DuckDuckGo is top result for "new search engine" | Hacker News Reader

DuckDuckGo is top result for "new search engine"

google.com

27 pointspclark51 comments

And you know how they got that ranking?

They promoted a widget - http://duckduckgo.com/karma.html - a little while back that when you install it on your site it uses backlink text of "new search engine" to link to their front page (rather than the page with the widget).

Sadly I don't find their actual search engine very useful at all, but the widget is excellent! It shows you your karma count / popularity on a handful of Web services including Hacker News.

Thanks for using our widget! There is also a similar profiles one: http://duckduckgo.com/profiles.html

If anyone needs/wants any help getting it set up (doubtful on HN), or, needs/wants other services added before use (more likely), then please let me know...

Not to co-opt any thunder, but we used the same strategy for Stormpulse.com and in doing so have become the #1 result for "storm tracker" http://is.gd/i2C3 and the #2 result (behind only the National Hurricane Center itself, and ahead of Weather Underground, et al) for "hurricane tracking" http://is.gd/i2C8.

I'm all for diversity, let's hope this duck doesn't go the way of the dodo!

If anybody out there wants to pit their might against google then I wish them good luck, as long as you find that your relevance for 'new search engine' on your competitors website is of major importance I think you have a ways to go.

Coincidentially duckduckgo gives 'cuil' as the first result for 'new search engine', I'm not sure how to interpret that :)

Now that you mention it. Am I the only one seeing this?

For the past month or so, Google has been less satisfying in their search results for me. I've been an avid Google search addict since 1998, I really sense a palpable drop in result quality since before the holidays.

Maybe it's a bad index refresh? Maybe they've got some little issue? Maybe it's my discomfort with the invasion of the top search results with "Did you mean BLAH" results?

Or I'm losing my mind? Or maybe they're losing a bit of their touch?

Recently I had 2-3 technical search results that returned much better hits from Yahoo and Live than from Google. This almost never has happened for me-- certainly never before did I start to think "maybe I'm missing out by using Google exclusively".

For a business perspective, I believe this might be adding to why we're seeing increased traffic for our error search engine (http://bug.gd). Our search results differe substantially from Google's because we optimize for errors across our own web index, our community results, and BOSS. Google used to do a better job of finding these errors in haystacks, too.

Is anyone else feeling this drop in Google search results quality lately? Or is it just me?

You're not alone. I think it's the suggested search results. Almost never useful. I've switched over to yahoo in my toolbar. I think the top search engines are close enough in quality that their results are only distinguishable by interface (there's been research, though I can't remember where). When they change the presentation with that "did you mean" they do more damage to the brand than improvement to the results. It's Google's version of Clippy.

how many people would go to Google and search for a term "new search engine"?

I'd figure a person would use the term search or search engine, and for those duckduckgo is not even in the top 10 pages

http://www.google.com/trends?q=new+search+engine%2C+hacker+n...

You have to start somewhere...

Just to be clear, I went for this key phrase, e.g. look at the homepage title.

I thought "new search engine" was a) in immediate reach; b) efforts for it could help with "search engine"; and c) people actually searching for "new search engine" are probably good candidates for using Duck Duck Go.

Now I suppose it's time to move on to higher volume stuff...

"new search engine": Approx search volume January=18,100. Approx search volume average=22,200

(From google adwords tools).

For comparison, "people search" gets 68,000,000 January, and average of 30,400,000

Sort of off topic, but is the adwords tool the best one to use to find search volume?

If you have a point of reference, I find Google trends useful as well. By point of reference, I mean you have some keywords where you know the actual click volume from personal experience, i.e. you rank 1st on that keyword.

Yeah I've used Google Trends and Insights a lot, just wanted to see what everyone else out there is using.

I personally think adwords tool is the best freely available tool right now. Spyfu and wordtracker are other options - paid. More expensive Hitwise reports, can't beat these in terms of depth and accuracy.

You should also check out google's new Search Insight at http://google.com/insights/search

Seems to give logical numbers from what I've seen, How accurate they are I don't know, but they seem to be in the right sort of ball park.

Thank you. I've been using them, Google Trends & Insights and Exact Report (for rankings).

WordTracker has a great free too: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Also SEOBook has a decent tool: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

But yes, AdWords tools is among the best to find search volume. No one else has the data to offer the same information.

This site is going to have to change it's name to get to the next level. I can't ever see anyone saying "just duckduckgo it".

"Just duck it." :)

duckit?

Maybe, but 15 years ago "just google it" would have sounded strange too.

There's strange and then there's overly long. Google rolls off the tongue.

Also, Google is fun, maybe even a little silly. DuckDuckGo is childish. It makes me think it's a search engine for toddlers.

I'm willing to admit I may be wrong, but I think that name will hold them back.

I somewhat agree with you. In the long-run in my opinion it will hinder widespread adoption because, as you said, the name just sounds silly. But right now the name probably helps them because it generates attention and is memorable. But how DuckDuckGo thinks about this when it comes to a long-term perspective I don't know.

