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

  • venotic@kbin.melroy.org
    131·
    22 days ago

    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.

  • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
    4·
    21 days ago

    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.

    • irelephant [he/him]🍭@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      21 days ago

      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.

  • FRYD@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    22 days ago

    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.

    • toastal@lemmy.ml
      2·
      22 days ago

      Cherry on the shit sundae was a couple months ago when Google started to require JavaScript be enabled for search.

      • yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        22 days ago

        Okay, so this wasn’t just me! I installed NoScript for Chrome on my work laptop as a stop gap for no more ublock origin and thought something was fishy w/ Google’s search page.

    • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      22 days ago

      DDG is slow. Like noticeably slower than other search engines. I have been using DDG exclusively for 2 months at this point and it is wild how much faster brave search is not even mentioning google search.

      • FRYD@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        21 days ago

        I’ve actually never tried brave search. Which is kinda funny because I started using DDG when brave came out and it was the default search engine.

        What do you mean by slow though? Like just the webpage loading or the time it takes you to get good results? I’ve never noticed any load time, but I’ve always had a few tweaked content blockers running and that may affect my perspective.

  • EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    3·
    22 days ago

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

    …Oh, sorry.

    Hell no. If anything, it’s gotten worse.

    In their defense, however, it’s probably largely not their fault. In my admittedly one-person-sample-size experience, 90% of the searchable Web is either Reddit threads or articles, and with Reddit going officially with Google (meaning DDG doesn’t catch as many Reddit threads as they used to), that leaves most of the searchable Web being articles. Because SEO has to ruin everything.

    So, it’s not really that DDG is shitty (mostly), but that all searches are shitty. Though, with the whole Google-and-Reddit thing, I find Google’s results are noticeably less shitty (though still shitty).

    • untorquer@lemmy.world
      2·
      21 days ago

      I feel the same except Google is worse due to higher number of ads in results and most SEO prioritizes Google over Bing meaning more Google results are AI spam articles.

      • EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        1·
        21 days ago

        I feel the same except Google is worse due to higher number of ads in results

        I generally don’t see ads due to uBlock Origin. Or am I just not noticing them? Lol.

        and most SEO prioritizes Google over Bing meaning more Google results are AI spam articles.

        I will give you that. But I find that’s the case with DDG too which is why I’m having to rely more and more on search operators like site:. I agree that it’s really annoying.

  • JackLSauce@lemmy.world
    41·
    22 days ago

    “just as good”? No, I feel it is (and has been for years) vastly superior but I mostly use it to find documentation or Stack Overflow answers so consistent UI and concise summaries are high priority to me. Take that as you will

    I don’t think anybody can dethrone Google Maps yet but that’s another story

  • ByGourou@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    21 days ago

    I really tried, I set duckduckgo as the default for my second browser (I use it a lot) to slowly get used to it, but every time results are so bad I get mad and switch to Google especially for images

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
    2·
    22 days ago

    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.

  • ceenote@lemmy.world
    2·
    22 days ago

    My thought always was that DDG was good to set as my default, and if I’m not happy with the results then it’s not a big deal to use Google once in awhile.

  • HouseWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    21 days 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.

    • klangcola@reddthat.com
      3·
      22 days ago

      No and kinda yes. Duckduckgo has its own webcrawler, but also adds in results from other sources including Bing, Yahoo and others.

  • DioEgizio [he/they]@lemm.ee
    1·
    21 days ago

    yeah honestly I’ve been using ddg for a very long time and while a few years ago I had to frequently !g because search sucked now google got so enshittified many times ddg feels better

  • DannyBoy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    20 days ago

    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.