[boyter]

What about things like,

  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=frequency+of+letters+in+The+quick+brown+fox+jumps+over+the+lazy+dog
  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=days+between+6%2F22%2F1979+and+10%2F5%2F1979
  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hn+duckduckgo+interview
  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=php+xml_parser_create+example
  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=currently+in+theaters
  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=msft
  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=currency+in+panama

The only one I think Google does better is "currency in panama" however it also gets the information wrong in the "zero click" answer. The only reason I like that result more is the Wikipedia answer on the right is just more appealing to my eye.

[comex]

Careful... for "hn duckduckgo interview", at the moment, DuckDuckGo shows a HNSearch widget with three (stale) results, none of which is this page; no relevant results appear in the main listing. Google has no special widget, but this page comes up first in the main listing.

To digress a bit, zero-click is great when the information you want is actually accessible with zero clicks, but it's very, very limited: as soon as you need to click through to a website, special widgets can't compete with a solid backend for regular search results. That's why I can hardly imagine switching to DuckDuckGo...

[moollaza]

Hey, I'm the intern who implemented the HNSearch Zero Click plugin, so let me explain the poor result:

A HNSearch (HNSearch.com) for "interview duckduckgo" doesn't return this thread at all, in any of the results (even on a 'stories' only search), however the one thing it does surface is your comment, because that exact phrase was found in it. I realized we weren't showing the right comments, and I found a very small bug which has now been fixed. So thanks for getting me to notice that :)

However, if you search "interview duckduckgo's" (ie. the same wording in the thread's title) the ONLY result returned is this exact thread (an HNSearch limitation).

These same results are fed to us by the HNSearch API and so the fault lies within HNSearch's search methodology (as far as I can tell). We're still looking for a resolution to this, however, any suggestions are welcome!

[boyter]

Fair comment. I was hoping the hacker news search would be a little more accurate. I would argue that it is what failed in this case but it does reflect poorly on DDG...

Interesting both Google and DDG have the linked article as result number one for the term "duckduckgo interview" but no Zero click for either.

That's an interesting comment about the zero click. It's interesting, but I find myself using zero click info more these days. I tend to craft queries which I know will pull this information back for me. Its much the same way that Google trained me to use their syntax or how the instant search trained me. I agree that a solid index of the web is critical for regular search results though.

I would be curious to know if the apparent issues with Bing/DDG are more down to people perceiving Google to know the answer. I know that when I use alternative search engines I get weird looks from people at work who say quote "Why are you using that? Its crap! Just use Google."