I tried using DuckDuckGo for a few days. Here's what I found, YYMV:
• Google's results are much better. A handful of times I searched for something I would think, "Wait, that can't be all there is," and Google would give me back what I was looking for above the fold.
• Google is much, much faster in returning results for my regular searches, which are usually programming related or an esoteric Wikipedia topic.
• DuckDuckGo's bang syntax (!jquery, etc) isn't any better than search keywords built into Firefox and Chrome.
• DuckDuckGo's settings page is like Skyrim -- epic and freeform.
• DuckDuckGo is a very well-executed product. The UI is clean, browser integration is smart ("You're using Chrome! Click this!" or something), and it's tailored for my savvy search users.
I tried using DDG for a few weeks, and I had the same experience as you. I frequently found myself doing the same search on Google to see if there were more results, but the biggest issue for me was speed - both Google and Bing are blazingly fast, and I found myself being annoyed with the noticable delay in DDG.
> • DuckDuckGo's bang syntax (!jquery, etc) isn't any
> better than search keywords built into Firefox and
> Chrome.
Having never used DDG, the advantages that I can see:
1) You don't have to set them up, because they are already there.
2) You get them from whatever computer you are at. You don't have to setup or sync the keyword searches with every computer you use (or public terminal).
3) If you use DDG as your main search engine, it's right there, so you can use a singular search interface.
I used DDG for a few weeks and I'm glad I did because I'd forgotten just how good Google is. A few things that DDG made clear was:
1) How useful personalized search actually is. I like that my search engine knows what city I live in so when Googling the name of a restaurant I don't have to include it (that I don't live in an American city might emphasize this).
2) How much speed and responsiveness matter in web design (not to mention autocomplete). Searching google is a much, much smoother experience.
DDG is really good at returning a good result for a really general search term like "C++". However, for me at least, that is an extreme edge case.
People go on quite a bit about the bang syntax in DDG, but is this not a functionality that's entirely contained within Chrome's (and many other browsers') search keywords function? When I type 'wik http codes', it takes me directly to the wikipedia page for http codes, and it's built in. Does bang syntax do anything else in addition?
Mainly that you don't need to set them up. I have set up loads of custom searches in Opera (which was the first to have this functionality, years ago), but there are always search engines you hadn't thought of.
Looking at the !bang help page for DDG, I discovered HN Search, for instance, which I did not know of before. Knowing this, I could of course set it up as my own custom search, but `!hn whatever` is easy enough that I haven't felt the need yet. Additionally, dunno if Chrome or FF do this, but in Opera if you select text and right-click it you can search it with a custom search engine. It's in a submenu of the context menu, and it's nice to not have it too cluttered :)
One additional trick with custom searches in the browser, is to key Google's "Feeling Lucky" to `go` (just append `&btnI=yes` to the search URL) and DDG's equivalent feature to `dd` (prepending `!+` to the query, that's a bang and an encoded space btw). Super useful if you know your first hit is going to be what you want anyway. For some reason, Google occasionally gives you the result pages anyway instead of redirecting you, btw. Didn't use to, but they changed something I guess.
I don't even use Chrome's search shortcuts anymore. I just type whatever into the address bar, and Google almost always has what I want in the top 3 results. With keyboard shortcuts, I can launch the correct Google result with my keyboard, and I think it ends up being considerably faster than using a specific search engine keyword. It's also better at times, since some sites (like Wikipedia and some documentation sites) have terrible built-in search functionality.
Yes, this is in Firefox too. I've had `wp %s` bookmark for many years now bound to the wikipedia search page, so I do `wp cat`, etc. etc. The JavaScript example really didn't hit home for me either because I'm always on Freenode, and /msg ecmabot mdn [term] is faster than anything else, especially because I usually have a chat open with ecmabot already.
Yup, exactly. This is the exact question I had last time I saw a ddg thread here. (Also works with Firefox, Opera, etc)
(And again, the same thing I said last time, the added benefit of using browser shortcuts instead of ddg is that you can map them to intranet results that can't be indexed (by an external search engine))
Perhaps I'm not using the search keywords functionality correctly, but in my experience, it works in one of two ways.
- Start typing 'wiki...' and it will autocomplete to http://en.wikipedia.org In order to search that site, I have to left arrow, space, and then type my query. I found that while usually helpful, the autocomplete was occasionally unpredictable/frustrating enough to me that it negated the times it was helpful. Having fine tuned control w/o autocomplete is preferable to me.
- Using the omnibox to enter 'wiki http codes', which will pull up google results. I then have to tab or otherwise use keyboard shortcuts to select the first link, all of which are a worse user experience than the bang syntax to me.
