Some surprising things about DuckDuckGo
gabrielweinberg.com85 points by ArmageddonIt 7 hours ago
85 points by ArmageddonIt 7 hours ago
we don’t censor search results
A surprising fact I /do/ know about DDG: they don't update bang searches anymore, which was one of my favorite differentiators. This feature adds a lot of utility to DDG as a browser default search engine.
You can search "!w Gabriel Weinberg" and it will open the Wikipedia article because of the leading exclamation mark and w. If a site changes their search url, you can submit the precise new pattern they should use for a redirect. If a new service pops up, you can use the same form to request a new search prefix. These form submissions could give someone at DDG an easy interface to verify quickly and approve or reject them.
These form submissions get ignored and have been for years at this point.
> You can search "!w Gabriel Weinberg" and it will open the Wikipedia article because of the leading exclamation mark and w
Just for anyone else who isn’t aware, the bang commands can be anywhere in the search string, and need not necessarily be at the beginning.
All these queries will take you to Wikipedia for the term:
"!w Gabriel Weinberg"
"Gabriel !w Weinberg"
"Gabriel Weinberg !w"
Many a times when I find the default DuckDuckGo search results inadequate and want to go to Google search, I just put a “!g” as a separate term anywhere within the search string and hit enter. This is especially useful on mobile where the search string may be a lot longer than the visible text box and I can’t be bothered to move the cursor.
A primary problem is we get overwhelingly spammed with submissions. They are not completely ignored. We have maintainers, but as a relatively small team given the surface area of what we're working on, they have been de-prioritized. That said, I think some better tooling could probably get be put in place at this point to help us.
Here's two that I would like to propose:
!gw - Google web-only search (&udm=14) - https://udm14.com
!kagi - Your best competitor. I like to switch back and forth and compare. They have !ddg which goes to you, so it's only fair.
(I have submitted these, I think more than once, but no response.)
btw - I enjoyed collaborating with you years ago to hack a way to get DDG working in Safari, before it was official. If I recall, you still had servers running in your basement at the time. I was really impressed with the lengths you were willing to go to make this work.
DDG now enjoys a privileged position as one of only five selectable search engines in Safari, which makes it a priceless gateway of sorts in a browser that is otherwise extremely locked-down and hostile to user customization. This is one reason why I think the bangs are really important.
I ended up just putting together my own bang provider (and stole the snaps feature from Kagi).
Are you aware of Firefox's search keyword feature? You can bookmark the URL of a web site's search result page, replace the search text query parameter with %s, and enter a keyword in the bookmark details. From then on, entering that keyword followed by some new text in the address bar will perform the new search.
You can choose keywords that don't start with !, so typing them is easier than using Duck Duck Go's bang feature.
I use this a lot, but the problem with this, that still hasn't been fixed after all these years, is if you have 2 or more keyboard layouts, you can't make more than one bookmark pointing to the same URL with different search prefixes.
So if, for example, you wanted to make
> x <search_term>
and
> y <search_term>
both work the same, x and y being letters from 2 different alphabets but mapped to the same keys, you couldn't, without some JavaScript. If you just added those 2 keywords, even if you manually edited or created your bookmarks, one bookmark would override the other and the other would appear empty with no keyword.
The workaround I found was using a bookmark with this code in it (instead of the usual URL):
javascript:(function(){var keywords="%s";var mainURL="https://<URL>/";var searchURL="https://<URL>/<params>-"+keywords;if(keywords==""||keywords=="%"+"s"){window.location=mainURL}else{window.location=searchURL}})();
Where https://<URL>/<params> is something like https://example.org/search/q-.
It's slower and sometimes doesn't work if you type "y" and then the query too fast, especially if you're pasting the query. So sometimes it doesn't work and searches with the browser's default search engine for "y <query>".
You can also just right-click on a text field and select "Add Search Engine" and it creates it for you, no need to manually edit URLs
> These form submissions get ignored and have been for years at this point.
Hmm, when I added !mt more than a decade ago it went live almost immediately...
This functionality has always been available in Firefox: Just add a keyword to a bookmark.
The reason I don’t use DuckDuckGo is that when you sell keyword based ads on your platform, it really isn’t private. If you’ve ever worked with keyword based ads, they might be anonymous, but anything you are searching is showing up somewhere to some third party.
I really like Kagi, becuase I can pay for the search and my searches aren’t being leaked to third parties.
Ads are optoinal and private; you can turn ads off in the settings if you want. Per our privacy policy: "Viewing ads on DuckDuckGo Search is anonymous, like the rest of our search results (as described above)." More info at https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ads-by-....
One thing not mentioned in TFA but I came across following the 'we're hiring' link to the Back-end Engineer role. They use PERL (v5). That certainly surprised me!
I don't like the current AI trends much, but I've found duck.ai the best way to experiment with AI. I've had mixed results with DDG search and the site is sometimes slow to load.
I love that duck.ai provides a more private way to use different smaller and medium (?) scale LLMs.
