Congratulations Gabriel. DDG is invaluable for those of us who do not want our searches logged into a database, who do not want search results sorted by whether or not an acquaintance has "liked" a page. I wear my DDG t-shirt out and have been asked about it a couple of times. I wear it happily.
For what it's worth, I've seen absolutely no indication that Google takes social data into account when ranking results. They only show it as metadata on items within the original ordering.
I tried switching to DDG, but found that I was really missing Google's date range filter. Especially for troubleshooting searches where you can get results that are relevant to the search terms but have obsolete old content, I almost always hit "past year" or even "past month". I know about the sort by date feature in DDG, but I really want date as a filter on the whole result set, with a sort by relevance within the filtered results.
Agree 100%. I use the "past year" or "past month" at least once a day. No date ranges to fiddle with, no new page to have to go to to enter a date range .... just click the link and the results appear in a second. DDG would be awesome with this.
I support that ! This is the feature I miss the most in DDG. Most of my searches during the day relate to tech stuff, and recent content is one of the most relevant criteria (usually, I filter to get the result from the last 12 months).
Weirdly, I want a time filter, but to block recent results and promote results older than X years.
I can think of the example, but there was something with few results for (about) 12 years ago (and those were the ones I wanted) but millions for this year. (And I didn't want those.)
The !bang syntax is definitely one of DDG's best features. Being able to access a few hundred site searches with a keyword is incredibly powerful, and saves time on creating quick searches in Firefox.
Definitely agree. I set DDG as Firefox' default search engine (about:config --> keyword.URL) and it has come to the point that searching with the dedicated search bar has begun feeling clunky. I think there are no important sites which I frequent that aren't included in the huge amount of bangs yet. Could just as well get rid of the search bar altogether...
What I like is no zooming car ads blocking content like on Yahoo or the unhelpful auto-entry and auto-guessing features that gets in my way like on Google (e.g. searching for what Google thinks I meant instead of what I actually typed, did Google buy Microsoft Bob and Office Assistant Clippy?)
It's particularly annoying when Google substitutes words without telling you. Or when they silently drop words and you only realise when a ctrl-F through the web-page says nothing found.
Gabriel is taking on a challenge that extends beyond Google's reach, the filter bubble. Luckily he's been able to implement several human curation strategies to make a better search engine based on reliable search results. On the flip side, Google has been fostering a limiting perspective on the world's information due to their personal relevance algorithms which drive more ad clicks.
I was always impressed with the speed of response by the ddg team. I'd report an issue, and within minutes (sometimes seconds) I'd have a reply from the ddg team. Broken queries were fixed in days, sometimes hours.
I think its a good move. In my opinion you can only play the one-man-band card for a while and then you need to come up with other reasons why press should write about you. DDG has innovated quickly and been able to address user's needs at the right time when they were discussed in the press, picking up the loyal users on the way...
I quite like DDG but from my region (NZ) it's just too slow compared to Google. I look forward to when you're big enough to have datacentres in Auckland or even Sydney.
We just added some servers in singapore that should have speeded us up for your region. Have you tried it recently (last couple of weeks). If it is still slow would love to continue debugging at http://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html
I go to "goodies" and "zero click info sources". I see this line:-
Language SE - quint in quintessential
So I clicky the link, but it appears to have nothing to do with Stack Exchange. Some of the others work - Numote Big Bang Schedule has a nice box at top of the search results.
ALSO: Do you have a printable cheat sheet for all the bang syntax and extras? A4, mono, please!
Is there a way to get google results instead of yahoo results? I don't mean using the !g syntax, but getting actual google results in the format of duckduckgo.
I love the site, but alot of the time, Yahoo's results are weak.
No, but we use other results besides Yahoo's (including our own). I'd appreciate specific examples when they come up: http://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html
Congratulations, Gabriel! I am very happy for you. DDG is my default search engine, and I suggest that friends and family use it. Just wondering why you don't use https as a default setting. Also, sometimes I find the continuous scrolling of search results makes it a bit more difficult to keep track of where I have been than with Google's default 10 results per page. Consequently, sometimes I find it easier to quickly scan Google search results. I wonder if there is something further that you could tweak in this regard? Keep up the great work!
Thx! We don't use https by default because it is noticeably slower to connect. Also noted on continuous results -- our non-JS versions do have some pagination.
There is some context based advertising in place already, via amazon (used to be thru some "invite only" ad service) but the volume of advertising is very low, only one ad per several visits, and I'd venture that the rate of adblock usage and non-clicking of ads is much higher among the DDG set. I hope they find a way to monetize!
I quickly used DDG for the first time for some searches and you guys place WAY too much emphasis on exact query match domains. Also, including .com.au addresses in a local search when I'm in the US is probably not a lot of help.
DDG is a great search engine. I was stoked to see that the Midori[1] browser adopted it as the default search engine. However, if I can't seem to find something there, I try Scroogle with SSL[2]
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pewpewarrows|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patja|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] re_todd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvehent|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|14 years ago|reply
I can think of the example, but there was something with few results for (about) 12 years ago (and those were the ones I wanted) but millions for this year. (And I didn't want those.)
[+] [-] Sodaware|14 years ago|reply
(The full list of !bang commands http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html)
[+] [-] skrebbel|14 years ago|reply
Also, Opera has had it for years (right-click any form field and choose "Create Search" - no plugins or options screens needed)
[+] [-] slowpoke|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] skrebbel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epi0Bauqu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steveh73|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epi0Bauqu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|14 years ago|reply
Language SE - quint in quintessential
So I clicky the link, but it appears to have nothing to do with Stack Exchange. Some of the others work - Numote Big Bang Schedule has a nice box at top of the search results.
ALSO: Do you have a printable cheat sheet for all the bang syntax and extras? A4, mono, please!
[+] [-] epi0Bauqu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bull|14 years ago|reply
I love the site, but alot of the time, Yahoo's results are weak.
[+] [-] epi0Bauqu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] startupcomment|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epi0Bauqu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] white_devil|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] suking|14 years ago|reply
Best of luck.
[+] [-] gurraman|14 years ago|reply
I think I'm not alone in using the address bar less and less.
While I'm at it:
- I would probably change the color of the address in the results to make it easier to distinguish from the excerpt/description.
- Remove the green background that is displayed on hover. I find it hard to scan entries with that big green blob hovering :)
Edit: formatting
[+] [-] epi0Bauqu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbbo|14 years ago|reply
1 - http://www.twotoasts.de/index.php?/pages/midori_summary.html
2 - https://ssl.scroogle.org/