DAE feel like DuckDuckGo is now just as good as google for the vast majority of searches?

I do not think so in my experience. I'm a software developer and a lot of my job is searching solutions to problems. Every year or two I'll try DDG because I love the concept but it never works as well for me. Putting the same search query into Google yeilds actual results for me more often than DDG does.

That's a low bar, google sucks now

I feel like its better than google. I switched to DDG a couple years ago. 6 months ago I did a trial run with a self hosted search that only used google as a back end, the results felt like garbage

It’s just as good as 2008 google, which is all I want.

ive been using it consistently for the past few years. it works well for me, but sometimes ill go to other engines just to see what they come up with, or when results are lacking. sometimes they are better, sometimes they are worse.

meaning ddg is probably good enough nowadays, at least for me.

I've been using DDG since 2016 and never felt it was worse in terms of "search quality" than Google.

Especially nowadays I hear friends whine near weekly about Google, but it's still somehow "better than DDG".

Honestly people just make excuses not to change what they're use to. Even if what they're used to has changed around them for the worse.

My only real complain I have is I wish 'search by date range' was less finicky use and also worked in the image tab like it does in Google images.

I use QWANT but I have the same feeling tbh. Or maybe Google search has been worsening I'm not too sure..

Don't you mean DuckDuckBing ?

Good enough for me, although there are times I need to use google.

Compared to a few years ago, it’s better. Some websites still aren’t indexed, and even by entering their name exactly, they don’t show. Google doesn’t have this problem.

Brave search is also pretty good

Yes, I switched back in 2023 and noticed it was already better than google.

All major search engines feel like they're either filled with AI slop results, or just only returning major corporations' sites anymore, though. DDG just falls into the latter, while Google is mostly the former.

I've switched away from DDG after many years of use. I have gone to Ghostery Private search. It seems to be better for my search results with a lot less garbage mixed in.

Naw. I use Kagi (paid) now, and get much better search results.

I like DDG a lot more, especially because of the bang shortcuts. But I transitioned recently to Qwant. It also has bang shortcuts and is hosted in Europe.

You seriously can't type whatever dae means?

Yes, mostly, except that programming related searches have really gone downhill in DDG for me.

As a general purpose search engine yeah it's just as good. Google has some nice extra features which aren't too important (for example if you search UFC it shows full fight card info and results on the search page).

Where it falls behind is for more "power user " type work. I only use Google at work as it makes finding very specific results with keywords and date ranges on certain sites etc much easier.

Nowadays I use Qwant though to boycott us. It's much slower but still does the job for day to day use.

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.

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.

It's my primary but Google unfortunately is often a fallback. And Google is tracking the shit out of us these days. Certain obscure searches don't work well on DDG, sad to say.

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.

no. i switch to using it as my primary search engine every once in a while, just to see how it's doing. i always run into situations where i can't find the thing im looking for. maybe im just the obscure searches man

I found Qwant to be a bit better, but yeah. Google got so much worse over last few years

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)

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

Google is almost unusable for me even with ad block. I've been using DDG for the last 3 or so years now.

It has been for several years now. I rarely use Google now, and when I do, I'm using it out of DuckDuckGo (!g)

I really agree Google just took themself out of the market. I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped their "search" product completely, the way they've dropped a lot of other good products along the way.

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

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).

"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

Probably so. Haven't used it much but Google has got so much worse. Being filled with adds and irrelevant results that DuckDuckgo probably is better now.

I'd say the same. Google dorks work much better than DDG's filters for site-specific stuff, and generally for things like "search term" but for general searches DDG seems pretty similar.

The only things I've also had worse performance from DDG on compared to Google (in very minimal ways) has been:

• Highly specific searches (e.g. searching for a diagram of the dimensions of common connector types, DDG shows side-by-sides of connectors, Google does that but also with more diagrams that have dimensions in them)
• Context but not keyword based searches (e.g. "thing that has x y and z characteristics" returns more relevant results in Google than DDG, very marginally)

And of course, there's always the !s bang to run a search through Startpage (which uses Google) if I'm not getting enough detail.

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.

Definitely not; DDG has always been bad. However, as others have pointed out, Google is getting worse and every day. That said, it's still better than DDG, which isn't saying much.

There are no good search engines anymore. I got tired of having to add site:reddit.com to all or my searches to get actual answers, so now I've resorted to using AI and pretending that it isn't just making up half the shit it spews. Perplexity is a half decent replacement for a search engine; it's more accurate than most and it cites its sources:

https://lemmy.world/post/26764870

yeah honestly I've been using ddg for a very long time and while a few years ago I had to frequently !g because search sucked now google got so enshittified many times ddg feels better

I use Yandex for finding pirated or otherwise censored content.

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

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

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

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

DDG does the job. Hopefully, I won't have to switch engines soon.

What do people use google scholar for? Use jstor and other specific databases like arxiv

Google just got worse.

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.

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.

isn't it just a bing wrapper?

So far its still less bloated

Better.

Google kind of went downhill

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.

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.

100%. I have not used google in about roughly 15 years. DDG has been my daily driver since 2010

I've had to use !g way too much lately, so no.

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.

Wow, it has been some time since I used duck duck go. On my phone I have bing for searches as it is convenient with chatGPT integration (which tbh I only use when coding, for which I have copilot now baked into VScode). On my laptop and work station I use Arc. Its sexy af and really makes a man wonder about himself. I will have to revisit DDG. I do remember enjoying it though only for enhanced privacy. Feature wise it just seemed exactly what chrome was offering

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

Better usually in my experience. Google is mostly SEO-sludge anyway. Though sometimes when you need something very specific Google is better but that gap has been pretty much closed during 7+ years I’ve used DDG.

I use Startpage and it feels like I always get the results I want even when I don't use perfect prompts. Just recently I got a three month free trial for Kagi and the results were better than google in my opinion, or at least less cluttered with "possibly related things" that are just ads in the end.

It's not as good as google was when I was first allowed to use the internet 15+ years ago, but much better than today's google. Just so much more peace of mind to know that profit isn't what governs my search results.

kagi still owns both of them. but there's also startpage and leta which are google wrappers if you don't want to use Google directly

For me they are even better than Google. But I use Qwant now.

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

I love DDG AI