I switched to DuckDuckGO about 1.5/2 years back, and it was awesome at the time. But it has gradually gotten worse to the point where I @google search pretty much 70% of the time. Now that could be me being in a bit in the honeymoon phase with DDG at the time and it wore off, or maybe it's actually been getting worse.
My pet, unproven, theory. Is that DDG has been "improving" but that's been making the search worse somehow. Perhaps the context and "fanciness" of a search is not something we all value and that's what we're experiencing.
My pet theory is that the reason why every search engine is worse than Google is because they all use Google's interface. They want a single textbox capable of searching everything. Google spent who knows how much money in R&D perfecting this search box. You can't make a search box more perfect than what Google has. I'd even say that most problems of "bad search results" are directly caused by this minimized interface design.
I think alternative search engines would have better chances if they provided alternative interfaces to refine search queries instead of trying to compete with Google/Bing.
I suspect it's because DuckDuckGO is Bing, and Bing is getting worse. Why is Bing getting worse? Because Bing has grown enough market share to be worth SEO people optimising for it.
