13/09/26 22:05
About a week ago, I switched my primary search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo. Aside from briefly using AskJeeves (RIP) when I first got online, I've been using Google for basically my entire life, as I never found other search engine's results to be as good. I don't think the competition has gotten much better, but Google has gotten so much worse that the others are now better by comparison.
The final straw for me was hearing Google is now replacing URLs in search results with their own tracking redirects. This means you can't see where the link actually goes, you can't right-click > copy link and get a clean URL, and of course Google is ever-more-accurately tracking every click.
I actually used this as an example of link tracking in this comment on HackerNews back in 2021. At the time I never thought they'd actually do it.
The other issue is how cluttered the Google search results page has gotten. To show what I mean, here's how DDG looks with my current settings:
For contrast, here's Google:
The Google page is "fine", but cluttered with AI slop, questions, excerpts, etc. At normal (100%) zoom, only 3 actual results fit in the browser window, which is 1440p tall! The DDG page is just a small Wikipedia excerpt, a couple of search recommendations, and a clean list of links. That's all I want.
The real power of DDG is the customisability. In the settings you can change the appearance, including custom fonts,colour schemes, URL format, snippet length, and much more. Importantly, you can disable all the AI slop and extra excerpts. They even have a dedicated no-AI version - which tries to filter out AI-generated images too. That last feature is available as a setting on the regular site too, though I leave it disabled (I'm not doing much image searching anyway).
I could go on, so I will. There's settings to turn off ads and self-promo widgets - a feature I have literally never seen before in my life. I mean, I use an adblocker anyway (as everyone should), but come on - just turning off ads for free! It boggles the mind (in a good way). You can also disable infinite scroll and other dark patterns, with the granularity to have different behaviour for web and image results.
The one setting I would like to see is to change the number of results per page, but with so much other good stuff on offer, I can forgive this omission.
Compared to how hostile most of the web is, DDG is a much-needed breath of fresh air. It's an inspiring reminder that this is how things can be. I know it's possible to get nearly the same results on Google with extensions and a bit of work, and other search engines offer similar features and customisation. However, DDG just offers them up for free, and since it saves settings in a cookie, you don't even need an account. It's this attitude of offering a good service with no nonsense that I appreciate.
As for the quality of the search results... it's complex to judge. I don't think DDG's index is quite as good as Google's. However, it's quicker to review the results because the page is cleaner, and you can block sites from results, so in terms of useability it's better. It's not as good as Google was in its prime around 2008-2012, but neither is anyone else. And if there's a specific query that only Google can handle satisfactorily, you can just use the !google search operator to proxy their results (or several others) anyway.
I was a bit skeptical of how DDG is profitable, since they aren't as enshittified as every other big online service. Turns out, they do include affiliate links in some search results. This sounds bad, but they're at least limited to shopping searches and are non-tracking, unlike every other search engine which is doing the same thing anyway. On top of that, there's a paid tier if you have an account. I'm not sure what further features they could offer really, I already have everything I want without even needing a free account? It's not perfect, but few things are.
I'm sorry if this post reads too much like an Ad for DuckDuckGo. It's intended as a recommendation or review from a fellow human. If you're interested in a search engine that's more small/indie web focused, I can recommend Marginalia, which curates its own index and prioritizes non-commercial content. Or there's bubbles.town which is like HackerNews for blog posts.