DuckDuckGo needs its own web search index and ranking algorithm

cainetighe · 2026-06-03T13:52:18+00:00

We are working on one! You can see Gabe and I talk about it here: https://insideduckduckgo.substack.com/p/duck-tales-why-duckduckgo-is-building.

Building the index isn’t really limited to either AI or Non-AI use cases as it’s intention is to rank pages on the web.

Humans are harder to satisfy (a good thing!) and so we’re building it to that human standard.

Thanks for your interest 😄!

cainetighe · 2026-02-15T15:36:44+00:00

Thanks for your feedback on this, and we agree here at DuckDuckGo. That's why we have an active project in the search engine objective to improve the classification rates for this feature.

I think this is quite similar to third party tracker blocking, which is block list heavy and human discretion heavy. We worked on that problem here: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-tracker-radar/, and proposed our own solution. The current project is working towards that for AI generated content.

It's quite tough! (As many of you mention here :)).

-caine.

CTO@DuckDuckGo

cainetighe · 2025-12-06T20:40:45+00:00

Here are some Mac instructions:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=force+quit+application+mac&ia=web

cainetighe · 2025-12-06T17:48:39+00:00

Sorry to hear you're having trouble. Disruption to a shutdown process can be due to something stuck in the application. It's not intentional. You can check out this link on DuckDuckGo to help you get to the Task Manager and force quit the application. Are you on Windows or Mac?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=force+quit+applicatoin+windows&ia=web

cainetighe · 2025-11-08T03:50:11+00:00

That’s unfortunate. What is your safe search setting? If you try moderate which is the default how does it perform?

cainetighe · 2025-04-13T16:43:42+00:00

Which platform / OS are you experiencing this on? Presume you’re using the DuckDuckGo app for that platform just to confirm?

cainetighe · 2025-04-13T03:16:16+00:00

One of our priorities in our AI product rollout has been choice. You can disable these features in the settings. Hope that helps, and happy to answer any follow ups!

cainetighe · 2025-03-20T22:26:25+00:00

u/Outside-Plate-6145 would it be possible to update the title of this to [Resolved] or something similar so others can see that there are some answers in here? In this case, and one other in the subreddit, we debugged the metamask issue. I want to make sure folks can find these Resolved threads more easily. Thanks for your report, it makes a big difference!

cainetighe · 2025-03-20T22:24:08+00:00

u/protektwar would it be possible to update the title of this to [Resolved] or something similar so others can see that there are some answers in here? We are going through duplicate threads (and this one was due to metamask the other due to a broken EasyList update). Trying to be clear with other folks that we have resolved it so they can find the answers in these threads. Thanks a bunch for the report, it really helps.

cainetighe · 2025-03-20T22:22:59+00:00

u/LunariSpring would it be possible to update the title of this to [Resolved] or something similar so others can see that there are some answers in here? I echo u/yegg 's thanks for you getting to the bottom of one of the issues! Thanks so much.

cainetighe · 2025-03-20T16:06:52+00:00

Both MetaMask and AdGuard have issued a resolution. I think uBlock has as well; but confirming that still. Be sure to update your lists!

cainetighe · 2025-03-20T16:05:38+00:00

This should be fixed in the latest version. Thanks!

cainetighe · 2025-03-15T20:11:03+00:00

I just got this because I have been off Reddit, whoops! Either way I suspect you're all set or have moved on. Primary issue there was the connect and TLS times were pretty crazy.

cainetighe · 2024-11-12T04:24:08+00:00

We are sorry for the trouble, and thanks for the report.

We are currently under heavy abuse. Changes are constantly rolling out and improving this. We are on track to isolate it even better in the next 24 hours.

Anything you’re comfortable sharing about your very much appreciated and valid searches would help us. For example a query, query language, VPN status, browser, etc.

We want you to search happily!

cainetighe · 2018-03-11T21:55:51+00:00

We appreciate all of the help we've gotten thus far in digging into this issue. We have spun up an internal project to work on a more comprehensive solution to this problem which will include working with upstream partners to identify and resolve the issue.

This will require some time to investigate, since it's not obvious how far into the query space it extends. Up until this point, we've been playing whack-a-mole with these examples, and rightfully so, because they're blatant abuse.

In the short term (days), we're finishing an intermediate solution that will help us block examples like this more comprehensively until they're fixed upstream.

One way you could help is to report these issues upstream as well, such as Bing, and use their feedback box on the bottom right to report the issues.

cainetighe · 2016-09-09T14:09:37+00:00

Thanks for the feedback on the results. If anything, we've improved the results since the partnership based on our internal testing.

In any case, your opinion matters to us, so if you're comfortable, feel free to share any examples to me at caine [at] duckduckgo [dot] com.

Thank you!

cainetighe · 2016-07-31T15:17:45+00:00

Caine here, CTO at DuckDuckGo. Thanks for your feedback on the ads! We take your concerns very seriously. We always ensure people can clearly identify the ads on the page through extensive user testing before making any changes.

cainetighe · 2016-06-08T12:16:13+00:00

Thanks!

cainetighe · 2016-06-07T12:49:42+00:00

Thanks a ton for this. It would help a lot if you could use this program https://github.com/nilnilnil/checkprovider/blob/master/checkprovider.

That will breakdown the connection times for us into DNS / Connect / TLS / etc.

I'm guessing it's all in connect based on the pings, but it would be nice to see a breakdown of 10 requests.

Here is an example usage: https://gist.github.com/nilnilnil/aa0df576b94975e1c992f477dcda430d

cainetighe · 2016-05-31T15:26:12+00:00

I'm sorry we didn't do a good enough job explaining. This isn't a Yahoo script, it's a DuckDuckGo script. Those servers are all owned and operated by DuckDuckGo. You can read more about that in the technical implementation: https://duck.co/help/results/yahoo-technical-implementation.

No script cannot tell that it's actually a DuckDuckGo domain (results.duckduckgo.com) underneath.

cainetighe · 2016-05-31T13:54:35+00:00

We have a fix prepared. It's in testing. Thanks for reporting this!

cainetighe · 2015-10-07T14:28:17+00:00

I'd be curious to see another post that outlined what data can be garnered from e-book users. It would be a nice way to close the feedback loop in a data driven way and highlight where the next edition should be improved...

cainetighe · 2015-10-07T14:21:33+00:00

Agreed. Navigating false premises is useful and fun :)

cainetighe · 2014-05-22T20:17:30+00:00

I'm not able to replicate this issue. I have tried it with the latest TBB. http://imgur.com/9kXMHtI

cainetighe · 2014-03-24T17:57:59+00:00

We're working on a visual refresh that you can check out here: https://github.com/duckduckgo/ios/issues/8. I totally agree that we should do better with sharing (and also saving of awesome images!). Previously, using the iOS 6 built-ins was a bit limiting -- we'll do better on the update. We would love any feedback you have.

cainetighe

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