Sidenote: I use duckduckgo for Safari search. I saw an ad on twitter for something that I searched in a private window of Safari. Not sure whose fault that is, but it really disturbed me.
My "shorthand" address missed my house by about 5 miles, and the precise mailing address (like I'd use on an envelope) brought up a steakhouse about 8 miles away. My company name dropped me in Saudi Arabia, and the exact address dropped me in New York (I'm in Minnesota).
It's the same issue I have with Open Street Maps, if you're not in SF/NYC/Chi they're damn near useless. OSM at least gets me to the correct block, although it's still off by about 500 feet.
Edit: Oh boy, this is like Cuil again. Grand Canyon brings up a mall in Israel, Burj Khalifa is somehow underwater, Eifel Tower brings up Las Vegas, Roman Colosseum some residential street in Houston. Statue of Liberty and Taj Mahal are the only two landmarks I tried it got correct. I get it's a "beta", but ouch. If you can't get addresses or major landmarks correct this shouldn't even be public facing yet.
I think for the Americans, contributing data feels too much like work which would violate their idea of letting the free market do its thing. Where would the world go if people just did things for free? Same as with self check-outs, you ain't gonna do that work yourself if you're not getting a discount!
To be fair, contributing to OSM is more work in America. You have to drive every where and you technically aren't allowed to use other maps as a source (I don't know if that's ever followed though)
There are ways to track besides the search engine. The website you landed on might have done it. Not saying it wasn't ddg, but that there are many possibilities (and what I think is a major part of the problem)
Sidenote: I use duckduckgo for Safari search. I saw an ad on twitter for something that I searched in a private window of Safari. Not sure whose fault that is, but it really disturbed me.