The Verge published this spam article about the “best printers of 2024” to demonstrate how terrible Google’s search results are. It now appears as the top non-sponsored post if you search “best printer” on Google.

I love a good, informative troll.

  • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.onlineEnglish
    6214·
    6 months ago

    My DDG searches have been absolute garbage for the past few months. About 75% of the time I have to re-search my keywords on Google to actually get a relevant result.

    It’s bad enough that I’m about to switch back to Google.

    • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
      44·
      6 months ago

      That’s not been my experience. I’ve been using DDG for years, and when I first switched I would occasionally have to go find something on Google instead. That slowly fell off as the years went by because going to Google and getting better search results became rarer and rarer. It’s to the point now where I don’t even do it, unless I need to look at something on street view.

      • makyo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        23·
        6 months ago

        I second this, this has been my experience exactly. It’s gotten so bad that not only do I not need the Google fallback, but I’m starting to feel like the DDG results are better than the Google ones in the first place.

        • Opisek@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          Better than Google now, but still not better than Google back then. It my experience at least.

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      6 months ago

      It depends on what your searching. For me programming questions are way better on google.

      Also searching obvious questions like a country’s population, google still does its job there too.

    • Squizzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 months ago

      I deleted their app and moved search engines, they got shit quick. So bad at their main usp. I was constantly fed hyper local results, local even with location off. And dont get me started on how bad it was for porn.

    • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.worldEnglish
      63·
      6 months ago

      Try Startpage. I have just started using it so I can’t tell you how it compares. I also need to look up who owns it. But I have been told it has the same privacy qualities of DDG.

      • frankgrimeszz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        6 months ago

        I used to like it, but there was one incident where it fed me links to phishing sites. Like all the results were malicious. I suspect they had an internal breach or the session was somehow hijacked. That was years ago, but it made me wary. It’s usually okay.

        • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          Good to know I haven’t fully switched yet. I am definitely going to look more closely at its parents company and where it has servers.

      • 24_at_the_withers@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        Funny. I primarily used Startpage for the last few years, but have had increasing problems with them providing bad/irrelevant results and frequently straight-up blocking my IP or requiring completion of a CAPTCHA before providing results. I switched to DDG, which has been working pretty well, and seems much better to me than it had when trying it a few years ago.