Not because DDG got better, but just because google got worse.
google is still better for site-specific searches, and google scholar still has minimal AI slop
It’s just as good as 2008 google, which is all I want.
My thought always was that DDG was good to set as my default, and if I’m not happy with the results then it’s not a big deal to use Google once in awhile.
Just use start page instead for Google results. That’s what I do.
Mullvad has recently made their google search proxy free for everyone. It’s a good alternative to startpage: https://leta.mullvad.net/
I like startpage more still. Mullvad’s ui sucks.
Yo, startpage looks sick. I’ll have to poke around and see if I can find more info on that it looks super useful. My quick test just now was “cloture 2025” which returned 4 news articles followed by basically nothing but .gov links, whereas Google returns way more “news”
Wow this is way cleaner than google. Just straight text search results for the most part.
“just as good”? No, I feel it is (and has been for years) vastly superior but I mostly use it to find documentation or Stack Overflow answers so consistent UI and concise summaries are high priority to me. Take that as you will
I don’t think anybody can dethrone Google Maps yet but that’s another story
I don’t think anybody can dethrone Google Maps
I wonder how the whole “AI is more important than copyright” thing could play into this… Someone could totally program an “AI” map assistant right?
I still haven’t found Google to be worse than Bing yet.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
…Oh, sorry.
Hell no. If anything, it’s gotten worse.
In their defense, however, it’s probably largely not their fault. In my admittedly one-person-sample-size experience, 90% of the searchable Web is either Reddit threads or articles, and with Reddit going officially with Google (meaning DDG doesn’t catch as many Reddit threads as they used to), that leaves most of the searchable Web being articles. Because SEO has to ruin everything.
So, it’s not really that DDG is shitty (mostly), but that all searches are shitty. Though, with the whole Google-and-Reddit thing, I find Google’s results are noticeably less shitty (though still shitty).
Yeah I really tried with DDG, switched my phone to it for 2 months. I was using !g so often it made the whole thing pointless.
Google sucks, but right now nothing is better. This is why they’re able to push their AI bullshit results so heavily, because just like with YouTube, ultimately there is no real competition.
I agree. Monopolies/oligopolies are terrible for the consumer.
I feel the same except Google is worse due to higher number of ads in results and most SEO prioritizes Google over Bing meaning more Google results are AI spam articles.
I feel the same except Google is worse due to higher number of ads in results
I generally don’t see ads due to uBlock Origin. Or am I just not noticing them? Lol.
and most SEO prioritizes Google over Bing meaning more Google results are AI spam articles.
I will give you that. But I find that’s the case with DDG too which is why I’m having to rely more and more on search operators like
site:.I generally don’t see ads due to uBlock Origin. Or am I just not noticing them? Lol.
I’m talking about the results as ads(paid for result ranking). Not as much a thing in DDG but google, they’re awful and you get maybe 2 results a page that aren’t paid promotion.
Freya Holmer did a good video on AI/SEO i think touches a little on this…
Oh that.
Yeaaaah that gets kind of annoying I imagine…
The killer for me has to be that it doesn’t support searching for phrases within websites I need. Latest example: github. I can be on the project page, copy a phrase from the code and search ddg with it in double quotemarks, and get 0 results. Copy - google.com - paste - enter - loads of results.
Also the search function broke for about a day, a few days ago
That’s a bit surprising, given DDG uses Bing, Bing is Microsoft and Microsoft owns Github.
Did you try the same search with Bing, or have an example to share?
I’m on it, I’ll do a test based on your suggestions
To be honest with you, I didn’t even know that was a feature. (Unless I’m misunderstanding you.) Sounds cool!
If I need to search a website, I use either Ctrl+F or the
site:search engine operator.Yes, I’m so glad that operators like site: and before: are supported. Necessary for weeding out a few bad results aha
Yeah, I’m still salty that Google and most other search engines have cut out some of the boolean operators over the last decade or so.
I’ve had to use !g way too much lately, so no.
Whats that do?
Bangs, used to move the search to another site, in this case google
I just realized the other day that I haven’t typed
!gin months.I really tried, I set duckduckgo as the default for my second browser (I use it a lot) to slowly get used to it, but every time results are so bad I get mad and switch to Google especially for images
Duckduckgo mostly uses Bing for its search results. It also uses yahoo, yandex, and it’s own crawler, but for the most part you’re getting Bing.
So what you really want to know is if Bing is just as good as Google. If you think it is, you should definitely use ddg because they’re the least intrusive.
