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Comment by zxyzzxxx | Hacker News Reader

DDG is the fastest of all the privacy-respecting engines, but it consistently gives me the least accurate results. It works if you search for mainstream keywords, otherwise it mostly doesn't.

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Google's strength lies in (and always has been in) the tail and ambiguous queries. Everyone can get the query "facebook" right; try the query "how to disassemble tile" on Google[1] and Yahoo[2] or Bing[3]. Google knows the difference between "tile" (the gadget) and "tiles".

[1] https://www.google.com/#safe=off&q=how+to+disassemble+tile

[2] https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=how+to+disassemble+tile&fr...

[3] http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+to+disassemble+tile

Interesting example. The results for ddg improve dramatically if you add "tracker" ("tile tracker"). I'm not sure I'd consider Google's default results better -- but then I don't own a "Tile". I do get that inferring that the connection "disasemble tile" implies something other than ceramic tiles (as opposed to "repair tile" -- here ddg and google are very similar for "repair tile" and "repair tile tracker" -- although none seem to give a result for software/a device to track progress of repairing ceramic tiles...).

I use it for all manner of searches. Knowing how to tune a search appropriately helps. Tossing in an additional keyword, or a set of associations can help:

    (phrase one| phrase two|phrase three)

Using bang syntax is also quite useful.

In my experience, where a DDG search doesn't turn up good results, an SP or Google search (both bang-searchable) are generally not much better. I'll revise my terms at that point.

Again, date-range is the notable exception, and it's not a minor issue.

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