Sure, but just lately DDG started deteriorating for me as well.
Maybe that coincides with another big update they did and didn't tell anyone about it -- looking for certain phrases that describe sex no longer works. A lesbian friend made me aware of that; she recently complained that she can no longer find porn through DDG queries so she started bookmarking various such websites and is going to them directly.
...What is weird is that I tried a few phrases several weeks ago and they didn't work but I just tried a few right now again and they did work this time. Strange. But there are still a few that absolutely don't work.
> Sure, but just lately DDG started deteriorating for me as well.
Might be an issue with one or more of their backends censoring certain phrases in a sporadic fashion. While they do have their own crawler,[1] I don't think it has a significant effect on the breadth or accuracy of their results.
yes, DDG & most non-Google engines are Bing under hood - easy way to check this is pairwise image searches on say Bing and DDG in anonymous browser sessions
Startpage one of few that's actually Google under the hood; we do mix of Bing, Google, and our own scraping at breezethat.com (founder here)
True, it steps on Bing is what I think people said.
And yeah I too am not hyped for it but it still does serve a real need -- to be less ad-oriented than Google. But I guess it's time to start looking around.
Maybe that coincides with another big update they did and didn't tell anyone about it -- looking for certain phrases that describe sex no longer works. A lesbian friend made me aware of that; she recently complained that she can no longer find porn through DDG queries so she started bookmarking various such websites and is going to them directly.
...What is weird is that I tried a few phrases several weeks ago and they didn't work but I just tried a few right now again and they did work this time. Strange. But there are still a few that absolutely don't work.