How to Use DuckDuckGo to Search the Forum

[Panjack]

DuckDuckGo is a search engine. It is found at DuckDuckgo.com. You can also make it your default search engine in your browser.

[font="Verdana"]Basic search for a word, such as BURMA, in DuckDuckGo:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +Burma

Note two things about this search. First, quote marks surround “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition.” Second, a “+” appears before the search term, Burma. You can run a search without these quote marks and without the “+,” but the results will most likely be worse. The “+” tells DDG that what follows is what you are really interested in, and results with multiple incidences of BURMA will get ranked higher. (As opposed to results with multiple incidences of the phrase, “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition.”)

Once you run one search within DDG, you can bookmark that page. Later, you can go to that bookmark and change the particular search you want to run and then rerun it. This way you won't have to enter all the parts of the search.

Note: if you are searching for a term that might be common on many different Matrix forums such as FIGHTER, you might put a "+" in front of the string “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” but not in front of the words or term you are searching for. This will tend to put search results for WITP-AE at the top. For instance you might run the following search:

site:matrixgames.com +“War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” fighter

If you want more authoritative results for technical aspects of the game, add the word “Alfred” to your search:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +Burma Alfred

Then, once you click on a particular search result, use your browser to search for “Alfred” on the page on the screen. Multiple incidences of this name might exist on the page. You can also rerun the search by putting a “+” before Alfred, and a different set of search results might appear:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +Burma +Alfred

If you want to search for phrase, such as BURMA ROAD, then you put quote marks around the phrase:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +”Burma road”

However, this will miss posts that have the following: “how do I get supplies up the road in Burma?” If your initial search (above) doesn’t seem to get what you’re interested in, rerun the search as follows:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +Burma +road

You can remove the “+” from either of the above to get slightly different search results.

You add any combination of phrases and/or words as your search terms:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +"Burma road" Monsoon +Headquarters -AK

Notice the "-" above: this tells DDG to exclude results that have what appears after the "-."

Often, trial-and-error is needed to get results giving you the information you are looking for...or leading you to the conclusion that the information you are looking for does not exist.

For new players: If you just can't find the information you need after searching, ask a question on the forum. In your question, you might report the searches you have performed because some people on the forum might ask if you've done your due diligence in trying to find answers by searching the forum.

[/font]

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Panjack

[font="Verdana"]Basic search for a word, such as BURMA, in DuckDuckGo:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +Burma

Note two things about this search. First, quote marks surround “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition.” Second, a “+” appears before the search term, Burma. You can run a search without these quote marks and without the “+,” but the results will most likely be worse. The “+” tells DDG that what follows is what you are really interested in, and results with multiple incidences of BURMA will get ranked higher. (As opposed to results with multiple incidences of the phrase, “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition.”)

Once you run one search within DDG, you can bookmark that page. Later, you can go to that bookmark and change the particular search you want to run and then rerun it. This way you won't have to enter all the parts of the search.

If you want more authoritative results for technical aspects of the game, add the word “Alfred” to your search:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +Burma Alfred

Then, once you click on a particular search result, use your browser to search for “Alfred” on the page on the screen. Multiple incidences of this name might exist on the page. You can also rerun the search by putting a “+” before Alfred, and a different set of search results might appear:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +Burma +Alfred

If you want to search for phrase, such as BURMA ROAD, then you put quote marks around the phrase:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +”Burma road”

However, this will miss posts that have the following: “how do I get supplies up the road in Burma.” If your initial search (above) doesn’t seem to get what you’re interested in, rerun the search as follows:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +Burma +road

You can remove the “+” from either of the above to get slightly different search results.

You add any combination of phrases and/or words as your search terms:
site:matrixgames.com “War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition” +"Burma road" Monsoon +Headquarters -AK

Notice the "-" above: this tells DDG to exclude results that have what appears after the "-."

Often, trial-and-error is needed to get results giving you the information you are looking for...or leading you to the conclusion that the information you are looking for does not exist.

For new players: If you just can't find the information you need after searching, ask a question on the forum. In your question, you might report the searches you have performed because some people on the forum might ask if you've done your due diligence in trying to find answers by searching the forum.

[/font]

And what is DDG - A site? An app? If the latter, where is it available?

[Nomad]

DuckDuckGo is a search engine.

[tolsdorff]

There are 100's of search engines out there. Yahoo still exists. duckduckgois one. Google is just the most popular.

Many google top search results are from affiliated companies or sites that paid money to be on top.

If you like more obscure unknown search results for queries, you are better off using some of the alternative lesser known search engines. They use their own indexers and web-crawlers. These alternative results are often much more informative and interesting than the results Google provides.

[Panjack]

DuckDuckGo.com is their website, which can be bookmarked. Alternatively, I think most browsers permit DDG to be set as the default search engine for a browser. DDG's website explains the privacy advantage is of their search engine.

But anything that DDG can do, Google can do (using slightly different techniques). However, I think the use of "+" in DDG permits slightly different search results by emphasizing terms, which is something I don't think Google does.

[BBfanboy]

Thanks Panjack. The website is the info I can use.

[Nomad]

For some reason duckduckgo.com seems to be off line right now.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Nomad

For some reason duckduckgo.com seems to be off line right now.

That was me on the site downloading the app! I had no problems and even did the DDG for my cell phone with no issues. Maybe the ducks don't like beagles?

[Nomad]

I can't get to duckduckgo.com. I get an error that says the site can not be reached.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Nomad

I can't get to duckduckgo.com. I get an error that says the site can not be reached.

DuckDuckGo.com

I just copied the site name exactly as Panjack put it - capitals and all. I pasted that in place of the URL of this thread and got DDG immediately.

[Maallon]

ORIGINAL: Nomad

I can't get to duckduckgo.com. I get an error that says the site can not be reached.

Can you try this link:
https://duckduckgo.com/

[Moltrey]

FYI, DuckDuckGo hangs their hat on improved security of the site/engine compared to the competition.
(Oh, and the all-important "not sharing personal info" promise).

I haven't used it much or found a review to compare it to the earlier search engines, so YMMV.

[Nomad]

It is working today. I have duckduckgo as my default search engine.

[RangerJoe]

That has been my default search engine for years.

[CaptBeefheart]

I'm not a huge fan of the 800-pound gorilla search engine. I've been using DuckDuckGo for non-skewed (as far as I know) search results for some time. The other guys are definitely skewed based on tests I've done.

Cheers,
CB

[RangerJoe]

On google and some other search engines, the first page or two may have paid to be put there. They may also put their own stuff at the top.

[Sardaukar]

Yea, while Google is "standard" nowadays, it puts it's own stuff and paid content on top.

Thus, sometimes it is beneficial to use other search engines too.

[Platoonist]

For women seeking the best ab workouts, it's important to maintain a focused fitness routine.

Gee, thanks. Lord knows this forum gets overrun daily by female ab crunchers searching for bodybuilding tips.

[RangerJoe]

For women seeking the best ab workouts, it's important to maintain a focused fitness routine.

Gee, thanks. Lord knows this forum gets overrun daily by female ab crunchers searching for bodybuilding tips.

Plus they keep posting their pictures!

[Platoonist]

For women seeking the best ab workouts, it's important to maintain a focused fitness routine.

Gee, thanks. Lord knows this forum gets overrun daily by female ab crunchers searching for bodybuilding tips.

Plus they keep posting their pictures!

*Sigh* Somehow, I've learned to make peace with that fact.

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