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
I do not think so in my experience. I’m a software developer and a lot of my job is searching solutions to problems. Every year or two I’ll try DDG because I love the concept but it never works as well for me. Putting the same search query into Google yeilds actual results for me more often than DDG does.
I have the same situation. DDG has a feature where you can write “!g query” and search for “query” on Google. I use that as a fallback whenever DDG fails to yield good results - it’s super easy!
I did not know that!
You can do a lot of sites! https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
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.
It’s just as good as 2008 google, which is all I want.
I feel like its better than google. I switched to DDG a couple years ago. 6 months ago I did a trial run with a self hosted search that only used google as a back end, the results felt like garbage
That’s a low bar, google sucks now
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.
Good enough for me, although there are times I need to use google.
Compared to a few years ago, it’s better. Some websites still aren’t indexed, and even by entering their name exactly, they don’t show. Google doesn’t have this problem.
Brave search is also pretty good
You seriously can’t type whatever dae means?
DAE is a fairly common acronym on online forums, often used in titles such as these. You could have used Google (or DuckDuckGo) to learn its meaning 😊
It’s simply “does anyone else.”
I did, my comment stands
It’s clearly not that common.
Never saw that abbreviation before, but my assumption is it’s “does anyone else” since I can’t think of anything else that’d make sense in this context
Yes, that’s accurate. My point is that typing that out isn’t hard and opens the post up to all who know English.
I’ve been online for almost thirty years and have never - knowingly - seen “dae” as an abbreviation.
I don’t believe you. DAE has been an extremely common abbreviation for well over a decade at least.
TIL I’m a liar…
I didn’t say you lied, just saying that there’s no way you’ve been on the internet for 30 years and have never seen DAE anywhere before now.
Well now you have two people you are calling liars.
Maybe, and hear me out: you’re wrong.
You seem like a young man so that’s not something anyone has told you before, so what I would recommend is reaching out and finding a stable position to hold on to for 30-60 seconds. once you’ve recovered, your brain will automatically go to work trying to find out why you’re actually right, actually, like for real. Suppress that feeling for a moment and accept that yes, your life experience is different from others. And then find a nice therapist because let’s be honest after that shock to your system you’ll need one.
You people are so intent on projecting the idea that I’m calling you liars despite the fact that I never once said nor implied you were liars, that yeah, I’m going to just go ahead and say youre fucking liars now. Have a good day.
I didn’t say you lied, just saying that there’s no way you’ve been on the internet for 30 years and have never seen DAE anywhere before now.
“I’m not saying you lied, I’m just saying the thing you stayed as fact is clearly a falsehood aka lie”
This is the second “you’re wrong” in a day, I hope your evidently fragile ego can handle it.
I can. Be nice and I might.
Creep
If you wish to be understood, choose your words more carefully. If you wish to be treated with kindness, drop the defensiveness, learn to process feedback objectively, and take communication seriously. No one is being unkind or unreasonable here, except you.
That initial comment is quite pointed…
Yours is pretty over the top as well, lol.
“No one knows what the heck dae means you lazy bum. We invented words for a reason, try using them. If you’re illiterate then maybe try a YouTube video essay. “
If someone said that, sure… but no one did. Perhaps the Original Poster needs to take communication more seriously and less personally.
I think you’re making a significant deal out of something that is quite minor, personally. It’s okay, though. It’s minor, so we can agree to disagree. Cheers!
The basics of human communication is nothing important at all. 🤡
Chill out, man. This isn’t parliament. Everything doesn’t have to be communicated as if we’re drafting laws.
Communication styles vary greatly, and tone is dependent on setting. What OP posted was completely fine. No need to throw around clown emoji 😝
It’s an abbreviation on the internet. Do you act this way any time you see TIL, wtf, eli5 or other. Or are you just sour you don’t know this one
Naw. I use Kagi (paid) now, and get much better search results.
I’ve switched away from DDG after many years of use. I have gone to Ghostery Private search. It seems to be better for my search results with a lot less garbage mixed in.
Yes, mostly, except that programming related searches have really gone downhill in DDG for me.
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
DDG is slow. Like noticeably slower than other search engines. I have been using DDG exclusively for 2 months at this point and it is wild how much faster brave search is not even mentioning google search.
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.
Same here, although I don’t know how long I’ve been on DDG exactly. I never not find what I’m looking for.
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.
As a general purpose search engine yeah it’s just as good. Google has some nice extra features which aren’t too important (for example if you search UFC it shows full fight card info and results on the search page).
Where it falls behind is for more "power user " type work. I only use Google at work as it makes finding very specific results with keywords and date ranges on certain sites etc much easier.
Nowadays I use Qwant though to boycott us. It’s much slower but still does the job for day to day use.
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.