This way you can use the exact same keywords in every browser. It can be confusing if you use someone else's computer or several browsers on your own machine.
I spent a week on duckduckgo and I jumped ship because it was slower than Google. The queries took longer to return and it took me longer to cognitively process the page (because I'm so adjusted to Google.)
I'll use it when I want independent search results, but Google's catering to my interests usually works in my favor. When I search for Ruby on Google, all of my results are about the language. DuckDuckGo gives me results about the gem.
I believe to remember a recent discussion on HN where Gabriel seemed to be somewhat astounded by how important query speed is, even when we're talking about seconds here, and promised to look into that. I guess we have become spoilt and now cannot go back to waiting if only three seconds sometimes.
I've been DDG as my default search engine in Firefox for quite a long time now, and sometimes I still find myself re-running a query with "!g" - mostly when I expect to have to tweak my query once or twice and google is just faster (and still gives better results sometimes).
I stuck with it for nearly a month and it made me fall in love with google all over again, both for its speed and the quality of the results.
I think I would have been able to stick with DDG through the speed issues as painful as it was, but too often I found myself going to google anyway after failing to even find what I was looking for on DDG.
I switched from Google after the DDG redesign a few weeks back and the slowness is getting to the point that I am thinking of reverting. I considered Blecko, but the few queries I tried were far worse than DDG. I would consider Bing but the design is horrible.
One nice thing about the bang syntax is that if DDG fails I can easily rerun the search on Google. I don't end up switching back to Google out of frustration after a bad search.
I've been on ddg for a couple weeks now. I agree the speed is, by far, the biggest issue. I find it quite inconsistent..sometimes its ok, sometimes is slow (3+ seconds). Though, I've gotten used to it somewhat and it rarely bothers me. Think I'm gonna stick with it.
It seems DDG even thinks I'm asking about Jose Cuervo-- really?? How many backlinks do we need before you think I may actually be searching for Curvio?
I gave up on DDG. The !bang syntax fails, for me, in a pretty annoying way. "!django modles" sends you off to django's search page (as it should), but now I'm trapped in an inferior search engine.
searching for just "django modles" returns pretty bad results, including what could kindly be described as a linkedin blog entry.
Now try the same search on google. (I made sure to try this logged out in case google personalized my results.)
search for "django modles". The first result matches DDG. The next three are Model field reference, instance references, and how to make queries. All highly relevant! I work with Django, and I think these are good results.
DDG in general has provided dissatisfying results and I suspect it is from not knowing what I don't know when searching, so I can't identify bad searches as they happen. But not knowing is why I search to begin with, so that is Why I don't use DuckDuckGo, but I don't care if you do.
I loved DDG because it was a one person champion fighting a giant. And the attempt was very sincere and determined.
I tried switching to DDG for a week. But went back to Google.
Reasons:
- Relevance: Google gives me high relevance, very high. Restaurant:Food-Quality::Search-Engine:Relevance.
- Speed: Google works in milliseconds. Instant search + search intents also add value.
- Gives me rich map results. Also switching to Maps/Image searches with same search term help. DDG doesn't.
Positives of DDG which are actually not:
- Not bubbling up. I WANT the search engine to know that I'm a hacker. When I search for ruby, it is a programming language. I see value in bubbling up.
- Keyboard shortcuts - Good value. But I don't go for more than 3 results in Google. So just a single tab and enter works.
- Bang syntax - Chrome's search keyword replaces it.
Definite plus:
- User experience : DDG is much cleaner than Google.
I switched to DDG, and a couple days later, I find myself running searches while at Google headquarters, feeling... a bit awkward.
Seriously though... I switched back a week later. Speed was one thing, but I'd rather take the latency hit and support DDG. The biggest issue I had was relevancy. I would find exactly what I needed using Google, while I'd have to scroll down quite a bit to find what I needed in DDG. Also... the format of search results in DDG is a bit too big for me (seems like too much centering and spacing)... I'd like a lot tighter layout.
I'd really like to use DDG. Until some of my qualms are fixed, I'll stick to Google. That said, I'll definitely be revisiting and retrying DDG every few months.
I've been using DDG for the past 2 weeks or so.
First, the bad:
1. It's really slow. Latency is usually on the order of seconds, as opposed to 100s of milliseconds on Google.
2. Results could be better. Roughly 80-90% of the time I find what I'm looking for, but the rest of the time Google does much better (note: it's possible that DDG is getting queries that Google misses).
Now, the good:
1. The one-box is really, really good. A lot of the time, I'm searching for domain-specific queries, especially when I'm coding. DDG brings up a one-box with something like a stack-overflow link and often has exactly the code snippet I'm looking for.
