@lcamtuf what kind of settings are you using to get such a clean page? i use ddg because google's search results are usually visual chaos for me, but i agree google's results are better

@jmsdnns @lcamtuf this is what it looks like by default? Probably an ad-blocker like ublock origin?

@lcamtuf
I've found ddg has gotten much worse over the past year or so. I usually search there first, then add !g if I don't find what I want.. I rarely use Bing directly.

Ddg does seem to mostly respect quoted or plussed terms/phrases, which Google hasn't done for years.

@lcamtuf I have the same experience as you, just want to note that this likely has to do with handling verbatim queries (as shown by your example). Last time I checked Google had proper support for this (although hidden), while other like DDG didn't. Different experiences may be explained how specific individual people are with their queries/how much they rely on the engine to guide them.

@lcamtuf oh interesting! I thought that was a bug that only hit me, but for you it also seems that all links in bing's results have already been visited.

Did a designer really decide "purple looks better, let's use that for all links instead of blue??"

@lcamtuf oh wow!

I did the following:
1. open private window,
2. search bar "Your fight's on the home front", search on bing
3. click on Third link (which *was* a relevant result!)

4. close private window

5. repeat 1.–2.
6. now, formerly third is first result, rest seems to be the same
7. click further down on irrelevant BBC link

8. close private window

9. repeat 1.–2.

This time, results in *wildly* different order, completely irrelevant, big "people also ask" (I didn't ask anything??) box

@lcamtuf
I tried duplicating your search on ddg, and got almost no results. The same search on Bing was mostly the same as your screenshot, so not sure what's up with ddg.

@funkylab @lcamtuf
One thing I do hate about ddg:
Do a search
Click a result. While it's loading, notice the next result is better
Hit Back
That next result is gone and the results order is different.

@lcamtuf
Interesting. Ddg gives no results, Bing gives irrelevant results. I guess ddg queries Bing in a way that enforces quotes?

@lcamtuf antidotally I’ve found bing/ddg has better image search. I found it fairly useless for anything technical. I switched to kagi and I’m happy with that. (No specific examples for me since I don’t want to bother with either anymore)

@lcamtuf I often search for SHA-256 hashes. While Google used to be very good for this, these days it just returns 0 results or random garbage. DDG OTOH has a better chance of finding the hash.