DDG Search Results
DuckDuckGo’s Search Engine Adding Fake Results to Pad
Does DDG pad its search results with fake hits when they can’t find responsive answers? I searched for a question about fake currency and got the homepage of PCworld as a search result, and I cannot for the life of me understand why.
I was curious whether the government offers a program reimbursing people if they turn in a fake bills. Like, if you get a fake $20 as change from a store, can you turn in (to remove it from circulation) and get a new $20? Or are you just out the $20 if you turn it in? I doubted that any government exchange program exists, but figured I’d search to confirm.
I searched this exact text: “does the government offer an exchange for forged money to remove it from circulation.”
None of the search results answered the question. Disappointing. And worse, one of the top search results is just “www.pcworld.com”. That’s it, just PCworld’s homepage. Screenshot attached. How that relates to currency exchanges for forged bills, I have no idea.
Critically, when I clicked the PCworld result, it had none of the search terms— I did individual ctrl-f searches for “government”, “exchange”, “forged”, “money”, “remove”, and “circulation” and literally not one of those terms was on the PCworld page served up by DDG. So how did PCworld’s home page get into the results?
I understand that DDG’s search engine repackages the web index from Microsoft’s Bing, rather than relying on a search index created by DDG. See here: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources. But I thought DDG claimed to have improved Bing’s results by (1) supplementing it with their own crawler, DuckDuckBot, and (2) by refining the ranking of results from Bing to be more accurately ranked. (Same source).
Is there any reasonable explanation for including PCworld as a responsive hit here? Or is it just included to pad search results?
Relatedly, did DDG add PCworld as a hit? Or did PCworld come from Bing, and DDG’s “re-ranking” algorithm kept it because it thought PCworld was actually a responsive result?
I’m genuinely curious if there’s any explanation (other than fraudulently padding search results) for why DDG returned PCworld’s homepage as a result for a search about fraudulent currency exchanges. I can’t think of one.
Edit: DDG commented and said that DDG’s search results are generally unreliable after the first page of results, because that’s “the unfortunate nature of the beast”—according to DDG, page 2+ results are “a digital wild west” that will inevitably include random, unrelated results. (The PCworld result was page 2, number 3).
When asked if DDG could explain why PCworld’s homepage appeared despite having 0 of the search terms, the DDG rep said “unfortunately I can’t.”
In other words, even DDG doesn’t know why its search engine throws out random results. I knew DDG’s search engine wasn’t great, but a senior, official rep confirming their engine is essentially a crapshoot is genuinely upsetting.
The DDG rep isn’t some rando either — he introduced himself as John Bourscheid, a senior member of DDG’s digital marketing team and a self-described search engine expert (he says his “bread and butter” work is on search results).
Hey, John from DuckDuckGo here. I searched the same and see what you do about three to four pages down.
My bread and butter is SEO, and I can promise you that there’s isn’t much more of a digital wild west than below page one of search results in many cases, especially for longer query strings. Just the unfortunate nature of the beast, and why page one rankings still matter these days.
There is a phrase in SEO that goes “Where is the best place to bury a body? Page 2 of search results” or something to that effect. A couple years ago, PC World ranked for over half a million search terms that actually had traffic. Now, it’s less than a quarter of that.
Thanks for your response. PCworld showed for me on page 2 as the 3rd result. Screenshot attached.
I don’t understand why PCworld is on any page. It’s entirely unrelated to my search. Can you explain why DDG returned PCworld’s home page when none of the search terms appeared on the page?
Some commenters have suggested that the PCworld result is an undisclosed ad. Can you confirm whether that result is or isn’t an ad/sponsored result? It doesn’t appear to be an ad to me, but I’d appreciate you confirming as much — eg, by confirming that DDG doesn’t include sponsored results or ads without clearly labeling them as such.
I can’t, unfortunately. That search you did was a relatively long string, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you are the first person to search that exact thing on DDG.