I don’t like the duck.ai interface much (choosing a different LLM is not easy once you’re already in a conversation), but I use it a lot more than I use the DuckDuckGo search engine (the results from the latter aren’t great).
Just like with DuckDuckGo search, where I start a search and then use the !g bang command to go to Google for better results if needed, I try duck.ai and then move to ChatGPT (without any account) when even the best models in duck.ai aren’t good enough.
For most simpler queries though — where I’m just looking to learn a bit about something as opposed to finding a solution for a specific (more complex) question or problem — duck.ai with its GPT 5 models are more than adequate (even the 4o mini is fine).
Your comment here made me go and try it. It's quite polished and smooth for an ai ux. I'll have to use it more for quick queries.
I went to DDG to get away from all the Google AI stuff being shoved down my throat.
While it seems DDG is on the same path of AI / chat centric search UX, at least they allow me to turn off all that stuff. But... search has gotten so bad in general, DDG is having the same results issue I had on Google. I don't see DDG as a player in the Ai space so I think my usage will only decrease as search result quality continues to decrease.
I am hopeful in the long run that search index / results will become better as the core UX for most people becomes chat, search result pages become low human traffic (meaning ads are worthless), and search becomes one of many research tools for to the agents
If you don't like all the fluff on the results page, DDG provides two alternative interfaces [0] [1] with much simpler layouts.
cool, but they block curl requests with an iframe and such
I would pay DDG if they gave me an API for search, ideally pay-per-request. I'm not paying them for Ai, I can get that much better elsewhere
IIRC the reason they don't (can't?) provide a search API directly is because they're pulling from other search sources, e.g. Bing, and can't provide an API without licence violations.
Agreed that a DDG API would be pretty great, though.
You might like Kagi. The ability to upvote/downvote/block domains completely transforms the product.
It looks like just another search engine trening towards Ai UX. Do they have an API?
I'm now looking for APIs to integrate with my custom / personal agent setup. I'm done outsourcing my UX to Big Ai/Tech. I don't think we should repeat the same mistakes of outsource a core human/digital UX to Big Ai/Tech. We (HNers) complain so much about all the bad stuff the prior iterations (social media, saas out the wazoo), are we going to repeat it again by defaulting to whatever they give us, misaligned incentives and all?
They have an API but they're pretty costly(search is actually pretty costly).
The slow speed at which DuckDuckGo loads/responds to searches from Asia is quite apparent. I don't know if supporting IPV6 would improve this (will they?), but I see faster results from almost every search engine compared to DDG, which is unfortunate.
Firstly, Thank you to the entire DuckDuckGo team. DuckDuckGo is the browser I use most all the time. Any product that stops or reduces tracking and surveillance capitalism, I am happy to use and support.
Do you have plans to build an email service without the tracking? Would love to hear thoughts about this. There may be users willing to pay a small monthly fee for this.
We offer Email Protection: https://duckduckgo.com/email
It isn't full email, but removes trackers in your email before it gets sent to you, which is the most privacy-invasive part of email. More info at https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/email-protectio... and
I understand that having the DDG browser on Linux is difficult. It would be great if there was a way to just sync bookmarks and passwords using the browser extension for other browsers.
I use DDG browser for work and mobile and Firefox on Guix.
This was an interesting read. I'm surprised by the market share statistics especially. It feels higher than my lived experience would suggest, but I am likely missing context on broader population usage.
I did not know you can actually find good results with DDG. :>
All search engines got so much worse in the last years - it is so sad. We lost some of our knowledge that way.
This already started before AI, but AI further reduces the quality now.
DDG is great for literal searches. You can use !g for more exploratory stuff where google tries to guess what you want instead
They've never allowed a third-party to audit the "privacy" inside their code/platform that is claimed.
Suspicious as heck to have enough money for supporting +300 employees plus all other operating costs without an obvious money cow for those costs.
Rather use Qwant, Brave or even Ecosia.
We actually have, as part of https://natlawreview.com/article/nad-examines-privacy-statem... "The NAD found the claims supported by the evidence which included a third-party expert confirming that the company’s measures (encryption, tracker blocking, and private searches) protect against the three largest categories of personal data collectors."
In terms of money, as the article notes we have 3% of U.S. search market share. That's a lot if you consider how much Google makes. Now, in part because of our search privacy, we make way way less, but it is still enough to be profitable. That said, that means we could be way way more profitable if we tracked people, which we don't.
I found it interesting that they have an article saying "we don't censor search results".
Who is "we"? Don't they get their results from Bing?
We = DuckDuckGo. As the article notes, we are increasingly relying on our own search technology. For example, our Search Assist (our version of AI overviews), local results (maps, business listings, etc.), knowledge graph stuff (wikipedia, answers, etc.) don't come from Bing. That said, if Bing happens to removes something, we can add it back, which we do. We do not censor anything ouselves.
But DuckDuckGo does censor search results, if DMCA takedown requests are countered as censorship (which they should be because the system is abused).
