[godelski]

> I still can't find a good search engine where I don't spend more than 5 mins trying different keywords to get the results google gives me.

I always hear this but myself have never had problems with DDG. I'm curious what you search for.(am I the odd one?) Image search is TERRIBLE, but web search I have no issues with. I actually like how DDG works with programming questions, how it gives the SO result on the side.

Whenever I try Google I never end up getting better results. But that may be because I've been off them for years and so they can't provide any advantage.

[allenskd]

It's.... a bit hard to define my current workspace. I do software development but a lot of that development is on legacy applications using some obscure API, perhaps a super old version of a known open source project that nobody uses anymore, or simply dealing with an application written two decades ago in C and I have to know specific things.... and I'd have to say searching on Google is just handy when it comes to this.

It's not easy to describe I guess. For my normal "John Doe" usage I have no problems using DDG. But when it comes to work where I need to narrow it down the best I can I guess Google will always come to the rescue (but not always, haha.... nothing like dealing with undocumented libraries).

I wish it was just language-specific behaviors at least I know there's always plenty to search on but... it's a little bit of everything.

[lostlogin]

I find image search on Google to be terrible due to whatever it is that Pinterest is doing. It is awful trying to find something and repeatedly stumbling into their crapfest.

[Guph]

Thats why I do my searches with -pinterest.com in the search.

[adeeds]

big fat disclaimer: I'm about to start working at a competitor to DDG

However I've found that DDG has a really hard time when you have minor typos in your query, or when it includes really common words

When I type in semi-remembered song lyrics into Google, I'm usually able to find the song. I haven't had the same luck with DDG (one example of semi-remembered lyrics I tried to look up was "streetlight reflect piss streets". DDG doesn't give anything useful. If you add the word "lyrics" to the query, it gives you a list of maybe a dozen songs about lights and even some songs about urine, but not the one I was looking for. Even without adding the word lyrics, Google's first result is an infobox saying "Fat Cats, Bigga Fish|Song by The Coup", with the full lyrics and some links to listen to it.

I also had a hard time trying to look up info on DDG regarding Google employee benefits. Maybe that's intentional :)

At one point, the top search result for "Google vision plan" was a link to google.fr/maps (DDG actually gives some useful results now, but it didn't when I looked previously)

Another interesting query to compare for me was "subaru outback gate OR garage opener"

DDG just gives links to Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, and other places to buy garage door/gate openers. The first Google result is a video for how to teach a Subaru Outback how to open a gate/garage (which is what I actually wanted). Maybe I'm just used to the level of vagueness that lets Google give me useful results, which isn't explicit enough for DDG?

[asjw]

I've been using DDG as main search engine for 3 years, results for my queries are usually on par with Google in private mode, but if you're looking for results in any other language than English or non-tech stuff it falls behind big G

[CaptainZapp]

That's actually my only beef with DDG.

Searches in German (and probably other languages than English too) are pretty fucking horrible.

But on English searches it's my preferred search engine. It's definitely good enough in 98% of all cases and there's always !g if everything else breaks.

So I definitely accept the language limitation. Especially since I know what to expect. The privacy focus more than balances this out.