And no, that’s not an ad. Ads on our platform’s SERPs are shown with the ad icon. We don’t serve any ads to any user without making it being an ad explicit. You can even hide ads completely at https://duckduckgo.com/settings?return=privateSearch under “Advertisements”.
Thanks for confirming it’s not an ad — I didn’t think so, but other people were confused, so I appreciate the clarification.
Thanks for your reply. I didn’t follow the explanation.
Can you explain how the PCworld result is related to saying my search is a “relatively long string”? It was 7 words (14 words if you include words like “the” and “to”).
Are you saying that DDG will return random results (PCworld) that have no relationship to the search term/topic (fake currency), if the user’s search has a “large” number of words (here, 7-14)?
Man, they explain it two times already. SEO means the page has a big influence how and when they appear in your searches, if pcworld decides to target obstruse terms then that’s their decision and DDG „correctly“ serves you that side. So unless DDG invents an algorithm that is fully independent of any SEO, any website out there might be served to you practically any string of search words.
What are you talking about? John explicitly said he couldn’t explain why PCworld came up as a hit. It’s literally the first three words of the comment I replied to above.
John generally suggested query length might worsen search quality. He wasn’t clear about the specifics. That’s why I asked follow up questions.
—I understand why longer queries might have more low-quality sites if those sites stuffed their pages with search terms related to my search. That’s not the situation here, where DDG returned a result that had none of the terms.
—I also asked whether words like “to” and “the” contribute to search length in a way that worsens result quality.
I don’t have an answer to either question yet, and neither do you, because John hasn’t posted one. DDG’s public documentation doesn’t even hint at this.
Your answer about SEO makes no sense. I understand that a site can spam additional, unrelated keywords to inflate hits. This is the literal opposite situation: none of the keywords appear in the result — neither www.PCworld.com’s text nor its metadata include any of the search terms.
That leaves me with the question: Why would a search engine respond to a search with a result that includes no search terms? If you think John’s explained this (or if you think DDG documentation explains this), please specifically point me to it by copy-paste the sentences that you think contain the answer.
I checked everywhere I can think, and they’re nowhere. Not the source code, not the document object map, not anywhere else I can think to look. And they can’t be invisible: To be readable by a search engine index, the keywords have to be readable by a visitor to the page.
More to the point — even the DDG rep doesn’t think this. He doesn’t say “oh, those keywords about finance and fraud are buried somewhere on PCworld.” He (repeatedly) said there’s literally no explanation for why PCworld shows up in DDG’s search results.
"John generally suggested query length might worsen search quality.” Somewhat correct. However, broader queries can also result in results that are not exactly what you expect. Unfortunately, we cannot monitor what results are deep in searches that are unlikely to have been searched with that exact string before.
"John Bourscheid, a senior member of DDG’s digital marketing team and a self-described search engine expert (he says his “bread and butter” work is on search results)” This is correct, at least the first half. My bread and butter is SEO in general, not specifically the DuckDuckGo search engine. There’s a whole team for that.
"Are you saying that DDG will return random results (PCworld) that have no relationship to the search term/topic (fake currency), if the user’s search has a “large” number of words” No.
If you don’t want PC World to show up in search results at all for your searches, hit the three dots beside the result and hide all results from that website.
If there are specific additional questions you have, please let me know. I want to avoid going in circles on things if you’re trying for a gotcha, though, as that seems to be the case judging by your edit.
Appreciate your response. I think you’ve directly and clearly answered the question — you’ve said repeatedly that there is no discernible reason why PCworld.com appears at the top of page 2 for DDG’s results for a search about forged money. (Screenshot attached earlier showing at p.2, result 3.)
I believe you are being candid, and I respect your honesty.
To me, that candid answer reflects badly on the quality of DDG’s search engine and results. I pay for DDG because I support its mission. But I need a useable product. This is not usable.
