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by mattmanser 4203 days ago
Why are bangs good? Why not just go to the site?

Also Stackoverflow's search and many other site searches are totally rubbish. Not a bit, but totally rubbish. Here's an example:

"!so c# read file" => this delivers useless results, the top result being "Reading Excel files from C#"

Compare that to "stackoverflow c# read file" on google, which delivers what you actually want, with the question "Reading From a Text File in C#".
3 comments
vacri 4203 days ago
You don't have to load the site (trivial, but not negligible), throwing a bang in front of an already written search is simpler than rewriting the search, and google doesn't build a profile around you as another entity is doing the search.
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icebraining 4203 days ago
another entity is doing the search.

What? It redirects your browser to Google, it's you doing the search, not any other entity. They don't proxy or anything.

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ripdog 4203 days ago
He means that, for example, "!hn rust" would search hacker news directly for rust, whereas "hacker news rust" on google would do a similar job but via google, informing google of your search.
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vacri 4203 days ago
Sorry, ripdog and icebraining - I got it wrong. I hadn't played with ddg for a while and my memory was in error - I recalled !g returning google results in the ddg interface. My mistake.

I couldn't correct it because of HN's stupid 5-comment policy that applies to comments made in all threads combined, and couldn't edit the original comment with a correction as it had been more than an hour. :/

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wutbrodo 4203 days ago
That's definitely not what his comment says. He's quite clearly talking about !g (not other bangs) and saying (incorrectly) that another entity (DDG) is doing the Google search so Google can't build a profile around you.
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glaslong 4200 days ago
> Why not just go to the site?

Setting DuckDuckGo as my default and using !s means I can search any of those sites without having to go to them first.

It takes a step out of the process.

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girvo 4203 days ago
And if you search a programming term in DDG, it'll show you relevant results from SO in-line on the results page, which is pretty lovely.
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