[akerro]

>Of course Google serves different results to different users, that's why they're the market leader in search. The entire job of a search engine is to return relevant results

yea, yea yea... I moved to DDG when Google stopped returning me relevant results. Not because I'm afraid of Google knowing too much, I mostly search for code/configuration problems. DDG proved to me that it has more relevant and more helpful information than Google for problems I search for.

Plenty of times Google returns me THE SAME results for different, but similar query, I change 3 from 6 words (to synonyms), and I get the same very results, that are irrelevant to my problem and query. I see them because they have best SEO and meta keywords and 5 stars under the title, or because they are similar to what I searched for 15minutes ago.

I found a bug in Android UI. I spent almost a day looking for a solution or tips how to do that thing. Google was literally useless, it could just show me links from SO that people had the same problem, google-based mailing lists, but no fix. I searched for the same thing in DDG - BANG - first result was from some crappy blog that author couldn't spell words properly, it was looking like websites from early 00's. I had a source code solution for my problem. Google shows me what Google wants me to see, well optimized websites, nice looking, fast loading on mobile, sites that cooperate with google big data plan, sites that use GA, Google Ads and AMP.

I don't want magic personalized results based on suggestion of a vibrator I was searching for 2 days ago, I want most relevant results to what I search for now.

[marcosdumay]

It used to be that when I don't find something with DDG, I would go into Google and find it. But currently my impression is that any remotely useful page that Google would show is also there in DDG results, the "!g" switch just adds a bunch of spam and unrelated stuff.

[peatmoss]

Same exact experience. It’s been fairly recently that I stopped routinely checking up on DuckDuckGo’s search results. On the rare occasion that I do, I’m mostly surprised at how Google’s results are inferior to DDG’s.

Some of this may be the “what I’m used to” factor though. Maybe I’ve just habituated to expect the results I’ve gotten from DDG. Either way, I don’t miss Google. I used to DDG out of principle; now I DDG because it works better.

[moultano]

Do you happen to remember the query so I can debug? (Check your search history if you have it turned on.)

[akerro]

No, sorry I was something with icon styling on TabActivity, I was adding some shadows and animations. It was over 1.5year ago.

[abruzzi]

I had a similar experience recently. I searched for something, and the results were mostly intro pages or starting "how to do this with xyz" type of pages when I was trying to debug a problem I was having with xyz. So I modified the search to add a couple words to make sure it was obvious that I was looking for help debugging a problem, and the result set on the first page was identical.

[vincentleeuwen]

Noticed this as well. When I started using DDG it was like stepping 10 years back in time. Lots of interesting niche websites that look straight out of the 00's.

I mostly miss google when searching for physical locations, but the !g comes in handy there.

[ryacko]

There is an option for "verbatim" searches.

Anyway, google ignores synonyms if you use double quotes around each word or phrase.