this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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Two minutes of DuckDuckGo rearranging & dropping results for the same search; Bing, Startpage, & DDG all unreliable vs. Google :( (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Try it with this search:

an entire block of smash car windows

I’ll have to test Searx, Grasp, & Kagi. Right now I start with DDG and bang out to Google (append !g to my DDG search) at least half the time.

So note to DDG devs: those Google bang searches had results that left me disaPPOINTED!

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I get the same issue all the time lately. Search, click link, go back - clicked link gone, different results shown.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I get this but never clicked link gone. Rearranged or added results.

[–] Squizzy 2 points 11 months ago

Yep same here

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I always use mousewheeldown click nowadays, it opens the link in a new tab.

Also mwd on the tabs themselves close the tab (without needing to hit the tiny cross).

Changed the way I browse

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's what I do on the desktop, but on mobile there's no quick way to open a new tab.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Would it help turning on the setting to have the links always open in a new tab?
It's been a long time since I used ddg, but I believe they have the option in their settings page, most search engines do.

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

While this is not a bad shout, I hate that this rearranging logic has made it to production in the first place. Ddg should really know better.

[–] Tum 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I am not a search engine engineer.

Here are some things it might be though:

It could be that the results you see first are cached on their servers, and expiring from that cache between your searches. however usually when something requested is pulled from a cache, the items lifespan in the cache is usually refreshed so it lives a bit longer.

It could be that certain they are NOT cached at all, and certain sites are rate limiting the DDG crawler hitting them and returning info to you, so DDG takes them out of the results as they cannot confirm the site is alive. I noticed reddit disappeared from the results and we all know about Reddit and their APIs here.

It could also be their ranking algorithm for results is not as deterministic as they want it to be, it could also be that way by design. Page ranking is a closely guarded trade secret, especially at big places like Google. DDG results will never match 1:1 with Google. Personally, I prefer DDGs results to Google.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Excellent analysis. Caching came to mind for me as well. Thank you for the interesting speculation!

[–] Squizzy 15 points 11 months ago

Can anyone explain what happened DDG? They used to have very objective searching and now it is really targeted, which they claim they don't do.

For example if I search a random term or product I will get a niche buy and sell website that only serves my country and with results from my immediate region. I do disable the location functionality and it just stays the same or switches them up but they're there close to the top.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

No issue here.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Thanks for testing. What did you try? Any of the same refreshing + intermixing completely clearing cache/cookies/history?

My environment: iPhone 14 Pro using Firefox Focus 120.0. Saw the same rearranging behavior in Orion on iOS as well.

Three users here (besides the hundred upvotes) noticed something similar: https://infosec.pub/comment/4407136

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Same... it's probably OP's📱 phone

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Is this to mean you believe DDG was presenting identical results with each refresh/new search, while my browser failed to properly display what was returned?

Or perhaps something else?

(I’m not an engineer, just doing my best heh - thanks)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I did see DDG doing different search but all within the three 1st searches. In the meantime the results on Yandex after refreshing were all the Same ... Hope that helps you

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

Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I settled on SearXNG

[–] Rootiest 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I LOVE searxng!

I will never go back to any basic old search engine again.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I'm going to have to look into spinning a container later, sounds cool.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I am going to give SearXNG a try myself. It looks promising. I hadn't heard of it before today, but I am setting up a container for it now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Are you hosting it yourself?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Did not get to doing that yet, here's a tutorial if you want to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think setting up a docker container would be easier no?

[–] Rootiest 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I am if you have any questions

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

Are you running this through docker?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

If possible, self-host SearxNG using Docker/Podman to avoid all of these.