Totally feel the same here in France especially for recent news.
I guess Google obviously have more horsepower and manage to index in realtime majors news outlets and selected social accounts recursively.
Re:DuckDuckGo Traffic
by klingonopera on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @08:45AM
(#22117457)
I was disappointed wih DDG's regional results, especially since it seemed to have correctly identified my location.
What I only realized after a year or so, was that it defaults to off, and you actually need to turn it on, to get regional results. ("Oh, that's a button? Huh, I thought it was just graphics...")
Long term Australian DDG user here, and with similar disappointment in getting local search results, but I've grown accustomed to using other tools for that, or using DDG to find other tools for specific Australian search requests in addition to specifying, as you mentioned, locales and or dates.
Re:DuckDuckGo Traffic
by tigroferoce on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @07:12AM
(#22116826)
I'm on the very same page in Italy. Beside local search and news it's getting very good. And I'm fine trading off some discomfort and some occasional !g bang for clean experience and privacy.
Re:DuckDuckGo Traffic
by pepper_sauce on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @10:48AM
(#22118508)
Same in the UK. Especially annoying if I search for a book to buy and only .com's appear in the results.
If my search string has or shares close proximity to either an event in the past or a local event else where of a similar name, I rarely find my results.
For instance during the Australian Election recently, if I searched for Australian Election I was never returned results for the election occurring at that time (literally). Instead I was returned the results of the prior election, I assume the prior Australian Election has a higher search ranking than the election happening on that day.
NB: Maybe I need to get more Australian's on DDG...
Of course my searching habits have changed to counter act this, now I counter act this by adding either/or/both a locale and datetime and it nearly always works. I still have to use the !g for more specific searches but I say DDG covers 90% of my use cases now.
Edit: a lot, my post read like shit.