It's harder to change names later. Google both generated attention immediately and was long-term viable.

The product will generate attention in the long run if its good.

I completely agree with you. The name isn't the best it could be if thinking ahead.

I also was thinking, "This should be a kids site". I like the idea of a search engine for kids. You could concentrate on indexing only "kid safe" and "kid related" content. What a perfect name for that.

As for the length of a name, and if it "verbifies" easily, these are things I agonize about a lot. Perhaps we're taking too much upon ourselves. The users will find a way to talk about it easily, if they need to talk about it at all. "America Online" -> AOL, "Treasury Inflation Protected Securities" -> TIPS, "The Federal National Mortgage Association" -> Fannie Mae, etc.

would you be talking about it if the name was something else? Brand is a BIG part of any new search engine, one portion of it is remembering the name -- kinda hard to forget one with the name DuckDuckGo.

Yeah what seems silly, odd & out of the ordinary often becomes successful. Gets people talking!

Look at the Snuggie craze, which keeps you warm yet looks totally ridiculous!

I would if it were on Hacker News. Other than this thread, I'll have forgotten about it by tomorrow.

Very easy to forget IMHO, and hard to remember if it's duckduckgo, duckgoduck, gogoduck, duckgo, goduck, etc etc

No, it's easy to remember, if you remember the childrens' game "Duck Duck Goose." If you don't know the game, then yeah, the URL is just pretty nonsensical.

Ah. Is this an American game perhaps? Never heard of it. Thanks for explaining. May hamper global adoption :)

Yeah, it's an american thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Duck_Goose

I think pretty much all Americans know it instantly. I'm sure some will pipe up here not knowing it now...it's their queue :)

I knew the game once being reminded of it, but I didn't immediately make the connection reading about Duck Duck Go.

I'd throw another hat in the ring of, "Yeah, a better name would help."

Duck it, duck yourself, go ducking - I bet something will stick.

It's worse in past tense: "I googled it" vs. "I duckduckgoed/duckduckwent it". Not everything has to be verbed though.

DuckDuckGo gets some interesting results on an ego search compared to Google. I wonder how it ranks results compared to other search engines.

"We label official sites, and always put them on top."

How would we torture-test this product claim?

This claim is a lie as to an ego search on my own name. There is an "official" page (one I maintain), but it's not the top result. Do we consider Paul Graham, to give a familiar example, to have an official site?

paulgraham.com, which is labeled Official site at http://duckduckgo.com/Paul_Graham

Sorry if our text is a bit unclear. We label official sites (that we know about), and always put them on top.

Speaking of new search engines, is there any search engine that just returns a single result for each query typed in?

yes, google. The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is your friend :-)

Also, you could set the num parameter: http://www.google.com/search?q=asdf&num=1

What I'm thinking of here is a search engine that returns a single result per item, and then if the result answers your question, it ranks higher in the search result, meaning it answers other peoples questions too. You can click a button to get rid of the current result and view the next. This way, the search engine always gives the best possible reply.

this somewhat sounds like the search-wiki extension Google has. you can only see it when you are logged in but you can influence the ordering of results. it's not one result but you can manipulate them and AFAIK Google mentioned that they want to use that data sometime in the future.

Was thinking of something like this, also.

I could see it working, but mainly for queries that have one clearly-best result, or where the 'snippet' itself answers the query. So perhaps for 'answers' search more than general web search.

The implicit user feedback created would be great... but uses might be frustrated by not being able to scan many results quickly. (I always set Google to return 100 results...)

At the start, it would suck, but if the search engine reached 98% accuracy rate, you don't need more results. The engine could even learn when results are in order - for example, asking "where is mongolia" will give you a single answer, but "tv review sites" will give you a list of search results.

So bootstrapping is a challenge. Will users wait out the 'training' period?

(Or similarly, if a forward-thinking group is willing to help train, are their choices representative enough of what the impatient masses eventually want?)

I think it's a promising area for experimentation.

I am going to model this mathematically soon, but with a very small sample size, you can quickly reach a pretty accurate result. And in general, most results are pretty clear - number of states in the u.s will always be the same, no matter how forward thinking you are.

Such an engine has to start small and be trained for a few months, otherwise users will think it sucks. As it grows, it adapts.

I bet one could actually do this very easily using yahoo BOSS. Want to take a stab at it? If anyone wanted to work on this, I'd help, so long it was written in python.

Forgive me if I misunderstand, but couldn't you just look at what people click on and assume they had clicked next for all the results before it?

No, the point is that you have a text box that always accurately answers your query. For example, you type in "hangover cure" and it gives you a hangover cure. You type in "what is the capital of Benin" and it gives you the answer. You type in "Microsoft" and it shows you the microsoft website.

The search engine learns because when the answer is wrong, people select the "next" button. If you just return a list of search results, people will often click the first link because it's first.

Interesting that you used google to search for a "new search engine".

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