this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Not because DDG got better, but just because google got worse.

google is still better for site-specific searches, and google scholar still has minimal AI slop

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[–] Alpha71@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago
[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I really agree Google just took themself out of the market. I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped their "search" product completely, the way they've dropped a lot of other good products along the way.

[–] CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al 4 points 1 day ago

I've never forgiven them for getting rid of their search within results, that was brilliant

[–] lucg@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Eyeing the replies, does not one other person here get results constantly flooded with content farms? They've gotten significantly worse

But then, I don't use Google so maybe this is still better than Google Search?

It started maybe three years ago, around the same time as LLMs became usable for this, but I'm pretty sure >50% are human-written still. Probably the LLM generates the structure (saves any time they'd have to spend coming up with plausible-sounding texts) and someone from a low-income country is contracted to make it look more legit

Of course, queries for topics that have a Wikipedia page get Wikipedia first, recipes get tons of big-name recipe sites, products get stores. But when there's no obvious market around a topic, 3~4 out of 5 results are content farms pretending to have useful information to show unwary visitors ads

(As an alternative, I still have to try Kagi properly. It seemed on par with DDG when I did a few searches last year, but then their payment processor refused me trying to load my account, support was unhelpful, and I've gotten sidetracked since)

[–] skeezix@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

The problem with DDG is that when it doesnt find much it simply throws random shit at you. It’s infuriating.

I also get those content farms constantly. I don't want to use google but lately I've been using it over duckduckgo more often.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

On ddg? Only one or two, which I can filter out.

Google always will return a content farm though.

[–] Niquarl@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

The other annoying thing is the air summaries. I've disable AI features but that's still on. I hate it so much

[–] turnip 3 points 1 day ago

I use Yandex for finding pirated or otherwise censored content.

[–] DioEgizio@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

yeah honestly I've been using ddg for a very long time and while a few years ago I had to frequently !g because search sucked now google got so enshittified many times ddg feels better

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

What do people use google scholar for? Use jstor and other specific databases like arxiv

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

Google just got worse.

[–] ByGourou 8 points 1 day ago

I really tried, I set duckduckgo as the default for my second browser (I use it a lot) to slowly get used to it, but every time results are so bad I get mad and switch to Google especially for images

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

DDG sold out, very focused "bubble" results that they initally railed against.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Duckduckgo mostly uses Bing for its search results. It also uses yahoo, yandex, and it's own crawler, but for the most part you're getting Bing.

So what you really want to know is if Bing is just as good as Google. If you think it is, you should definitely use ddg because they're the least intrusive.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 6 points 1 day ago

It's much better than Bing.

[–] shaggyb@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I can turn off the horseshit firehose that we call AI, making it far better than google

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[–] FRYD 40 points 2 days ago (7 children)

I’ve been using DDG exclusively for something like 8 years. It works great for regular text search and I use bing for image searches. I really don’t understand the reluctance of people to switch to it. To me, Google has been borderline unusable garbage for a long time.

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[–] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 day ago (10 children)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

...........Oh, sorry.

Hell no. If anything, it's gotten worse.

In their defense, however, it's probably largely not their fault. In my admittedly one-person-sample-size experience, 90% of the searchable Web is either Reddit threads or articles, and with Reddit going officially with Google (meaning DDG doesn't catch as many Reddit threads as they used to), that leaves most of the searchable Web being articles. Because SEO has to ruin everything.

So, it's not really that DDG is shitty (mostly), but that all searches are shitty. Though, with the whole Google-and-Reddit thing, I find Google's results are noticeably less shitty (though still shitty).

[–] shinratdr@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah I really tried with DDG, switched my phone to it for 2 months. I was using !g so often it made the whole thing pointless.

Google sucks, but right now nothing is better. This is why they’re able to push their AI bullshit results so heavily, because just like with YouTube, ultimately there is no real competition.

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[–] venotic@kbin.melroy.org 58 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Not really. If you focus purely on just searching, yeah DDG is decent. But, I find its maps inferior and trying to find answers to some questions can get tedious. DDG I guess is just for people who want guilt-free searching.

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

ddg maps is just a no-frills apple maps.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 16 points 2 days ago (5 children)
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[–] fibojoly 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Have been using it for 8 years now. I never felt the need to switch back honestly. Only Google thing I really love is Maps and that's it.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

Gnome Maps is honestly really good!
Not everything has to be inside your browser.

[–] lucg@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Tried OpenStreetMap? Quality varies by country though

[–] yata 4 points 1 day ago

I switched to it a couple of years ago, with the expectation that I had to resort to google in more complex search instances. But very soon I found out that ddg did the job, and my "alternative" google searches did not turn up anything better, quite the contrary in fact, and I haven't been back since.

[–] JackLSauce@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (2 children)

"just as good"? No, I feel it is (and has been for years) vastly superior but I mostly use it to find documentation or Stack Overflow answers so consistent UI and concise summaries are high priority to me. Take that as you will

I don't think anybody can dethrone Google Maps yet but that's another story

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[–] ceenote@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago (5 children)

My thought always was that DDG was good to set as my default, and if I'm not happy with the results then it's not a big deal to use Google once in awhile.

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[–] jaxxed@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Google kind of went downhill

[–] cantstopthesignal 3 points 1 day ago

Kind of? It went Paul Rudd in Mac and Me.

[–] Tungsten5@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

Wow, it has been some time since I used duck duck go. On my phone I have bing for searches as it is convenient with chatGPT integration (which tbh I only use when coding, for which I have copilot now baked into VScode). On my laptop and work station I use Arc. Its sexy af and really makes a man wonder about himself. I will have to revisit DDG. I do remember enjoying it though only for enhanced privacy. Feature wise it just seemed exactly what chrome was offering

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Google is mostly adverts. Wouldn’t take much to be better than that.

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I just realized the other day that I haven't typed !g in months.

[–] match@pawb.social 15 points 2 days ago (3 children)

i switched from DDG to ecosia because of Lemmy and i gotta say it's even better

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[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I find it's actually better at this point because it just gives results without AI summaries and ads, also I find it's just straight up better at actually finding what you're looking for

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[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago

So far its still less bloated

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