DuckDuckGo SUCKS!

I mean, I like the concept. The private, highly customizable search engine is what we all need.

But if 4/5 times I have to use 'g!' just to find some really basic stuff, because the results are incorrect or point to low quality content then what's the point of using it in the first place?! It's really frustrating especially if I try to find something in Polish or Dutch, but even in English most of the time the search results sucks!

it's really useful that ducduckgo is like google in 2005 for one thing. It finds warez movie releases quite precise.

devRant.the.movie.~rlzgroup~.HDTVRip.x264-TVP

@irene is not about that. I have similar experience with ddg. The way G profiles you, it learns what kind of results are best for you, i guess. With G i rarely have to adjust the phrase once to find what I need, with DDG i do multiple times.

@irene that's one of the reasons, I, as java dev, don't receive results regarding c# unless explicitly say so :)

Yeah shame. Works great for me.

@irene "intellij idea 2018.1 focus issue" was the query I used when I had the issue. Google (not logged in) showed relevant result as the 1st one, DDG didn't have relevant result at all.
I can't modify my mindset to always be aware that my search engine is showing bullshit.

There had to be a compromise. You can't get privacy and tailored searches together.

@mt3o does it? In that case google doesnt know me at all. Im dutch and google returns 90% of german results the rest in english.
If I look up string im getting underwear and pieces of rope.

Google rarely gives me a correct answer, but that is because Im a bot according to them... Bruteforcing recaptchas seems to be most effective for me.

@irene because it's a year later now. When this was an upcoming issue it wasn't showing the relevant result. When I searched for it, it was showing results from 2012 and release notes.

@sSam hmm if only people had relevant information... 12 years ago "how to make text bold in word" also didnt give any results back in google.

@Codex404 I don't get your comment? Should I use DDG and pretend it's 2012?

You could try Qwant, basically the same thing but it’s funded by the eu
qwant.com

@Codex404 if you are pretending to be a bot, don't blame anyone for being treated as one :)

@athlon may I suggest you Qwant 😁
I've been using it for a few months now, and I have nothing to complain about. Plus, they have a dark theme.

@sSam people ask examples and giving examples of things that are a week old is already ancient in the time of the interwebs let alone a year old.

What I meant to say was "how to make text bold in word" would not have given results in google but it did in yahoo. There is litterally no way to check if that is true indeed. It might or it might not, Ive just made it up.

@Codex404 my point was that DDG sucked at providing relevant result when the issue was new, I don't care that it can provide relevant result by the time the bug has been fixed.
I can't provide more recent results, since I'm not using DDG because of the mentioned experience.

@Drillan767 @kenogo I will check 'em out, for sure. Thanks!

@irene a simplest example is when I was looking for prices at Media Markt. I don't really care what are the prices in Italian, or German one while I live, study and work in the Netherlands!
Or I try to find news about what's going on in Poland, it often gives me completely irrelevant content.

@sSam my point was that google also does not have all the answers and it all really depends on how you do things. Where yahoo has been relatively strong in the past with complete sentences as search term google is better in that now.
If you had googled "word bold text" it might have found a result.

Searching is an art that you have to master. If I search "floating point precision C#" on DDG i find the solution to my issue immediately. While Ive to search different terms to get the same solution via google.

@athlon in that case there is the country switch...

I use it quite a lot and change it from the netherlands to germany to UK and US, and once in a while belgium. It gives me the coorect results almost always

Using search engines mostly for programming and small things, I never had problems with DuckDuckGo. Quite the opposite, I mostly get the things I need after the first search in the first results.
In this point, Google has never been worse or better than DDG for me (I prefer the last one because of other things like privacy, image search features and others).
Maybe it is your lack of searching skill? Maybe Google is able to compensate this by its privacy thingies and DuckDuckGo isn't. But then you shouldn't blame the search engine but think about that you maybe sell your data for being lazy not learning to search efficiently.

