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Using Google whilst Duck Duck Go is down. How long has Google been this bad? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 months ago by makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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So ddg is down, so I visit Google. It's been some years.

I just can't believe how poor it's results are, and how it's trying to suggest things it think I might also want (and failing miserably).

I just assumed ddg would be the lesser, but I use it for privacy. Turns out I'm wrong.

How long has Google been this bad?

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[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 37 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I just can’t believe how poor it’s results are

Interesting, as the incredibly poor results are why I am still not using DDG. It's like a worse Bing, and Bing is already terrible.

You are btw correct that Google results have gotten worse. There were studies run that confirmed this. The very same studies found that Bing (and by extension ~all third-party engines) have also gotten worse, and faster so than Google. In other words, search as a whole has gone to shit, which anecdotally matches up with my repeated attempts to swap to DDG every 6-12 months that just result in learning to add !g to every single search, so I might as well skip doing that.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Your take matches my experience perfectly. I always am baffled when people say Google is worse than ddg. I always wanted to use ddg instead, but try as I might, on a literal daily basis, at least 30% ddg results are trash and I have to switch to Google to find whatever I am looking for

[–] ayaya@lemdro.id 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's my experience as well. Now I use a SearXNG instance with Google as the only source and it works well I'd say roughly 97% of the time.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

I am going to try to set this up. People keep mentioning it

[–] jpeps@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

I'm pretty sure it's just trendy to call Google search shit, and to criticise the top product. I'm also pretty sure DDG is just uses Bing search under the hood (plus it's privacy features), so I always thought these complaints were quite funny. The ads on Google are probably the most aggressive though, which IMO is the worst part.