5 ms·

The number of times I've taken a google search that gave me useless results, copied-and-pasted it into duck-duck-go, and immediately found what I'm looking for,

The number of times I've taken a google search that gave me useless results, copied-and-pasted it into duck-duck-go, and immediately found what I'm looking for, is astounding. I do think that they are starting to lose the power-user userbase when it comes to browsers and search engines. But their email, docs/sheets/whatever, drive, and now their DNS registrar services are all cemented into business flow. It makes sense. They don't need the power users - they need the most users. As long as they have the most users, businesses (where the power-users are working) are going to use ancillary services like Google MyBusiness, Google Analytics, and embrace google-backed (and ranking-factor) tech like SSL certificates and progressive web apps.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
> The number of times I've taken a google search that gave me useless results, copied-and-pasted it into duck-duck-go, and immediately found what I'm looking for, is astounding. I'll bet it's dwarfed by the number of times I get useful results from Google and total garbage from DDG. Earlier today I searched for "CADT syndrome" to figure out what another HN comment meant by it. Both engines automatically correct that to "cast syndrome" if you search without quotes. But only Google provided a relevant result after being corrected "no, I really meant CADT syndrome". DDG gamely provided the "cast syndrome" results after correcting the query.
- rubatuga 7y ago
  You should use verbose mode
  - frittig 7y ago
    are quotes around the search term not the command for verbose mode?
    - mkl 7y ago
      Not anymore. Google has a verbatim mode under Tools > All results.
  - mkl 7y ago
    I think you mean "verbatim". It's silly for that to be necessary to get reasonable results, though - if verbatim mode works better then those should be the results returned in the first place. I primarily use DDG, and in my experience when its results are bad, Google's usually are for that query too.
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  To be fair, two points. One, DDG isn't perfect in all areas, and has lots of work to do. Their budget is a tiny sliver of what the google search teams is/was, and they are much newer. Some topics get better results than others, and that is to be expected. Two, the others are referencing controversial opinion content in particular. They are saying that if the search is about something controversial or politically charged, the google result is noticeably lacking. This seems more concerning to many of us because this isn't just a newer search engine not quite up to par, this is the search engine purposefully pushing users into filter bubbles of Googles choosing! I hope I cleared up the difference between what you are referring to and what the others are talking about. Anecdotally, I can confirm as a heavy youtube user (both web and youtube-dl/mps) that youtube search is also affected. Many searches for things that aren't even that "out there" return no results, even with the exact name of the video. If you don't have the actual link from somewhere else, you can't find it. I think what google is doing is dangerous and a very slippery slope. Many of my datahording friends have been on youtube downloading sprees because they are afraid google is about to memory hole important videos that don't exist anywhere else that is easily accessible. ps. This is also the nice part of the bangs of ddg. Don't like the ddg results, just do it again with !gyear etc. (vs the google gui way, and I don't even know if googles daterange: operator even works anymore)
- gabriel34 7y ago
  searching for "CADT" syndrome yields better results in both search engines. As of now, the best resource (https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html) is avaiable on both search engines as the first result for this query, and somewhere in the first ten or so results for "CADT Syndrome". The best set of results (for my Google history) is in Google's verbatim mode searching for "CADT syndrome" (the link under the search bar with the autocorrected version) which includes mailing lists and release notes from various opensource projects interestingly there is also another meaning of CADT (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4610895/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4610895/) which is less favored in google, but shows second place in ddg. Perhaps if we were into medicine papers this would show up higher in google. Only ddg results include this (Hacker News) page and the comment you referenced (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21337404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21337404) Bottom line, both gave me useful results, ddg needs a better verbatim mode, google tracks me
codingslave 7y ago
Yeah lately I've been shocked about the search result quality as well, way too often I am getting almost all seo spam results on google. I was actually reading their 10k earnings report a while back, Google specifically highlighted spam/seo results as a threat to their business. Most google users probably have never even heard of duck duck go before, I doubt they are in any kind of risk of losing market share.
- wolco 7y ago
  I'm starting to notice more results from ddg. Google doesn't seem to be indexing most sites anymore. Not sure I understand why.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
netsharc 7y ago
Also, power users don't click on ads pretending to be search results...

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> The number of times I've taken a google search that gave me useless results, copied-and-pasted it into duck-duck-go, and immediately found what I'm looking for, is astounding. I'll bet it's dwarfed by the number of times I get useful results from Google and total garbage from DDG. Earlier today I searched for "CADT syndrome" to figure out what another HN comment meant by it. Both engines automatically correct that to "cast syndrome" if you search without quotes. But only Google provided a relevant result after being corrected "no, I really meant CADT syndrome". DDG gamely provided the "cast syndrome" results after correcting the query.

rubatuga 7y ago
You should use verbose mode
- frittig 7y ago
  are quotes around the search term not the command for verbose mode?
  - mkl 7y ago
    Not anymore. Google has a verbatim mode under Tools > All results.
- mkl 7y ago
  I think you mean "verbatim". It's silly for that to be necessary to get reasonable results, though - if verbatim mode works better then those should be the results returned in the first place. I primarily use DDG, and in my experience when its results are bad, Google's usually are for that query too.
arminiusreturns 7y ago
To be fair, two points. One, DDG isn't perfect in all areas, and has lots of work to do. Their budget is a tiny sliver of what the google search teams is/was, and they are much newer. Some topics get better results than others, and that is to be expected. Two, the others are referencing controversial opinion content in particular. They are saying that if the search is about something controversial or politically charged, the google result is noticeably lacking. This seems more concerning to many of us because this isn't just a newer search engine not quite up to par, this is the search engine purposefully pushing users into filter bubbles of Googles choosing! I hope I cleared up the difference between what you are referring to and what the others are talking about. Anecdotally, I can confirm as a heavy youtube user (both web and youtube-dl/mps) that youtube search is also affected. Many searches for things that aren't even that "out there" return no results, even with the exact name of the video. If you don't have the actual link from somewhere else, you can't find it. I think what google is doing is dangerous and a very slippery slope. Many of my datahording friends have been on youtube downloading sprees because they are afraid google is about to memory hole important videos that don't exist anywhere else that is easily accessible. ps. This is also the nice part of the bangs of ddg. Don't like the ddg results, just do it again with !gyear etc. (vs the google gui way, and I don't even know if googles daterange: operator even works anymore)
gabriel34 7y ago
searching for "CADT" syndrome yields better results in both search engines. As of now, the best resource (https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html) is avaiable on both search engines as the first result for this query, and somewhere in the first ten or so results for "CADT Syndrome". The best set of results (for my Google history) is in Google's verbatim mode searching for "CADT syndrome" (the link under the search bar with the autocorrected version) which includes mailing lists and release notes from various opensource projects interestingly there is also another meaning of CADT (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4610895/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4610895/) which is less favored in google, but shows second place in ddg. Perhaps if we were into medicine papers this would show up higher in google. Only ddg results include this (Hacker News) page and the comment you referenced (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21337404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21337404) Bottom line, both gave me useful results, ddg needs a better verbatim mode, google tracks me

codingslave 7y ago

Yeah lately I've been shocked about the search result quality as well, way too often I am getting almost all seo spam results on google. I was actually reading their 10k earnings report a while back, Google specifically highlighted spam/seo results as a threat to their business. Most google users probably have never even heard of duck duck go before, I doubt they are in any kind of risk of losing market share.

wolco 7y ago
I'm starting to notice more results from ddg. Google doesn't seem to be indexing most sites anymore. Not sure I understand why.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

netsharc 7y ago

Also, power users don't click on ads pretending to be search results...