For me as a german person it works perfectly, even better than Google in some cases. At least for Web-Search. Google does indeed give me many more Images.

Google literally knows everything about me, from my work to my favorite programming languages, to the groceries I order, to my sleeping pattern, to my music tastes, they know which 11 cities I visited in 2018, which plane tickets I booked, they tell me when a new Linux Mint release is out. It knows which 4 games I've been playing last weekend, and it knows about all my other interests and hobbies.

So when I enter "where to find silverwood" Google understands that I'm talking about a Minecraft modpack server, when I type "canteen" it knows I'm looking to buy a drinking cup because I've bought new climbing gear and booked a ticket to the Ardennes.

I like DDG for generic searches, but privacy and personalized convenience are difficult to combine.

DDG tends to work fine if you type more detailed queries -- you have to provide the stuff they don't know about you!

@bittersweet that is the exact reason why google doesnt work at all for me. Ive been avoiding google for about 5 years now and when I do use it they think Im german interested in sewing.

The ads I get on youtube are all in german even though the things I watch are English and Im dutch.

Where google only works good if they have a profile on you DDG works decent always.

@Codex404 Completely true!

But using DDG comes with the disadvantage of eternal torture (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/...)

No search engine comes close to the brilliant functionality that DDG provides with bangs. The privacy bit is just gravy for me. If DDG was wrapping up my search history and delivering it to Vladimir Putin, I would continue using it without hesitation because of those bangs that are absolutely 100% critically required for my everyday workflow now.

@TraceFree by inly 6$ per month. F*ck you very much! Keep your spam to yourself!

Downvoted and reported.

It doesn’t work with Chinese either. Bing actually better than most people think 🤔

@sunfishcc I actually used Bing back in Windows Phone 8.0 and 8.1 era and it was actually good

@Codex404 @irene here's another similar query that causes my described results since the issue is pretty recent:
"intellij idea editor loses focus after switching workspaces i3wm"
Since the issue was pretty similar this post popped in my head.

@sSam i just looked it up (al be it with removing words like "after" and "editor", since the more words contains it either cant find things at all or it gives results for other editors, but that is not specific to DDG)

My first result is a reddit post on /r/i3wm by /u/Onitux. One month old.

The solution: suppress.focus.stealing=false

@Codex404 could you give the query you used?

@sSam intellij loses focus switching workspaces i3wm

@Codex404 can't see the solution.

@sSam the third one...

@Codex404 it's i3wm subreddit?

@sSam okay you really need to learn how to look for information on the internet.

In the summary there is a threadtitle of someone who has the same issue. Literally copy and paste that in the reddit search and voila.

@Codex404 sorry my bad, thought this was DDG vs Google not DDG+Reddit vs Google. Anyways couple of things:
1. The result is 3rd not 1st like you mentioned in your reply.
2. If I wanted to use a reddit search I would have used it, I'm aware that i3wm subreddit exists. I can easily go to i3wm subreddit search for "intellij" and it's the 1st result.
3. DDG doesn't even give more relevant result. The bug report that was reported in 2018 June and with workaround provided the same day.
So should I wait half a year for someone to create a reddit thread when I'm using DDG and then use the reddit search engine? Or should I DDG intellij's bug report website and hope that it has a better search engine than DDG?

@sSam Okay,

first of all, it did show up for me as a first thing. For any reason it is possible to have this issue.

Secondly: I just checked google and for me the only result was on the second page, and it was the exact same reddit link

third: If you want to look for things on the internet you really should look further than a first link... What I gathered from your example search term is that you will indeed not get that good results because it's way to contaminated. There is words that might be relevant to a human being, but since it's not part of the main query you should leave them out. Comparing search engine results is impossible to do since especially Google and Bing are depending on the profile they have on you from previous searches and other data hoarding where DDG only uses location, and current search queries in order to find things.

Grab a brand new device, don't connect it to any account and make the first network you connect to be one you have never used.

@Codex404 are you sure google's result wasn't on third page? I see the discussion is over.