It’s much better than Bing.
ive been using it consistently for the past few years. it works well for me, but sometimes ill go to other engines just to see what they come up with, or when results are lacking. sometimes they are better, sometimes they are worse.
meaning ddg is probably good enough nowadays, at least for me.
You probably already know this, but you can use search “bangs” to search other websites from ddg.
For example, to search google, you would put !g or !google at the start of your search.
i do! it transformed my address bar, i sometimes use other engines through ddg now. its the main reason its my search provider.
Not really. If you focus purely on just searching, yeah DDG is decent. But, I find its maps inferior and trying to find answers to some questions can get tedious. DDG I guess is just for people who want guilt-free searching.
ddg maps is just a no-frills apple maps.
which is to say: terrible
yes, it is. but between it and graphhopper (or osm), it’s “enough” for me.
i don’t need a feature-filled “app” (my phone is ‘dumb’), and the only time i end up on something else like bing or google maps is if a site i need to use embeds and relies upon them.
my problem with apple maps is how frequently it has something’s location completely wrong because osm addresses use the European addressing system everywhere when i don’t live in europe
OpenStreetMap contributor here. What address format isn’t supported? Maybe I can help
United States format is very different from the european format and often the apple maps algorithm makes some boneheaded assuptions to translate from a US address to something OSM understands. i contribute, too, but the next time i have an example of apple maps fucking up… i’ll have already forgot this convo happened, but i’ll try
Agreed. Even if it were identical to Google maps in terms of content, it runs slower on all platforms I’ve so far tried (windows, iOS, OSX).
DDG is just Bing
Sorta not really.
I got identical results with a side-by-side comparison.
the bulk of its search results come from bing. only its instant answers and ai features aren’t bing
Google is mostly adverts. Wouldn’t take much to be better than that.
76% of their Q2 2024 revenue came from adverts. I’d rather pay with capitalist-consumerist shit on my screen than pay with money, but as everyone knows it’s far too invasive rn. Ergo, I use uBlock, sponsorblock and I don’t care about cookies.
I finally left Google a month or so ago and its amazing how little I miss it.
Yeah. I search for things all the time. Thousands of searches each month. I thought I’d miss it a lot, but I’ve not used Google for two years or so and it’s not really a problem.
I’ve been using DDG since 2016 and never felt it was worse in terms of “search quality” than Google.
Especially nowadays I hear friends whine near weekly about Google, but it’s still somehow “better than DDG”.
Honestly people just make excuses not to change what they’re use to. Even if what they’re used to has changed around them for the worse.
My only real complain I have is I wish ‘search by date range’ was less finicky use and also worked in the image tab like it does in Google images.
I can turn off the horseshit firehose that we call AI, making it far better than google
Ironically I find ChatGPT pretty good for certain types of searching.
For me, its only finding stuff thats really hard to google, like concepts or meme templates.
ChatGPT is great for when what you’re looking for is the proper search term.
If I don’t know what term to google, I can describe what I’m looking for and then nudge the bot in the right direction till it spits out the term.Exactly! If I don’t exactly know what I’m trying to find, its useful.
i switched from DDG to ecosia because of Lemmy and i gotta say it’s even better
Private browsing We protect your data and privacy so you can surf safely
This true?
Apparently it’s not. I had to search a bit on the website so unless you just want to plant trees, which is laudable, don’t bother.
Yeah I think I’m headed in this direction. I’ve also been thinking about one of them self-hostable search engines a lot
I’ve been using DDG exclusively for something like 8 years. It works great for regular text search and I use bing for image searches. I really don’t understand the reluctance of people to switch to it. To me, Google has been borderline unusable garbage for a long time.
Cherry on the shit sundae was a couple months ago when Google started to require JavaScript be enabled for search.
Okay, so this wasn’t just me! I installed NoScript for Chrome on my work laptop as a stop gap for no more ublock origin and thought something was fishy w/ Google’s search page.
Stop using Chrome too
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I’ve actually never tried brave search. Which is kinda funny because I started using DDG when brave came out and it was the default search engine.
What do you mean by slow though? Like just the webpage loading or the time it takes you to get good results? I’ve never noticed any load time, but I’ve always had a few tweaked content blockers running and that may affect my perspective.
I used it for a few years, realized that I had to use bangs every other search, and reluctantly switched back to Google. But now Google is way worse than it was, so I think I might as well try switching back again, see how it feels now.
Same here, although I don’t know how long I’ve been on DDG exactly. I never not find what I’m looking for.