2. I don't have to give more information to google. Admittedly, they already get my email and stuff, but at least this way I'm spreading my information so no one has absolutely all of it.
Finally, the things that are in principle useful but I don't use much:
1. Bang commands. Seriously, I'm not going to type !cplusplus to search cplusplus.com, I'll just click the first link. I also can't remember all of them. I do use !g, !image, and !video, but mainly because they take me to a better search engine.
2. The search suggestions in the top right. It's a good idea, but I don't have the cognitive capacity to keep track of those in addition to the search results.
As explained, the author is not really using a search engine as most do. He/she really is just using DDG as a bookmark for searching a specific site. This works, but how would you then discover that a better information source is available?
When would you stop asking Jeeves or HotBot and switch to Stack Exchange?
The author is using Chrome. He could set up search engines to use in the Omnibar instead of visiting DuckDuckGo (e.g. ama[TAB] to perform a search directly on Amazon.com).
I want to use DDG, and it has been my default search engine for a while now, but most days, I need to fall back to Google for at least one search because the DDG results simply aren't good enough. When I fall back to Google, I go via Scroogle though: https://ssl.scroogle.org/. DDG has a bang command for Scroogle, it is "!s"
I think it's funny that people argue Google's more relevant. One of the reasons I got fed up with Google was the constant link spam in it from the content mills like Demand Media. Which is why I gave DDG a go. Maybe things have changed at Google, but they lost me as a heavy search user. Habits have completely changed.
I've been using DDG for quite some time (months) as my main search engine and it's been great. I'd say I only need to hit Google once every 50+ searches.
The inline results from Stack Overflow, Youtube and Wikipedia are excellent. That and the keyboard shortcuts are more natural to me (specifically j/k) than Google's (tabs and arrows).
"One of the reasons I got fed up with Google was the constant link spam in it from the content mills like Demand Media."
Exactly. Half of the results for most Google searches I do are mostly garbage. DDG consistently returns far higher quality results than Google for me.
The litany of pro-Google posts in this thread really make me wonder if there are conflicts of interest the posters aren't disclosing (ie. how many of them work at Google?)
(Since I brought it up - in the interest of disclosure I'll say that I have no financial interest in or association with any search engine or web site.. or any company whatsoever, to be honest)
Another reason to use DDG - they don't "bubble" you with their search results, and have a strict privacy policy. See: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html
I have them set to my search engine and I would say about 90% of my searches hit productive results. For the other 10%, I consult with Google via their handy link or just via Google directly.
You can't compete with Google for breadth of web search, but I find most of my searches don't utilize that for accurate results, eg finding a company page. When I look for a specific error message or help with a code snippet, GOOG is still king.
Ugh, another link to w3 schools? It possibly only ranks so high for JS searches because everyone is linking to it as being an exemplar of horrible JS information. Please stop linking to W3 schools.
I like everything about DuckDuckGo except for the search results. I so often wind up re-googling what I searched it isn't worth the effort. And this is with a unpersonalized Google version. I am not logged into any Google account, I run Ghostery and I clean cookies at every browser shutdown.
Many times a search time yields zero hits in DDG and I instantly find what I search for with Google. Sad but true. And yes, i use "" around all words and phrases in Google.
I tried really hard to get used to DDG for an entire week. I changed my bookmarks to DDG, learned hashbang syntax etc.. But at the end of the week I just came to know how much more google does than DDG. I kept missing:
Auto complete (suggestions) - I tend to type a lot of things wrong, integrated image search and unfortunately some times quality of the results too..
I'm not saying every one has to stick with google.. just saying DDG isn't a viable alternative for most people used to google search (but its a lot better than bing)...
[+] [-] aiurtourist|14 years ago|reply
• Google's results are much better. A handful of times I searched for something I would think, "Wait, that can't be all there is," and Google would give me back what I was looking for above the fold.
• Google is much, much faster in returning results for my regular searches, which are usually programming related or an esoteric Wikipedia topic.
• DuckDuckGo's bang syntax (!jquery, etc) isn't any better than search keywords built into Firefox and Chrome.
• DuckDuckGo's settings page is like Skyrim -- epic and freeform.
• DuckDuckGo is a very well-executed product. The UI is clean, browser integration is smart ("You're using Chrome! Click this!" or something), and it's tailored for my savvy search users.
[+] [-] vetler|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyre|14 years ago|reply
1) You don't have to set them up, because they are already there.
2) You get them from whatever computer you are at. You don't have to setup or sync the keyword searches with every computer you use (or public terminal).
3) If you use DDG as your main search engine, it's right there, so you can use a singular search interface.
