In the last couple of months I have noticed an increasing trend of supplying me search results that are completely unrelated to the current query and tie back to my location or previous searches. I can say this with a high degree of certainty this is without a doubt beyond the 100th instance this has happened.
My browser is configured against tracking and fingerprinting (in fact all my devices are) which would make it fairly difficult to retain any data unless they are profiling me.
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It does though? Right under the search bar there should be a switch bar to turn on localized search, and a dropdown to pick different location.
Or is it itself location locked?
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It is not accidental, they localize searches
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On DDG I can type in an exact company or product name and not get a proper result, it’s crazy. Google seems to find the stuff no problem, it’s really quite frustrating when the search engine isn’t even capable of basic queries.
I’ve also noticed that if you do a search, click a result, then hit back to go back to the results they manipulate the results in some weird way so they’re not the exact same results you got the first time. Infuriating
Yeah I hate that. Now all results have to be opened in new tabs just in case.
Yes! I thought I was losing my mind. I was like “I swear this was the third result but now it’s the 5th? Eh, maybe it was the 5th.”
I’d bet that’s more bug than feature. Like they’re trying to avoid SEO providing any consistent ordering to be gamed.
Still a pain in the ass either way. Vindication for being a complete tab whore.
I get the same shit at work where I can’t use a VPN: like 7-8 relevant results then basically just ads for local businesses after that.
great. i finally get off google and now duckduckgo is bad. i hate the internet.
The only time I use ddg is to find conspiracy sites to add to the blocklist I maintain. All the trash rises to the top in that search engine. It’s rubbish.
I feel like ddg has never had good search results
It has been doing this shit for a while. Returning results based on just one key word out of many keywords from my query.
Lately they have been even ignoring the restrictive +“keyword” syntax and returning whatever shit just so they won’t admit their (or Microsoft’s indexer) is shit
Yes, I have the same issue with DDG for something like a year now. I can’t use it anymore for basic searches, I feel like the bing api they are using is getting worse and worse.
Same here. Every time I ditch Google and go to ddg, I just laugh how irrelevant all the results are and I continue feeding Google with personal data and telemetry and whatnot.
It is true that even Google’s results feel much worse than before but it’s still significantly better than ddg.
Try kagi.com
I you have to pay for it, but t’s amazing
Thanks for mentioning Kagi! I’ve been looking for some Google/DDG replacement but every single one I’ve tried had some sort of dealbreaking drawback for me. Google collects all my data and heavily filters my results, DDG provides dogshit results most of the time I don’t even bother using it, Startpage is awfully slow, and I didn’t even get to understand what Searx is as looking for it led me to some random ugly pages.
Subbed for 1 year 10 bucks plan. Works super-fast on mobile too. Hell yeah!
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My browser (Firefox) is configured the same way.
No issues with your search term here. I think you have gremlins.
I use DDG, tho’ it’s with a VPN. And it seems to work just fine. shrug
I have still the same good results in ddg, no matter what device or browser. I have noticed that they have some location bias when ddg (and any other search engine i have tried) has non good results globaly but good resulta locally.
Still better then anything i have tested. Just because there are minor anomalies i will stick with them.
