Let me Duck Duck Go that for you

Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by resdirector on Monday May 10, 2010 @12:17PM (#1334877)

Quick question: what types of searches are better done through DDG than Google? I've tried a few searches, but haven't found DDG better than Google...is DDG superior only for certain types of searches?

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by epi0Bauqu on Monday May 10, 2010 @12:21PM (#1334891)

http://duckduckgo.com/about.html

Of course it is subjective, but it really should be better across a wide swatch of searches. I think it is most clear though on what is X searches. The information view (from the home page) goes even further on these type of searches and grabs topic summaries in real time.

Other areas where I think we do noticeably better on average are with names and long un-quoted searches (5+ words). Of course you can find counter-examples everywhere...

What I always suggest to people is to give it a week as your primary search engine. If you (or anyone) do/does, I'd really appreciate you getting back to me with your feedback.

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by resdirector on Monday May 10, 2010 @01:44PM (#1335297)

I used DDG for an hour, and although I like the zero-click, I'm going to change back to Google: I've had a few searches like this:

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=gwt+log+javadoc&v=

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=gwt+lo...

Which Google performs better at.

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by resdirector on Monday May 10, 2010 @12:41PM (#1334987)

Very initial impression:

* I like the zero-click info.

* Is disambiguation redundant? Can't you just infer from history and location? Or is this against your privacy policy?

The single most frustrating thing I find about search engines is iterating a non-trivial search. It doesn't seem like DDG has an edge against Google here. I long to see a search engine that makes it easy to send a question off to Quora, Vark etc.

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by epi0Bauqu on Monday May 10, 2010 @12:46PM (#1335013)

How would that work exactly in your mind? We already have a feature to send your search to hundreds of other sites, http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

Is it as simple as redirecting you to those sites, or do you mean manage the workflow, email you the results, etc.?

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by resdirector on Monday May 10, 2010 @01:18PM (#1335194)

(I like the bang feature: many of my searches are of the form "wiki william henry harrison". By the way, I think the search results for http://duckduckgo.com/?q=william+henry+harrison are out of order)

My ideal search-engine would be a cross between a traditional search-engine (machine) and a Q&A site (humans). If you were taking a lot of iterations to find your answer, you could simply expand the text-area to allow you to write out a human question.

So, short of DDG becoming also a Q&A site....yeah, dunno :P.

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by joe_bleau on Monday May 10, 2010 @01:10PM (#1335163)

Last time I looked at DDG, it required javascript. That's a negative in my book.

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by jodrellblank on Monday May 10, 2010 @12:19PM (#1334885)

If you search for the MD5 hash of an email address, DDG finds them on Disqus (if they exist there) and Google doesn't.

Only one I've actually noticed ;)

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by epi0Bauqu on Monday May 10, 2010 @12:23PM (#1334905)

You can also md5 an email http://duckduckgo.com/?q=md5+yegg%40alum.mit.edu :). More goodies at http://duckduckgo.com/goodies.html & http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by yawniek on Monday May 10, 2010 @12:34PM (#1334955)

the goodies site is perfect thanks. it would be helpful if it would be top3 if you search for "DuckDuckGo safari"

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by epi0Bauqu on Monday May 10, 2010 @03:43PM (#1335700)

Why safari? You mean to add to safari?

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by jacquesm on Monday May 10, 2010 @12:23PM (#1334904)

DDG seems to be less 'shopping biased' than google, and seems to do a better job of categorizing stuff.

I wished some search engine would implement a 'context' search though, that would really make my day.

Trying to find something like 'go' by keyword search alone is really a problem, you always have to add a bunch of other keywords in the hope that that will narrow it down enough, if you could just filter out those contexts that you're not interested in after the first search is over that would be really neat.

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by epi0Bauqu on Monday May 10, 2010 @12:24PM (#1334908)

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=go ?

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by jacquesm on Monday May 10, 2010 @12:26PM (#1334916)

Hehe, mindreader!

Neat one, when did you roll that out, I completely missed that trick.

Congratulations!

& thanks !

To embarrass me further you could now say you rolled it out in 2006 ;)

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Re:Let me Duck Duck Go that for you by epi0Bauqu on Monday May 10, 2010 @02:57PM (#1335570)

Haha, no need to embarrass :)

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