this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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No such thing. Ask away!
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It's great that DDG doesn't track a users searches. It really is.
But at the end of the day, it's still just another ad platform profiting off of companies trying to sell you things.
And here you are complaining it seems like an ad, when someone's explaining an alternative ad-free search.
Just think about that for a moment.
Also, if we're being frank, DDG's results are damn near useless half the time.
It's like the opposite end of the SEO spectrum. Whereas Google just anchors onto certain keywords to regurgitate the same 4 listacles, DDG just sees your input for "my lawnmower won't start" and responds with "lawnmower huh? I dunno here's the history of John Deere or some shit, fuck off".
I tried using DDG but had even worse results than Google is having right now. I wish it was good, but my multi month trial of it was not impressive.
It was especially bad for programming. At least Google still finds what I need for that
Hard disagree with that, DDG searches are accurate about 90% of the time that I use it (which as a web dev is quite a lot) if they aren’t hitting Google with the same term rarely wields any better results.
I've had the same experience as you. The vast majority of the time, I can get the results that I want.
It also doesn't allow you to actually exclude keywords. Which can be utterly infuriating if you're looking for a specific entry in a franchise or a lesser used definition of something.
It's just handing your search off to Bing, and Microsoft just does what it does.
DDG pays Bing to use their API. DDG makes money by placing ads in the results. They do it kind of circularly using Microsoft's ad system, but they are separate.