DuckDuckGoReviews 223

If you scroll down the list of reviews here you will notice that the reviews with 1 and 2 stars have the most votes for being helpful. A blind man can see this is a deliberate attack in an attempt to discredit the DuckDuckGo search engine.

This is a free service that does not play the privacy violation games that google does. Also, google is politically liberal in its search results when using it for searching about politicians. I am so sick of the Internet telling me who to vote for. So far I do not find DuckDuckGo doing this.

If you're using Firefox there are themes you can install with the Stylish add-on to make DDG look exactly like Google. We all hate change and prefer the familiar so this helps make the transition easier. My main complaint is the mouse rollover effect where each search result changes color when the mouse is near it is very annoying and makes keyboard scrolling awkward. There should be an option to turn this off. The other thing is that each search result does not have enough of a description or include any available dates to inform me if this is something relevant and recent I want to click on. All the search descriptions only extend out to a quarter of the page where google extends halfway giving more info. I don't want to be forced to click on each search result to see if it's what I'm looking for.
I like DDG and would use it full time if these issues were fixed. I'm completely fed up with Google's intrusive stalking and data mining. I don't want every search I've ever made in my lifetime stored for eternity.
Reviewers talking about DDG hijacking their browsers is just plain rubbish. It sounds like they are newbie computer users with no technical skills and got themselves some malware, or they are trolls. DDG doesn't require any installation or download so how could your browser get hijacked?

I've been using DDG with Firefox for about 2 years. I've been happy with this search engine most of the time and like that it doesn't report my usage but a number of things annoy me. ++

Most annoying: when at a site I've finished with, if I type in a new search in the upper right search slot and hit , I will get the results of a search WITHIN the site I want to leave. The search title for the results is: "(search item) site:(website last viewed)" Example: "edward site: whitepages.com". Here I've wanted to search for "edward" on the Web but DDG constrained the search to within my last site viewed, which here is "whitepages.com". After using (typed item) for decades for a search on the whole internet, this is assbackwards. If I want to do a site search, I will deliberately click the DDG site search symbol (which is a kind of bullseye) in the search slot. Oh, and this setting is NOT in the DDG settings options. I have complained to DDG without response, so I'm saying it here. ++

Next most annoying is setting a search which I know will give many hundreds of results and getting only a dozen or two. I almost feel censored (and the term typed was in no way something to censor). I often have to add more terms to get results. Usually, I want the search engine to help ME by providing too many results and letting me use these results to prompt edits or conditions to my search, as necessary. I did make sure that child protection setting in DDG was off.++

3rd most annoying thing is no hint as to how many results were returned. Sometimes it's very helpful to know that there were only 17 results, total. I might need to widen my scope. Or if there were 108,500 results, then I should narrow. DDG gives no hint to this. Am I looking at all there is when I scroll down 3 pages or a bottomless pit of results (like Facebook)? ++

I'll end there for now. I hope DuckDuckGo will improve as I do like it's look and feel MOST of the time.

These are either badly written paid-for negative reviews or reviews written by people with really poor, and I mean really really poor basic computer skills.

I have never had an issue with DDG hijacking anything I use - it is installed on all my devices - and I have selectively allowed third party cookies with no issue. No spam email, no hacking, and as the first entry is an ad ( as they say) and it is marked as an ad, I have no real problem scrolling past it.

If your computer was hacked, that sucks, but did you install from Duckduckgo or a third party. Is your firewall up to date or did you turn it off to install something? Are you just really crap at keeping you computer secure and forget that it is your responsibility, not the software's, to be up to date?

The quality of the results is better than Google, who, as other reviewers have mentioned, are concentrating on ad revenue rather than quality, and far better than Bing ever was (if you are looking to be paid for writing negative reviews, try Bing, just sayin)

There are companies which pay people to write reviews; that's a fact because I have an acquaintance who did it for some months. I can't think why genuine users would be having trouble uninstalling DDG. I've done it several times with no problem.

DDG has never taken over as default browser and works great with Firefox.

If you want a browser to take over your life and your computer and send you endless pop ups, adverts and unwanted emails and matter of all kinds, use Google. I don't get any of that with DDG.

You may not like the interface or shorter (relevant) responses to queries but if you are happy with a clear, direct, advert and spam free browser, I would recommend trying DDG

I set DuckDuckGo as my homepage. When I later wanted to use a different search provider, DuckDuckGo would not allow it. Every normal avenue I attempted was prevented, and DuckDuckGo remained stubbornly my search provider. I finally did a system restore to get rid of this. I was hoping to have three different search providers, to use for different needs. But now I'm afraid of your product. Something very wrong happened. I am not the only guy who has had a problem. Bad duck.

Two main reasons I love DuckDuckGo:

1. Bang shortcuts - for example, typing "! Images ducks" directs you to a Google Image Search for ducks; "! Yt ducks" gives you YouTube results, "! Wiki" gives you a Wikipedia page, etc. It saves you from having to navigate to a website, load its homepage, and type in the search bar.

2. No tracking - Google, Yahoo! And Bing track you all the time to give you "personalized" search results, not to mention using your IP address to generate results based on your location. DuckDuckGo gives you results relevant only to the keywords you search for.

Granted their search algorithm isn't as advanced as Google for complex queries.

My Mac desktop with Mavericks has two accounts, Admin and Secondary. I found DuckDuckGo at Apple's extensions page, installed DuckDuck Go in the Admin account and it duplicated itself in the secondary account. Search results are commercialized and simplistic. It hides from all computer searches and I cannot uninstall it. All instructions for removal that I found, even at DuckDuckGo site, do not work. I must conclude from this that Apple and DuckDuckGo are both criminal.

Did a test search for "least expensive voice over programs." DuckDuckGo went straight to "cell phones". A quick comparison with Google confirmed that DuckDuckGo is a waste of time.

DuckDuckGo promote Scam websites to the top of their search lists, just like the others! I thought they were an ethical business, but found out to my loss (when I trusted their link) to buy a Rod Licence. They promoted a direct link into this scam website, which had the Environment Agency name on it, without any mention of additional fees etc.
Is there ANY search engines you can trust, now? I think not, they are all morally corrupt.