDG. For you, maybe not. But I think "...there is no reason to switch to them" just isn't accurate in general.

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Unfortunately for me, the most used !bang function was "!g" to re-run the search on Google. I used DDG daily for months as my default search engine and on about half of all my queries (most of them technical searches), it would give poor enough results that I'd scan the page, re-run the query with "!g " and find a useful result on Google in the first or second listing.

I finally admitted to myself that I was wasting too much time having to run so many searches twice and I switched back to Google.

I am in the same camp. I would like an option for custom bangs

I haven't had that problem at all. Most of my searches are technical and I rarely have to switch to Google. I would suggest giving it another try every few months if you aren't satisfied with it.

I think that's the main issue for anyone who wants to best google.

I'm not particularly disapointed with google search, and if I try something I don't like, I won't try it again unless a friend tells me it's changed a lot.

That business is clearly one-shot, either v1 is good or you're going to have to fight uphill against a bad rep of your own making.

For 80-90% of my queries it gets me to the same place as Google just as quickly, or more quickly in some cases

By quickly, do you mean in less time (search speed is more), or in fewer clicks (search quality is more / relevant links are above)?

I was thinking of wall time, but in general the number of clicks is the same. Again, for me. YMMV.

I suspect we all tend to search for the same types of things over and over. Ruby developers search for Ruby docs and modules, stamp collectors search for auctions and information about stamps, etc.

So I fully understand that my experience won't be shared by everyone.

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