Compared to a few years ago, itβs better. Some websites still arenβt indexed, and even by entering their name exactly, they donβt show. Google doesnβt have this problem.
Brave search is also pretty good
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
320 points (95.7% liked)
Asklemmy
46512 readers
946 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Good enough for me, although there are times I need to use google.
Itβs just as good as 2008 google, which is all I want.
I like DDG a lot more, especially because of the bang shortcuts. But I transitioned recently to Qwant. It also has bang shortcuts and is hosted in Europe.
Yes, I switched back in 2023 and noticed it was already better than google.
All major search engines feel like they're either filled with AI slop results, or just only returning major corporations' sites anymore, though. DDG just falls into the latter, while Google is mostly the former.
It's my primary but Google unfortunately is often a fallback. And Google is tracking the shit out of us these days. Certain obscure searches don't work well on DDG, sad to say.
Naw. I use Kagi (paid) now, and get much better search results.
I've been using DDG since 2016 and never felt it was worse in terms of "search quality" than Google.
Especially nowadays I hear friends whine near weekly about Google, but it's still somehow "better than DDG".
Honestly people just make excuses not to change what they're use to. Even if what they're used to has changed around them for the worse.
My only real complain I have is I wish 'search by date range' was less finicky use and also worked in the image tab like it does in Google images.
Don't you mean DuckDuckBing ?
I just typed "african mouse" into both bing, and ddg. I got EXACTLY the same results. Which I kind of expected . Same order, everything. However, my understanding is, that DDG obfuscates the user, and doesn't track. This is my hope, and why I use it.
Google is almost unusable for me even with ad block. I've been using DDG for the last 3 or so years now.
no. i switch to using it as my primary search engine every once in a while, just to see how it's doing. i always run into situations where i can't find the thing im looking for. maybe im just the obscure searches man
As a general purpose search engine yeah it's just as good. Google has some nice extra features which aren't too important (for example if you search UFC it shows full fight card info and results on the search page).
Where it falls behind is for more "power user " type work. I only use Google at work as it makes finding very specific results with keywords and date ranges on certain sites etc much easier.
Nowadays I use Qwant though to boycott us. It's much slower but still does the job for day to day use.
Probably so. Haven't used it much but Google has got so much worse. Being filled with adds and irrelevant results that DuckDuckgo probably is better now.
No. I was using big for the rewards points for a long time, the results were fine. I switched to kagi for ~6 months and it was good too. Since it's a little expensive I switched to DDG to see if I noticed a difference, it's been a little worse in comparison.
ive been using it consistently for the past few years. it works well for me, but sometimes ill go to other engines just to see what they come up with, or when results are lacking. sometimes they are better, sometimes they are worse.
meaning ddg is probably good enough nowadays, at least for me.
You probably already know this, but you can use search "bangs" to search other websites from ddg.
For example, to search google, you would put !g or !google at the start of your search.
i do! it transformed my address bar, i sometimes use other engines through ddg now. its the main reason its my search provider.
It has been for several years now. I rarely use Google now, and when I do, I'm using it out of DuckDuckGo (!g)
Better.
You seriously can't type whatever dae means?
Iβve been online for almost thirty years and have never - knowingly - seen βdaeβ as an abbreviation.
I don't believe you. DAE has been an extremely common abbreviation for well over a decade at least.
TIL Iβm a liarβ¦
DAE is a fairly common acronym on online forums, often used in titles such as these. You could have Googled (or DuckDuckGo) to learn its meaning π
It's simply "does anyone else."
Never saw that abbreviation before, but my assumption is it's "does anyone else" since I can't think of anything else that'd make sense in this context
I'd say the same. Google dorks work much better than DDG's filters for site-specific stuff, and generally for things like "search term" but for general searches DDG seems pretty similar.
The only things I've also had worse performance from DDG on compared to Google (in very minimal ways) has been:
- Highly specific searches (e.g. searching for a diagram of the dimensions of common connector types, DDG shows side-by-sides of connectors, Google does that but also with more diagrams that have dimensions in them)
- Context but not keyword based searches (e.g. "thing that has x y and z characteristics" returns more relevant results in Google than DDG, very marginally)
And of course, there's always the !s bang to run a search through Startpage (which uses Google) if I'm not getting enough detail.
Definitely not; DDG has always been bad. However, as others have pointed out, Google is getting worse and every day. That said, it's still better than DDG, which isn't saying much.
There are no good search engines anymore. I got tired of having to add site:reddit.com to all or my searches to get actual answers, so now I've resorted to using AI and pretending that it isn't just making up half the shit it spews. Perplexity is a half decent replacement for a search engine; it's more accurate than most and it cites its sources:
Have you tried Kagi? They have their problems, but I think it's better than Google.
I found Qwant to be a bit better, but yeah. Google got so much worse over last few years
I also use Qwant but it's noticeably slower for me. Do you find the same?
Yes, it responds slower but I don't really mind it. Like it's not significantly slower from others in my case.
What do people use google scholar for? Use jstor and other specific databases like arxiv
Google just got worse.
view more: next βΊ