this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Today I Learned

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 9 months ago (4 children)

I really wanted to like DDG, but its results returned are so horribly unusable, I had to give up.

I'm usually searching for something obscure, but add in general terms for general refinement. DDG will ignore my obscure term (the thing I'm actually looking for) and give me pages of results of the general terms. Using special operators doesn't help. Whereas Google will give me at least a few relevant results using the same search terms.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago

Yeah I gave duck duck go another shot the other day and it was FAR and away worse than google. Considering how bad Google has been lately I was impressed (and disappointed) by how much worse DDG was.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

I get the same pattern of ignoring obscure terms in both Bing and Google. Bings results include some that seem to assume I made a typo and Google includes a some sites that are just alternates that are the equivalent of ads.

I remember five or so years ago when both could at least return some relevant results anytime I used more than a few words.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I've been digging Kagi. It does cost money, but it's a small price to pay for the return of my sanity. I was constantly frustrated by Google results a hundred times per day before I switched to Kagi.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah I don't know why DuckDuckGo keeps getting recommended as much as it does.

I couldn't find on Google, the answer to a simple question the other day. All I wanted to know was the precooked weight of a particular fast food restaurant's patty.

I made it to page 3 of the Google results, wading through page after page of promotional content, news releases, and sponsored "news-style" articles that were thinly veiled ads.

Decided to visit duck duck go, and was greeted with search results that were even worse than Google.

I realize it's only one example, but to me it was an example of a search so specific, its egregious that the search engines simply refuse to return a page with the answer.