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Ask HN: Does Google look at !g queries to help improve search results?

17 points by fbelzile ↗ HN
As in, accidental !g's typed by DDG users thinking they're on DDG.

8 comments

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lights0123
Google can't even tell that the search is coming from DuckDuckGo, as DDG sends this when redirecting to a Google-owned service:

    <meta name='referrer' content='never'>
Interestingly, it doesn't to other networks. For example, Wikipedia, Reddit, and Twitter redirects use this:

    <meta name='referrer' content='origin'>
So they can tell it's from DDG, but not the exact URL (not that it matters because they get the query anyways)
sidpatil
Right, but he's referring to queries done on Google itself by users who thought they were using DDG but weren't.
fbelzile
I added the text to clarify the question later.
tinus_hn
Do they not send it to a custom URL? I thought Google would pay for sending them traffic.
naebother
Are you asking if Google accounts for the bangs? You probably won't get a straight answer, but it's certainly possible. I believe Google keeps track of the order of your searches, so they might take that into account if you remove the bang and click through to what you were looking for.
cpach
My guess: Probably not.
mrfusion
I’d guess being a monopoly they really don’t care to stress over small improvements.
brainfog
That is probably less than a rounding error in terms of traffic.