Eg, DDG always fail the "watch (specific movie or tv show) online" search query test. Many other search engines like Bing and Google also fail. It's a quick censorship influence test as DMCA takedown requests have a clear track-record of being abused.
One search engine that succeeds is Russia's Yandex. I'm sure they censor plenty of things (eg, material sensitive to Russia), but that censorship set may not intersect with the Google, Bing and DDG sets.
I use the DDG browser about 80% of the time. Duck.ai is an interesting product, like Proton’s AI chatbot - both privacy preserving.
Wow. You launched in 2008? Congratulations!!! 17 years, privately owned, in the business of search which is tough because google just dominates. I wish you another 17 years bro. DuckDuckGo is my primary search now.
DDG bangs is a nice feature. But feels neglected. No way to see a changelog and lots of old broken bangs. There is a form to submit new bangs suggestions but unclear if anyone reads the submissions or how the acceptance process works. No forum or other channel where users can discuss or upvote suggestions for new or changed bangs.
We do, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46259412 -- that said, I take the point and will circle up with the team.
I just hope you guys are sincere and not doing shady things to people who are trusting you. Your mission is noble, I really hope you keep succeeding.
I don't think Google, Bing, or anyone else plan to syndicate their AI results the way they did their search results, so DuckDuckGo will go from being unnecessary to obsolete.
duck.ai is nice
Ever since I started getting captcha prompts on DDG I had to stop using it (same for google).
I get so frustrated with the damn "are you a human" checks for Google search. My default search tool from Brave. I had gotten in the habit of searching quickly for something while reading a web page, etc. Worked find for years. Now some days I get results directly. Many days, though, I am getting 2-3-4 prompts. Getting pretty used to jumping over to Edge to do my searches now. On Starlink in a rural spot. Not sure why Google has flagged me. Do not care I guess. Should probably set my Brave default to Bing, but I do find Google's AI summaries helpful. Just not enough to do a bunch of "find the bicycle" "find the bus" "find the traffic light" captchas. One less Google search customer is not a concern of theirs methinks.
Human traffic really shouldn't be seeing that -- if you want to email me I can try to sort it out to improve our systems.
I see it occasionally. I haven't investigated it properly, but I suspect it's either the outdated version of Safari Technology Preview I use on an old Mac with an old version of macOS, or it might be NordVPN or perhaps a specific one of their endpoints that triggers it.
Brave search is far better. It does it's own indexing which is better than google or bings, and lets you up rank or down rank websites without having to set up an account
“We don’t censor results”… well…
Either that is completely bullshit, or it’s technically-bullshit.
1. They don’t have to censor because their sources censor for them. “Oh we’re just an aggregator of censored results” doesn’t mean “this is an uncensored search engine” like the claim would have you believe.
2. Proof of this is evident in by comparing Russian yandex.com, my now go to for anything related to hacking, pirated anything, topics of censorship or controversial discussion, even “legit” but rarer information like how to train or use X or Y AI model, etc. The domains that appear on yandex remind me a time gone by. Like image search before Pinterest, unreliable but not sterilized.
3. I use DDG everyday. In the last year or so, I have found myself going to Google, Bing, Brave, Yandex, SearX, and other more than ever. The quality of DDG has for me, unquestionably slipped. I have a strong distaste for Google, and have used them this year more than ever.
They are not uncensored, although maybe they allow that burden to be done for them to keep their nose high in their air on the topic.
However, I fear it may be a moot point as I find myself looking elsewhere often now.
> They don’t have to censor because their sources censor for them.
If the source has not put something on the web... how is anyone supposed to get past that? Or am I misunderstanding your statement?
It's neither, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46259466 I just made.
If you see results missing, I'd be happy to look into them. My email is in my profile.
“We do not censor anything ouselves.”
I mean… that’s exactly my issue. That’s just another way to say “we present censored results”.
To be fair… my real issue is the last year or so the results have been noticeably sub-par for me.
I knew there would be no point discussing a subjective matter like that. So I brought up statement that I found misleading.
We monitor closely and if something is off then we correct it. If you have particular examples in mind right now, please share them with me so I can look into them.
Sounds like their claim was technically-correct and you even acknowledged it... I don't see a problem with DDG itself in this aspect.
Why do you feel that the actions of a search provider(s) should be reflected so negatively and angrily on the aggregator?
You used technically-correct, and I used to technically-bullshit. We can both be right. The difference what he is intending to convey when they say they’re proud their product lacks censorship and is banned in China.
It’s not like anyone can go and see the CCP scoresheet for DDG.
This is a shill piece from the CEO of DuckDuckGo.
It's a blog post by the CEO, on the company's blog. That's completely benign and perfectly acceptable content on HN if the community finds it interesting and can discuss it curiously.
Please don't post like this on HN. It breaks multiple guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I did not submit to this to Hacker News. I wrote it for my audience on my newsletter.
I think you want a different word than "shill", since obviously he's not being deceptive about his association.
Maybe you meant to type "fluff piece"? That could be a matter of opinion.
Brave has a much better AI search than either Google or DuckDuckGo.
