is it just me, or has duckduckgo's search become really shit out of nowhere?

Yeah, I've been having poor results with duckduckgo as well. idk what's up with that, but it's a pain.

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HopefulFrog said:

Yeah, unfortunately, Google regularly returns much higher quality results than Duckduckgo for the same search query, in my experience. Apparently privacy comes at a cost.

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For me google is just full of shitty paid results that are never helpful. That, and those weird blogspot or smth websites with nothing but keywords.

DDG is based off of Bing, so that might have something to do with it.

always have been imho

Never ever used DDG, but regarding reverse-image searching, this site here is quite good, I use it all the time
Tho, out of the various ones used there, like, sauce-nao and google images seem to get the better results most of the time
https://iqdb.org/

DarkCoffe64 said:

Never ever used DDG, but regarding reverse-image searching, this site here is quite good, I use it all the time
Tho, out of the various ones used there, like, sauce-nao and google images seem to get the better results most of the time
https://iqdb.org/

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funnily enough that website was linked in the thread about image searching that i was looking for

It's been going on for me for just over a month now, it's become pretty useless at this point.

If it's warez related I find using Yandex and (believe it or not) AOL search.

Google and DDG have gone to complete shit!

I use Startpage. It's originally a Dutch search engine (though completely English) and is even better than DuckDuckGo. It doesn't use any data at all, while DuckDuckGo still collects a little.

DuckDuckGo (and other minor search engines like Bing) should have been pulled out a while ago. We already have Google, and we know nothing will replace it.
In fact, Google is the ONLY search engine I use.

It's not just you, it gets pretty frustrating while troubleshooting to have to put !g at the end of every search to get any helpful results (And then sometimes even Google doesn't have what I need). Before recently, it's been pretty reliable.

It's always been kind of shit. The results aren't nearly as good as Google, but they're usually good enough. Google is my backup.
Don't think they've gotten any worse.

SDA said:

DuckDuckGo (and other minor search engines like Bing) should have been pulled out a while ago. We already have Google, and we know nothing will replace it.
In fact, Google is the ONLY search engine I use.

Click to expand...

Monopoly is bad. It stifles innovation, and allows the company to do whatever they like to their users/customers.
That, and do you really want Google to have even more of everyone's data? There is a need for privacy-centric alternatives to giants like Google.

SDA said:

DuckDuckGo (and other minor search engines like Bing) should have been pulled out a while ago. We already have Google, and we know nothing will replace it.
In fact, Google is the ONLY search engine I use.

Click to expand...

I use Bing frequently and it seldom fails. Image search is hit or miss, though.

I use Google to random searches to mess the algorithm.
Something like "snot tarmac pumping device".

The Real Jdbye said:

That, and do you really want Google to have even more of everyone's data? There is a need for privacy-centric alternatives to giants like Google.

Click to expand...

YES, I want to. Don't even try to blame me for my decision.

coming back online just to say this is probs why

Ok, this might explain an awful lot... https://torrentfreak.com/duckduckgo...nd-youtube-dl-from-its-search-results-220415/

DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results​

Privacy-centered search engine DuckDuckGo has completely removed the search results for many popular pirates sites including The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and Fmovies. Several YouTube ripping services have disappeared, too and even the homepage of the open-source software youtube-mp3 is unfindable.

Launched in 2008, search engine DuckDuckGo is a go-to service for Internet users who value their privacy.
Unlike many competitors, the site doesn’t keep a record of users’ IP addresses or other sensitive information.
In recent years, the site also stood out by returning cleaner results than competitors such as Google, which actively alters its algorithms to downrank pirate sites. At one point, Google even pointed users to DuckDuckGo when they searched for Pirate Bay proxies.

DuckDuckGo Fears Liability​

The privacy-focused search engine is not immune to potential copyright issues, however. This first became apparent when it removed several search shortcuts for ‘pirate’ sites. These “bangs”, as they are called, were seen as a potential copyright infringement liability.
“We operate globally, as do bangs, and products that actively facilitate interaction with illegal content can have us and our employees face significant legal liability, and jeopardizing the entire service,” DuckDuckBang’s Tagawa explained.
DuckDuckGo ended up removing roughly 2,000 bangs for popular sites including The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and RARBG. At the time, the search engine stressed that these sites were still listed in search results. However, that appears to have changed now.