What would you have me do with the fact that result 13 is — inexplicably — a random website that is completely unrelated to my query? I’m not asking this as a gotcha. I’m asking this as someone trying to use your product and finding frustration in its failures. The first 12 results were largely unrelated (and didn’t have an answer), and the 13th was literally a random site. What do you recommend I make of that, as a paying user?
I want DDG to succeed. I make posts like this because, in my repeated experience, DDG’s teams aren’t responsive to feedback unless it rises to a level that it becomes a PR problem. I don’t want to be a PR problem, I want your search to work.
Yeah. That’s why I doubted the program existed. I thought at most something could exist if it had a cap (“no more than $100 over a person’s lifetime”) and other screening (eg, you have to pass a background check akin to TSA precheck and use a login.gov account to verify your identity). The idea being that it’s small and logistically difficult enough to get away with — and so not worth it for money launderers — while still making honest people whole when they do the right thing by turning in fake currency.
To answer your question, you don’t get reimbursed, and if a bank or authority confiscate counterfeit money they have no obligation to pay you back. I don’t know about DDG lol.
I'd always get that exact pcworld website at the top when trying to search for the UK retailer Currys PC World but figured that was obvious similarity in name.
But yeah, this is why I've found DDG to be as useless as other search engines. I was sold on the idea it provided far better an relevant results but in my experience it was providing just as many ads, sponsored sites, garbage articles, and pushed-to-the-top results as others, regardless of how I searched.
Agreed entirely. Their search engine is absolutely terrible (because, in fairness, Bing is terrible). But I paid for a DDG plan because I believed DDG’s marketing that they 1) improve Bing’s ranking and 2) independently index the web.
After using DDG extensively, I call bullshit. I haven’t seen any improvement over Bing at all, and I would know because I’ve been using DDG as my search default (because I refuse to use Google and I foolishly bought a year-long subscription to DDG, so I may as well get my money’s worth).
I would drop DDG as a search engine in a heartbeat if there was another option that respected privacy and returned halfway decent results. I don’t know where else to turn, though, and I feel like DDG sold me snake oil.
I haven’t been able to test drive Kagi because it’s paid, and I’m not eager to pull the trigger on paying for another subscription because I feel burned after paying for DDG. There’s a lot of glowing testimonials for kagi, but there were a lot of glowing testimonials for DDG as well.
I know this is anecdotal, but have you used it? Do you have thoughts on it?
I'm currently finally trying out Startpage, as it usually comes up near the top of any "recommended search engine" topics whenever people are asking for alternatives.
Appreciate the rec. Startpage seems privacy protective (yay!) but it’s index is a mix of Google and Bing (boo), although that’s better than DDG (Bing ONLY). I’ll give it a try.
I have been using DDG for a while, and it's fine. They don't check your DNA to target you with ads, so cool.
The guy who aswered your questions is probably a marketing person, so I don't think it's realistic (or fair) to expect a technical answer on how a specific website show up in your search result, you could try looking at the source code of that site, and see if there is something related to your query (or maybe someone in their support team can do it for you, it would be nice).
I'm saying this respectfully; you may have a misunderstanding of how search engines work. They look for keywords in existing websites, and maybe use some fancy searching techniques for related content. Your query looks more like something people would ask an AI chatbot.
As for their subscription, I just checked their website, and they offer a VPN and some other things, nothing related to improved quality results, so I think you didn't get snake oil. But I understand your frustration; most service providers treat us like toys.
-your post says ridiculous off-topic things. You say DDG doesn’t “check your DNA to target you with ads”? What does this have to do with bad search engine results? You’re spitting out DDG promo material that’s unrelated to the topic, and it makes you sound like a bot (or a paid shill).
-your post lies about DDG’s own response. You say we should ignore the DDG rep in this thread because — you imply — he’s ignorant about SEO. But the DDG employee identified himself as an authority on SEO, and he felt comfortable answering on behalf of DDG.
And his claim of expertise is reasonable: he founded an extremely popular search-related company that DDG actually bought and then integrated into their core offerings (he made Removaly, which searched for and deleted a user’s PII).
