this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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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

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[–] miridius 2 points 19 hours ago

That's a low bar, google sucks now

[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I use QWANT but I have the same feeling tbh. Or maybe Google search has been worsening I'm not too sure..

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

It’s just as good as 2008 google, which is all I want.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Good enough for me, although there are times I need to use google.

[–] spacemanspiffy 2 points 1 day ago

Yes, mostly, except that programming related searches have really gone downhill in DDG for me.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don't you mean DuckDuckBing ?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I just typed "african mouse" into both bing, and ddg. I got EXACTLY the same results. Which I kind of expected . Same order, everything. However, my understanding is, that DDG obfuscates the user, and doesn't track. This is my hope, and why I use it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Yes, I switched back in 2023 and noticed it was already better than google.

All major search engines feel like they're either filled with AI slop results, or just only returning major corporations' sites anymore, though. DDG just falls into the latter, while Google is mostly the former.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I like DDG a lot more, especially because of the bang shortcuts. But I transitioned recently to Qwant. It also has bang shortcuts and is hosted in Europe.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Naw. I use Kagi (paid) now, and get much better search results.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (20 children)

You seriously can't type whatever dae means?

[–] NikkiDimes 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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."

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I did, my comment stands

It's clearly not that common.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I’ve been online for almost thirty years and have never - knowingly - seen β€œdae” as an abbreviation.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Yes, that's accurate. My point is that typing that out isn't hard and opens the post up to all who know English.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's my primary but Google unfortunately is often a fallback. And Google is tracking the shit out of us these days. Certain obscure searches don't work well on DDG, sad to say.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

no. i switch to using it as my primary search engine every once in a while, just to see how it's doing. i always run into situations where i can't find the thing im looking for. maybe im just the obscure searches man

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Google is almost unusable for me even with ad block. I've been using DDG for the last 3 or so years now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

It has been for several years now. I rarely use Google now, and when I do, I'm using it out of DuckDuckGo (!g)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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

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[–] lucg 7 points 2 days ago (4 children)

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)

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 days ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Probably so. Haven't used it much but Google has got so much worse. Being filled with adds and irrelevant results that DuckDuckgo probably is better now.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 3 days ago (11 children)

Not really. If you focus purely on just searching, yeah DDG is decent. But, I find its maps inferior and trying to find answers to some questions can get tedious. DDG I guess is just for people who want guilt-free searching.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

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