News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for the past 7 months.

Re:DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for the past 7 months by magv on Friday April 02, 2010 @04:25PM (#1237479)
I've been using DDG since the new privacy policy. There are two points I frequently bump into:

1. DDG has a spellchecker, but not a good one. For example, DDG correctly guesses "hcker news", but unlike Google it fails to correct e.g. "hooker news".

2. DDG is relatively good on general queries (like unique names), but not on specific ones (like phrases). Recent example: searching for "r6rs vote" on Google gives ratification votes as the first link, DDG can't find that link at all.

So while I'm not too dissatisfied, I'm not too impressed either.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for the past 7 months by epi0Bauqu on Friday April 02, 2010 @04:53PM (#1237549)
On 1, I was planning to backfill with Bing. In fact, I'll move that to the top of the list and do this weekend. Side note: Bing doesn't catch "hooker news" either; and should they?

On 2, I actually have that link but have something in place to only show one per domain. Perhaps I should choose the more specific one be default. Also will change!

I hope in time, it will impress you :). Please keep sending me feedback so I can improve!

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for the past 7 months by epi0Bauqu on Saturday April 03, 2010 @08:53AM (#1238556)
UPDATE: 1 is done. 2 turned out to be a bug, which is now fixed, i.e. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=r6rs+vote&v=. Thx again for pointing it out!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for the past 7 months by magv on Saturday April 03, 2010 @11:10AM (#1238704)
What about kelvin hobles?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for the past 7 months by epi0Bauqu on Saturday April 03, 2010 @11:31AM (#1238736)
Unfortunately, as you pointed out, Bing doesn't get that either, so the back-fill doesn't help in this case. However, I did note it for future improvement.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for the past 7 months by magv on Friday April 02, 2010 @05:14PM (#1237592)
"Hooker news" is obviously a made up example. A real example would be "kelvin hobles". Google correctly guesses "calvin (and) hobbes", DDG and Bing do not.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for the past 7 months by epi0Bauqu on Friday April 02, 2010 @07:07PM (#1237803)
I honestly didn't know whether it was a made up example or not. Thx for the real example though.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for the past 7 months by ugh on Friday April 02, 2010 @04:28PM (#1237490)
DDG is a sometimes affair for me, too. I really like to use it for all those queries where I would get tons of spammy results with Google. DDG really works great for that kind of stuff!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for the past 7 months by ranza on Saturday April 03, 2010 @06:10AM (#1238468)
hacker / hooker ... common mistake. I do that all the time :)
[ Parent | on HN ]