[+] [-] bishnu|14 years ago|reply
DDG is really good at returning a good result for a really general search term like "C++". However, for me at least, that is an extreme edge case.
[+] [-] ordinary|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crux|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tripzilch|14 years ago|reply
Looking at the !bang help page for DDG, I discovered HN Search, for instance, which I did not know of before. Knowing this, I could of course set it up as my own custom search, but `!hn whatever` is easy enough that I haven't felt the need yet. Additionally, dunno if Chrome or FF do this, but in Opera if you select text and right-click it you can search it with a custom search engine. It's in a submenu of the context menu, and it's nice to not have it too cluttered :)
One additional trick with custom searches in the browser, is to key Google's "Feeling Lucky" to `go` (just append `&btnI=yes` to the search URL) and DDG's equivalent feature to `dd` (prepending `!+` to the query, that's a bang and an encoded space btw). Super useful if you know your first hit is going to be what you want anyway. For some reason, Google occasionally gives you the result pages anyway instead of redirecting you, btw. Didn't use to, but they changed something I guess.
[+] [-] baddox|14 years ago|reply
I don't even use Chrome's search shortcuts anymore. I just type whatever into the address bar, and Google almost always has what I want in the top 3 results. With keyboard shortcuts, I can launch the correct Google result with my keyboard, and I think it ends up being considerably faster than using a specific search engine keyword. It's also better at times, since some sites (like Wikipedia and some documentation sites) have terrible built-in search functionality.
[+] [-] oinksoft|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmoy|14 years ago|reply
(And again, the same thing I said last time, the added benefit of using browser shortcuts instead of ddg is that you can map them to intranet results that can't be indexed (by an external search engine))
[+] [-] ClifReeder|14 years ago|reply
- Start typing 'wiki...' and it will autocomplete to http://en.wikipedia.org In order to search that site, I have to left arrow, space, and then type my query. I found that while usually helpful, the autocomplete was occasionally unpredictable/frustrating enough to me that it negated the times it was helpful. Having fine tuned control w/o autocomplete is preferable to me.
- Using the omnibox to enter 'wiki http codes', which will pull up google results. I then have to tab or otherwise use keyboard shortcuts to select the first link, all of which are a worse user experience than the bang syntax to me.
[+] [-] sebastianavina|14 years ago|reply
I love the keyboard functionality google has.
[+] [-] m_for_monkey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phamilton|14 years ago|reply
I'll use it when I want independent search results, but Google's catering to my interests usually works in my favor. When I search for Ruby on Google, all of my results are about the language. DuckDuckGo gives me results about the gem.
[+] [-] kleiba|14 years ago|reply
I've been DDG as my default search engine in Firefox for quite a long time now, and sometimes I still find myself re-running a query with "!g" - mostly when I expect to have to tweak my query once or twice and google is just faster (and still gives better results sometimes).
[+] [-] furyofantares|14 years ago|reply
I think I would have been able to stick with DDG through the speed issues as painful as it was, but too often I found myself going to google anyway after failing to even find what I was looking for on DDG.
[+] [-] underwater|14 years ago|reply
One nice thing about the bang syntax is that if DDG fails I can easily rerun the search on Google. I don't end up switching back to Google out of frustration after a bad search.
[+] [-] latch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tansey|14 years ago|reply
- Google: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=...
- DDG: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=curvio
It seems DDG even thinks I'm asking about Jose Cuervo-- really?? How many backlinks do we need before you think I may actually be searching for Curvio?
[+] [-] parfe|14 years ago|reply
searching for just "django modles" returns pretty bad results, including what could kindly be described as a linkedin blog entry.
Now try the same search on google. (I made sure to try this logged out in case google personalized my results.)
search for "django modles". The first result matches DDG. The next three are Model field reference, instance references, and how to make queries. All highly relevant! I work with Django, and I think these are good results.
DDG in general has provided dissatisfying results and I suspect it is from not knowing what I don't know when searching, so I can't identify bad searches as they happen. But not knowing is why I search to begin with, so that is Why I don't use DuckDuckGo, but I don't care if you do.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bdg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alagu|14 years ago|reply
I tried switching to DDG for a week. But went back to Google.
Reasons:
- Relevance: Google gives me high relevance, very high. Restaurant:Food-Quality::Search-Engine:Relevance.
- Speed: Google works in milliseconds. Instant search + search intents also add value.
- Gives me rich map results. Also switching to Maps/Image searches with same search term help. DDG doesn't.
Positives of DDG which are actually not:
- Not bubbling up. I WANT the search engine to know that I'm a hacker. When I search for ruby, it is a programming language. I see value in bubbling up.
