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

  • limoncia@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    59 minutes ago

    I found Qwant to be a bit better, but yeah. Google got so much worse over last few years

  • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    52 minutes ago

    I really agree Google just took themself out of the market. I wouldn’t be surprised if they dropped their “search” product completely, the way they’ve dropped a lot of other good products along the way.

  • DioEgizio@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 hour ago

    yeah honestly I’ve been using ddg for a very long time and while a few years ago I had to frequently !g because search sucked now google got so enshittified many times ddg feels better

  • 74 183.84@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 hour ago

    Wow, it has been some time since I used duck duck go. On my phone I have bing for searches as it is convenient with chatGPT integration (which tbh I only use when coding, for which I have copilot now baked into VScode). On my laptop and work station I use Arc. Its sexy af and really makes a man wonder about himself. I will have to revisit DDG. I do remember enjoying it though only for enhanced privacy. Feature wise it just seemed exactly what chrome was offering

  • Luc@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    3 hours ago

    Eyeing the replies, does not one other person here get results constantly flooded with content farms? They’ve gotten significantly worse

    But then, I don’t use Google so maybe this is still better than Google Search?

    It started maybe three years ago, around the same time as LLMs became usable for this, but I’m pretty sure >50% are human-written still. Probably the LLM generates the structure (saves any time they’d have to spend coming up with plausible-sounding texts) and someone from a low-income country is contracted to make it look more legit

    Of course, queries for topics that have a Wikipedia page get Wikipedia first, recipes get tons of big-name recipe sites, products get stores. But when there’s no obvious market around a topic, 3~4 out of 5 results are content farms pretending to have useful information to show unwary visitors ads

    (As an alternative, I still have to try Kagi properly. It seemed on par with DDG when I did a few searches last year, but then their payment processor refused me trying to load my account, support was unhelpful, and I’ve gotten sidetracked since)

    • Niquarl@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      4 minutes ago

      The other annoying thing is the air summaries. I’ve disable AI features but that’s still on. I hate it so much

  • ByGourou@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    6 hours ago

    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

  • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    7 hours ago

    Have been using it for 8 years now. I never felt the need to switch back honestly. Only Google thing I really love is Maps and that’s it.

  • yata@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    8 hours ago

    I switched to it a couple of years ago, with the expectation that I had to resort to google in more complex search instances. But very soon I found out that ddg did the job, and my “alternative” google searches did not turn up anything better, quite the contrary in fact, and I haven’t been back since.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    13 hours ago

    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.

  • Silk@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    7 hours ago

    I use Kagi, I really like how it’s AI answer gives sources for statements.

  • Zeppo@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    8 hours ago

    I use it for almost everything. I only resort to Google if I can’t find what I’m looking for, which is rare and typically it’s something obscure. Google has also steadily made their service worse over the years. I don’t feel like I am missing much.

  • EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    15 hours ago

    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).

    • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      14 hours ago

      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

      • flux@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        11 hours 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?

      • EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        14 hours ago

        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.