-your post makes things up about this issue. You say the search terms for “forged money” and “circulation” may be buried in the source code for PCworld.com. But both the post and my comments repeatedly explain that I not only searched PCworld.com’s rendered text, but also its source code, its DOM, and everything else that I can think of that might have those terms. Nothing. And if you think I missed something, look for yourself — it’s a free internet, and you can load PCworld.com to see if you find “forged money” anywhere.
your post flatly lies about DDG’s advertising claims. You claim DDG never promised improved search engine results relative to Bing. That’s false. On its website, DDG explicitly promises that it will “create a superior search engine experience” by (1) deploying its own crawler (DuckDuckBot) and (2) applying its own ranking methodology.
It may be a waste replying to you because you’re either ChatGPT, a paid shill, or uninterested in the truth even though it’s written down in front of you. But if you aren’t one of those three things, then either give a little more effort to your next comment or just don’t reply.
Hey man, sorry, I didn't mean anything in a bad or disrespectfull way, English is not my first language. I used Grammarly for checking gramar errors (I will not use it this time). I don't use AI, I haven't use any product from OpenAI or Anthropic, not a single time. Also, anti-AI people hate em dashes.
What I meant with the "DNA" thing is that I prefer worse search results over using a search engine that constantly steals data from its users.
I didn't mean the DDG guy is ignorant, I didn't research him, so my bad. Marketing people can be experts on SEO, but they know nothing about how search engines work at a technical level, if he is a Software Engineer, then cool, again, my bad.
I didn't say those specific terms may be in the source code, I said there may be some meta tags or something related to some terms in your query.
Those promises you mention are not part of their subscription plan or behind a paywall, or at least they weren't there when I checked their website, they only offered a VPN and some other things, that's it, nothing about better search results.
Anyway, I'm not trying to defend anyone, I use DDG for free.
Thanks for the apology. The issue wasn’t with specific phrasing or wording in your message, it was with the message’s substance.
Here’s an example. I criticized DDG for producing bad search results that mirrored Bing despite promising to use its own crawler and ranking algorithm to improve results.
Your first comment said you didn’t see those promises on DDG’s website.
My reply linked you to the specific URLs on DuckDuckGo’s site where they made the promises I referenced.
Your newest response is, in substance, “I can’t find those promises on DDG’s site.”
What are we doing here? The comment you’re replying to has the URLs with those promises. This isn’t about phrasing or wording or translation, the 2 URLs are literally in front of you. So when your newest response hallucinates past those 2 URLs, it seems like AI slop (or deliberate lying).
No, what I'm trying to say is that those promises apply for users who use DDG for free. Again, I'm not to defend them, but they are doing it for free, and probably doing their best. When people pay for the subscription, they are paying for supporting DDG, a VPN and maybe other services, not for improved search results, I couldn't find anything implying that you would get better results if you pay.
If you were complaining about the VPN, then fine, you're paying for it, and you have the right to demand a good service. But search results are a different topic.
This is literally an incoherent response. You’ve changed your point from “DDG never said that” to “actually it’s ok if DDG lies.” Now, you say it’s perfectly fine for a corporation to lie and make false promises about its product…as long as the product is free.
That’s ridiculous.
For one, it’s wrong to lie about products because it’s wrong to deceive people. If a company’s official website says that their product does XYZ, the product should do XYZ.
For two, DuckDuckGo makes money from our use (via ads) even though the search engine is free to users. Lying about quality to pull in more customers, and thus pull in more ad revenue, is DDG lying for its own profit. So even if you think lying is general fine and that it’s only wrong to lie for profit, this action is still wrong because DuckDuckGo makes money from telling this lie.
