I’ve had the same experience. I’ve wondered what the cause of using !g less is.

Is it because I’m giving google less and less of a diet so it’s ability to cater to me is eroding?

Or perhaps DDG is just truly getting better?

Or is there a subtle feedback loop between man and search engine where we learn how to search better and better given a certain tools behavior?

Would love to hear what others suspected.

I mainly use DDG, but whenever I have to go to !g, I find I get better results if I phrase it like a brain damaged lunatic who can't spell and didn't start thinking about the query until two words in. I believe it keeps Google happy, if you throw it a little bone by letting it second-guess your query. Make it feel all smart and artificially intelligent, so it gives you the good results.

In DDG I usually just enter some keywords.

Older G users also rely on it but to a lesser extent. Having a couple weeks of appending !g when a search query does not match eventually hits the spot where "hey, they actually don't know what I'm thinking now".

When using DDG a couple of years back, I noticed that after a while, throwing in a !g became my default so I figured I might as well switch back to Google. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to love DDG but for my searches, I would simply have to revert to Google too often.