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Comment by fbnlsr | Hacker News Reader

I usually switch between DuckDuckGo and Startpage. Both are good.

Been using DDG for about 8 years instead of Google search. Occasionally use google image search for matching an uploaded image. Use google maps for any local searches (credit to where credit is due its a superior map product).

Yandex seems to be better at image reverse search. Maps is the only one I still use Google for.

Yandex and TinEye satisfy all my reverse image search needs. Google Maps is the only Google service I use. There is simply no substitute for Street View and it is fantastically useful and interesting. Even so it is only a secondary option and I use maps from OpenStreetMap through Organic Maps 90% of the time. I am satisfied if that is the extent of my relationship with them.

What

(What do you search) they stink vs. Google even though Startpage is proxying them.

DDG is _not_ a “good” search engine — please, anybody have a hundred side-by-side screenshots to compare identical searches?

Edit - also admit Kagi’s great, I’m not affiliated; if you have money Kagi should be the pick (ideally purchased via their more private payment options probably)

What are your metrics for good? I’ve exclusively used ddg for years and have zero issues. You ask for an outrageous level of proof- you prove it’s not good.

Whattttttt this is a few bucks of request from some open source model, just been lazy

Edit: have to do the work, get the screenshots, & analyze my own patterns. How often do I just need the first link from any search engine (like searching $majorBrand to look for their homepage), how often do I search something esoteric where DDG falters, how often do I search something essentially unique but simply not indexed by Bing (DDG) even though it was submitted to Google just fine, etc.

None of that says anything about ddg being bad. What does esoteric even mean in this context? I stand by it being a great private search engine.

I've been generally satisfied with ddg for a few years now. Started using it when Google was had obviously turned to shit, didn't look further.

DDG is a mediocre search engine. A mediocre search engine is still much better than whatever Google's become.

Honestly, the answer is so often a little toy search like Marginalia or going straight to the website in question now, its frightening.

Are we both blocking Google ads and scrolling past the AI summary?

Their business practices are just the worst. But are the first 10 blue links they show you usually bad? (Like you know that one of those 10 should be the exact thing you want, so you decide to rely on another search engine instead, & the alternative search succeeds where Google failed)

Yes, I am. And these days Google has become about as bad as DDG. And not because DDG has become better.

Have read this comment before multiple times, even a year or two ago. Hence my “unreasonable” demand for screenshots if someone has the minutes to script it. - Hmm, really should be a live site to track over time... Can make that and Show [Three People On] HN!

(Google could give better results to those unloyal to them, as one example, so testing needed! We could be getting wildly different results or just have starkly different usage tendencies, there’s just no way I could disagree with so many of y’all on something this basic assuming no DDG astroturfing or anything unless we’re looking at things differently one way or another)

Waiting for your screenshots. Do the legwork yourself first.

And obviously there is no astroturfing here from DDG. That you could have seen from a tiny look at my profile. I have a pretty public persona on the internet.

Thanks, and important to say beyond not accusing them I was _definitely_ not accusing you!

DDG is unusable compared to Google for searches not in English.

DDG works well enough for me. I wonder if people who pay for Kagi perceive it as being better to justify the money spent.

In my experience, DDG brings up relevant results, maybe a bit more so than Google does.

But often I'm searching for a phrase inside quotation marks and DDG hasn't crawled enough sites and gives me 0 or 1 result while Google gives me 5-10 results. Sometimes Google completely disregards the quotation marks, though.

> But often I'm searching for a phrase inside quotation marks and DDG hasn't crawled enough sites

Microsoft Bing bungles quotation marks so hard (???).

DDG catches the fallout.

> Sometimes Google completely disregards the quotation marks, though

Years ago I remember Google asking the person lodging a similar complaint for an example of a query because they found there was always an explanation. Noticed this no longer holds as of perhaps a few months ago if I’m not mistaken. Even this* fails:

+”omg just tell me no results if this exact string isn’t present come on I even put the plus sign”

Infantilizing for us, maybe optimizing for the 99.5% in reality (understandable, annoying)

*edit, made up example based on what I believe I’ve seen this year

edit:

> DDG brings up relevant results

Have you noticed, not if you misspell a proper noun? Spellchecking e.g. brand names, new/fad current event topics is apparently really hard (IIRC Bing not perfect here either?)

> Microsoft Bing bungles quotation marks so hard (???).

DDG was never good at quotation marks so I forgot to mention it also sucks at these.

> Have you noticed, not if you misspell a proper noun?

I haven't but I'd really prefer 2 options:

1) I may mispel thinks quote freqwently but gimme any sorta relevent result

2) I know what I am searching for. Maybe add a "Did you mean X?" link but still show me the results containing the misspellings. If I search for "motorolla" or "mottorolla" (misspellings for "Motorola") in quotes, DDG gives me 1 incomplete page for that misspelling. Google (StartPage) gives me mostly misspellings but with "Motorola" included in some results. Without the quotes both engines treat me as a moron who can't type. If I search for

"mottorolla" phone 2026

DDG still shows me "mottorolla", not "motorola" while Google has decided I am indeed someone who can barely type even though I've put in quotes.

Startpage is a disenshittifier for Google. I switched to it some years ago because of exactly that feature, but I also wonder how much longer Google will allow it to operate as such.

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