- Keyboard shortcuts - Good value. But I don't go for more than 3 results in Google. So just a single tab and enter works.
- Bang syntax - Chrome's search keyword replaces it.
Definite plus:
- User experience : DDG is much cleaner than Google.
[+] [-] tessellated|14 years ago|reply
Well there's still Google's mobile version around to feast your eyes on. Currently I'm using this to search fast and clean:
<http://www.google.com/pda/search?q=%s&ie=utf-8&oe=ut...;
A big hosts file, privoxy, and Opera's Adblock & Ghostery plugin take care of the rest.
[+] [-] dylanz|14 years ago|reply
Seriously though... I switched back a week later. Speed was one thing, but I'd rather take the latency hit and support DDG. The biggest issue I had was relevancy. I would find exactly what I needed using Google, while I'd have to scroll down quite a bit to find what I needed in DDG. Also... the format of search results in DDG is a bit too big for me (seems like too much centering and spacing)... I'd like a lot tighter layout.
I'd really like to use DDG. Until some of my qualms are fixed, I'll stick to Google. That said, I'll definitely be revisiting and retrying DDG every few months.
[+] [-] pranjalv123|14 years ago|reply
Now, the good: 1. The one-box is really, really good. A lot of the time, I'm searching for domain-specific queries, especially when I'm coding. DDG brings up a one-box with something like a stack-overflow link and often has exactly the code snippet I'm looking for. 2. I don't have to give more information to google. Admittedly, they already get my email and stuff, but at least this way I'm spreading my information so no one has absolutely all of it.
Finally, the things that are in principle useful but I don't use much: 1. Bang commands. Seriously, I'm not going to type !cplusplus to search cplusplus.com, I'll just click the first link. I also can't remember all of them. I do use !g, !image, and !video, but mainly because they take me to a better search engine. 2. The search suggestions in the top right. It's a good idea, but I don't have the cognitive capacity to keep track of those in addition to the search results.
[+] [-] codesuela|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 8ig8|14 years ago|reply
When would you stop asking Jeeves or HotBot and switch to Stack Exchange?
[+] [-] kevinpacheco|14 years ago|reply
http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
[+] [-] ClifReeder|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karunamon|14 years ago|reply
Worse results than Google (and even Bing) for most of my everyday searching.
"But we're not Google!" is not a real selling point.
[+] [-] yabai|14 years ago|reply
I really want to like and use Duck Duck Go...I will keep trying!
[+] [-] yabai|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mike-cardwell|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zecho|14 years ago|reply
I've been using DDG for quite some time (months) as my main search engine and it's been great. I'd say I only need to hit Google once every 50+ searches.
The inline results from Stack Overflow, Youtube and Wikipedia are excellent. That and the keyboard shortcuts are more natural to me (specifically j/k) than Google's (tabs and arrows).
[+] [-] gnosis|14 years ago|reply
Exactly. Half of the results for most Google searches I do are mostly garbage. DDG consistently returns far higher quality results than Google for me.
The litany of pro-Google posts in this thread really make me wonder if there are conflicts of interest the posters aren't disclosing (ie. how many of them work at Google?)
(Since I brought it up - in the interest of disclosure I'll say that I have no financial interest in or association with any search engine or web site.. or any company whatsoever, to be honest)
[+] [-] aiurtourist|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddrager|14 years ago|reply
I have them set to my search engine and I would say about 90% of my searches hit productive results. For the other 10%, I consult with Google via their handy link or just via Google directly.
You can't compete with Google for breadth of web search, but I find most of my searches don't utilize that for accurate results, eg finding a company page. When I look for a specific error message or help with a code snippet, GOOG is still king.
[+] [-] valugi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xpose2000|14 years ago|reply
Quite honestly, I don't see a need to switch now.
[+] [-] secoif|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unicornporn|14 years ago|reply
I like everything about DuckDuckGo except for the search results. I so often wind up re-googling what I searched it isn't worth the effort. And this is with a unpersonalized Google version. I am not logged into any Google account, I run Ghostery and I clean cookies at every browser shutdown.
Many times a search time yields zero hits in DDG and I instantly find what I search for with Google. Sad but true. And yes, i use "" around all words and phrases in Google.
[+] [-] jwwest|14 years ago|reply
The functionality being described here is something that I actually use Alfred for these days.
[+] [-] meow|14 years ago|reply
Auto complete (suggestions) - I tend to type a lot of things wrong, integrated image search and unfortunately some times quality of the results too..
I'm not saying every one has to stick with google.. just saying DDG isn't a viable alternative for most people used to google search (but its a lot better than bing)...