I use DDG as my main search engine - for most things it works just fine, when I can't find what I'm looking for I go to google. I find it hilarious that the image search function works a lot like Google used to in the past - I'm constantly looking for reference when drawing and more often than not if you type something innocuous like "man with hand in front of face" you'll end up with a first page full of porn in DDG whereas it's all SFW in Google, even with all restrictions off. Luckily DDG offers a nudity filter which works pretty well - even if it still fails to catch the odd gore picture.
I tried to switch over to DDG 6 months ago but wound up reverting to Google.
I sometimes end up browsing fora with poor search tools, and that is commonly when I use a search engine (that or if I'm fact checking stuff, but that's a different usecase). Duck Duck Go always ended up failing to get the results whereas Google managed to get the correct results.
I also have had similar negative experiences with DDG for searching stackoverflow. Google isn't ideal, but at least they do always end up getting me what I'm looking for. With DDG I oftentimes get completely unrelated results which just happen to match the keywords I was using.
Finally the image search would always invariably return porn on DuckDuckGo instead of things relating to the query I was looking for.
I used DDG for a few weeks, but ultimately switched back to Google. It was mainly for two things:
1) It's slightly slower than Google, which became more apparent after the fifth or sixth search of the day.
2) No images integrated with search results. I didn't realize how often I searched for images until I used DDG. At Google I usually get a few images and an "Images" link to click. At DDG I needed to add a !gi to my query.
Like JohnsonB said, there really need to be another draw besides just privacy.
Same here, more or less. DDG is 'good enough' in a lot of instances but I think it's more that Google has taught some 'bad' searching habits. When I type a random Google search I'm basically expecting it to read my mind (and essentially it does through all of the tracking and analytics); DDG has none of that so the method of searching has to be more specific.
That said, it does't prevent the situation where searching for certain gifs or images gives you a page full of softcore porn, even with the moderate safe search enabled.
DDG is kind of fascinating. Ever since I switched to DDG as my main search engine, I feel like the internet is 90% porn. Although that's probably not far off, I'd prefer seeing relevant search results instead.
Its not that bad with the regular search results. Sometimes porn makes it to the first result page, usually its on the second or later.
The real problem is when searching for images. I recently had to search for a lot of images and for basically any search term I entered DDG was able to find porn. Ultimately, this made me switch back to Google since constantly having to risk showing NSFW results on your workplace in an open plan office isn't exactly a great experience.
I'm now using Google at work, Ecosia on my mobile phone and DDG/Google on my PC/Mac.
Yeah I have some friends who say ddg is unusable for them. I really wonder what kind of exotic things they search for, I have been using DDG for a couple of years now and rarely need Google.
I switched to DDG about 3 Month ago and use Google only for image search and when I am not happy with DDGs result. More often than not Googles result are not better so I have to change my search terms :-)
Have you tried alternatives like duck duck go? I feel like several times a week I have to go back to google because DDG is too dense to understand context, and will suggest things that just make no sense. Don’t even get me started on trying to search for NSFW content on it either.
I have been using DuckDuckGo for the last years and search results have been steadily getting better. Great experience.
But it has some serious problems regarding image search. I recently wanted to show my wife and her family a dog from a big YouTuber and searched for "Christian Guzman dog ava". Text results are relevant but when you click on images the results are entirely hardcore-porn. Safe to say it was a great experience.
This hasn't been the only incident since then. Sure you could turn-on safe search but this greatly reduces the quality of DDGs image search in general in my experience. If you compare both Google and DDG for this exact search with same safety-settings, Google's results are on point.
I've been using DDG as my primary search for about 2 years now, it rarely ever falls short for me. When it does, it's usually related to some type of image search I'm doing, I think google still has nicer tools for that.
I've been using DDG for a couple of years now, and have a different experience. Usually when I'm frustrated by the the result in DDG, I try the same search in Google, and find that the results are no better!
Google image search and and local results are still better, but DDGs ! system makes it easy to switch search engines when you need to.
I have had a similar experience to you. I switched to using DDG as my main search engine for about a year now, and I am quite happy with the results it gives me. Once in a blue moon I'll be stumped enough to try searching Google, but I haven't found that their searches are any better.
Things such as DDG's 'bang' system, and the ability to view and save photos easier, I've been finding it just as usable or even more so than Google these days.
It's also what I use. I've tried to use ddg is the past several times but I kept coming back to Google many times a day because the results were so bad. I moved to StartPage almost a year ago and I use that exclusively since then (except from times to times when searching images: for that I sometimes go back to Google because they offer better search options and filters like size, color, license, etc.).
Same. I only use DDG for web search and never feel the need to use Google search. I suspect the people who complain about the result quality either have very specific needs or could actually improve their query quality. I use Google's image search occasionally, because I feel it has more results.
The part that is really hard to degoogle for me is Youtube. There just is no alternative (if you factor in the available content).
Probably because DDG is shit compared to google. It consistently misinterprets context, it’s shy about domain-specific searches, especially involving pornography, and struggles to ‘correct’ poorly-written search strings.
It doesn’t come with the baggage that google does, ovviously, but let’s not pretend it’s any kind of real competition in terms of functionality.
I don't know what you're searching, but I found the opposite to be true. Exceptions being local to geo area shopping, searching for images with text on them with the text - think xkcd -, and extremely obscure software error messages - apart from these, DDG beats google for me. Has been for quite a while.
Sure, what can you expect, right? Imo not that any unrelated search yields porn. With google this never happened (actually I can't remember ever seeing porn images unexpectedly in ggl image search where I also had safe search off). It held me back recommending DDG to others. Though, as I said, things have improved a bit nowadays, and it happens less often.
a few years ago i resisted switching to DDG because google was still noticeably better in many ways in terms of search results; the balance has been shifting significantly since, and i use DDG for over half my searches at this point. the main downsides are less 'magic' when using very vague descriptions as queries, and more spam domains. but the image search is easily much better at this point.
reply