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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[–] lucg@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago (1 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)

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 1 points 57 minutes ago

On ddg? Only one or two, which I can filter out.

Google always will return a content farm though.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

DDG sold out, very focused "bubble" results that they initally railed against.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I use StartPage because it does image search, and none of the AI BS.

[–] ByGourou@sh.itjust.works 8 points 4 hours 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

[–] shaggyb@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I can turn off the horseshit firehose that we call AI, making it far better than google

[–] cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Ironically I find ChatGPT pretty good for certain types of searching.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 1 points 56 minutes ago

For me, its only finding stuff thats really hard to google, like concepts or meme templates.

[–] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Have been using it for 8 years now. I never felt the need to switch back honestly. Only Google thing I really love is Maps and that's it.

[–] lucg@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Tried OpenStreetMap? Quality varies by country though

[–] yata@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 hours ago

I switched to it a couple of years ago, with the expectation that I had to resort to google in more complex search instances. But very soon I found out that ddg did the job, and my "alternative" google searches did not turn up anything better, quite the contrary in fact, and I haven't been back since.

[–] Zeppo@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 hours ago

I use it for almost everything. I only resort to Google if I can't find what I'm looking for, which is rare and typically it's something obscure. Google has also steadily made their service worse over the years. I don't feel like I am missing much.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 11 hours 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.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 4 points 10 hours ago

It's much better than Bing.

[–] jaxxed@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Google kind of went downhill

Kind of? It went Paul Rudd in Mac and Me.

[–] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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).

[–] Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (2 children)

The killer for me has to be that it doesn't support searching for phrases within websites I need. Latest example: github. I can be on the project page, copy a phrase from the code and search ddg with it in double quotemarks, and get 0 results. Copy - google.com - paste - enter - loads of results.

Also the search function broke for about a day, a few days ago

[–] flux@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 hours ago

That's a bit surprising, given DDG uses Bing, Bing is Microsoft and Microsoft owns Github.

Did you try the same search with Bing, or have an example to share?

[–] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

To be honest with you, I didn't even know that was a feature. (Unless I'm misunderstanding you.) Sounds cool!

If I need to search a website, I use either Ctrl+F or the site: search engine operator.

[–] Silk@lemm.ee -1 points 5 hours ago

I use Kagi, I really like how it's AI answer gives sources for statements.

[–] FRYD@sh.itjust.works 33 points 19 hours ago (4 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.

[–] CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

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.works 2 points 2 hours 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.

[–] serendipity@aussie.zone 3 points 12 hours ago

Same here, although I don’t know how long I’ve been on DDG exactly. I never not find what I’m looking for.

[–] 0ops@lemm.ee 1 points 10 hours ago

I used it for a few years, realized that I had to use bangs every other search, and reluctantly switched back to Google. But now Google is way worse than it was, so I think I might as well try switching back again, see how it feels now.

[–] toastal@lemmy.ml 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml 3 points 15 hours 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.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 7 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I find it's actually better at this point because it just gives results without AI summaries and ads, also I find it's just straight up better at actually finding what you're looking for

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

i find ddg sufficient for nearly everything. occasionally i will go to startpage or ecosia or mojeek for a different 'perspective', but that is not very often at all. i also use wolframalpha almost daily for some sort of calculation or conversion.

i haven't used google or bing except by accident when using someone else's browser or device (that is, when i forget to go to duck.com first).

Is ddg on mobile just a facade and still uses google?

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.ml 7 points 16 hours ago

So far its still less bloated

[–] variouslegumes@reddthat.com 10 points 17 hours ago

I just realized the other day that I haven't typed !g in months.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Google is mostly adverts. Wouldn’t take much to be better than that.

[–] suite403@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I finally left Google a month or so ago and its amazing how little I miss it.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Yeah. I search for things all the time. Thousands of searches each month. I thought I’d miss it a lot, but I’ve not used Google for two years or so and it’s not really a problem.

[–] Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

76% of their Q2 2024 revenue came from adverts. I'd rather pay with capitalist-consumerist shit on my screen than pay with money, but as everyone knows it's far too invasive rn. Ergo, I use uBlock, sponsorblock and I don't care about cookies.

[–] venotic@kbin.melroy.org 48 points 1 day 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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[–] toastal@lemmy.ml 5 points 16 hours ago

No. DDG still puts less priority in small blogs over Reddit posts. All bigger search engines put way too much stock & rank in corpo social media.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 13 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (2 children)

DuckDuckGo AKA Bing is complete dog doo. When you are looking for news it only tries to shove in the Microsoft MSN news page. The algorithm manipulation in favor of Western MSM bias is even heavier than Google. When you search certain terms it refuses to show articles containing those exact terms.

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[–] match@pawb.social 15 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

i switched from DDG to ecosia because of Lemmy and i gotta say it's even better

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 2 points 9 hours ago

Private browsing We protect your data and privacy so you can surf safely

This true?

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[–] ceenote@lemmy.world 21 points 23 hours ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] JackLSauce@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago (2 children)

"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

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