I'd switch to DDG in a half second if they supported the full query syntax of altavista.digital.com (see http://jkorpela.fi/altavista/ if you've forgotten). Disclaimer: I work for, um, Google.
I do wish they supported a larger search syntax. My current workaround is I have a massive bookmark folder of alternative search engines that I try if I'm not having luck narrowing things down enough.
If you want, you can shoot me an email and I'll send a link to a page where I have them listed already. Not a blog post, and not much info about them, but I have a list.
I just don't have a domain yet so I don't really want to go super public.