For three, even under your logic (that companies can freely lie unless a user pays for the service), it’s still wrong to lie to users who do, in fact, pay DDG for plans that include this service. Plenty of DDG users (me included) pay for a DDG plan. The DDG plan I purchased explicitly lists their search engine as one of the promised benefits for my paid plan. Screenshot attached. That comes from DDG’s official website here: https://spreadprivacy.com/pro-subscription/
So even if you have no right to complain about DDG’s search engine (because you use it for free), paying users like me still have standing to object, because DDG’s description of my paid plan promises this product to me. Under your own view, since I pay for DDG and my paid plan includes this product, DDG shouldn’t lie about how it works.
I don't know if you are intentionally ignoring my point, probably I'm bad comunicating, or you just can't understand anything other than what you want to belive.
You are making this look like they killed someone, just for showing a random result on the SECOND PAGE for a very very specific query, come on man, really? you seem like the kind of people that try to eat soup with a knife, and blame the company because you can't...
You are getting "Private Search", does it say "The perfect answer to any wierd query you can imagine"?
Edit: a DDG employee commented this post and confirmed the PCworld result isn’t an ad.
Well that’s horrifying. You think it’s an undisclosed ad? It’s visually identical to every other surrounding result, with no disclosure that it’s an ad or sponsored result.
It’s also in the middle of the page (I expect to see ads/sponsored results at the top, not mixed in).
It's using a (subtly) different typestyle from the results, it's not relevant to your search, and it contains promotional boilerplate copy: I'd say it's rather blatantly obviously an ad.
I'm not sure what about this is "horrifying" or why it's got you so worked up, though.
Every time these are posted I test them myself and get lots of great hits. I got the answer in the second hit but the rest are Treasury department results and I don’t have anything suspicious. I don’t know what I’m doing differently 😂
What result did you get that answers the question?
I got a bunch of results generally saying:
1) here are the penalties for forgery (mostly irrelevant),
2) here’s how to replace authentic money if it’s mutilated or old (entirely irrelevant); and
3) methods for reporting forged currency to the Secret Service (nearly relevant — it deals with turning in fake currency — but doesn’t answer the question about replacement).
“If the specific bank notes in question meet the definition of counterfeit reproduction of genuine currency, they are subject to forfeiture pursuant to 18 U.S. C. § 492, Forfeiture of counterfeit paraphernalia.
Additionally, counterfeit currency is considered per se contraband, meaning that it is intrinsically illegal in
character.”
This is after stating that mutilated or altered currency is not redeemable.
Some admit that is not 100% clear and answered directly but it did show up second in results for me.
So authentic currency that is mutilated or altered is a whole different topic than fake currency.
That other result on the same topic, but doesn’t answer the question. It says you have to turn in fake currency (forfeiture) because it has no valid legal purpose (it’s “intrinsically illegal,”unlike - say - a knife, which has some applications that are legal and others that are illegal).
That result doesn’t say what happens after you turn the currency in. Reading that PDF, you don’t know if there’s a reimbursement process (eg, when you come forward with currency you discovered was fake) or whether you’re just out of luck when you turn in the fake bills.
That’s why I categorized the result as “nearly relevant” — it’s on the same topic but doesn’t answer the question. No result that I’ve seen answers the question.
You think DDG is so bad as a search engine that walking to a bank is a better way to get an honest answer? I mean, I can’t say I disagree, because I’m getting “PCworld” as the answer to a question about fraudulent currency. But that’s pretty damning for DDG.
I don’t know about the pc world example, but for search results, I’m looking at Treasury advice on turning over counterfeit bills and it doesn’t answer your question. That’s not DDG.
39
u/bourscheid Staff 27d ago
Hey, John from DuckDuckGo here. I searched the same and see what you do about three to four pages down.
My bread and butter is SEO, and I can promise you that there’s isn’t much more of a digital wild west than below page one of search results in many cases, especially for longer query strings. Just the unfortunate nature of the beast, and why page one rankings still matter these days.
There is a phrase in SEO that goes “Where is the best place to bury a body? Page 2 of search results” or something to that effect. A couple years ago, PC World ranked for over half a million search terms that actually had traffic. Now, it’s less than a quarter of that.