DuckDuckGo has completely removed and hidden my website -- completely, and including Ripcord -- from all search results. I only know about this because someone messaged me to say they were pointed to a site with malware instead of my real website when searching for Ripcord on DuckDuckGo.
I don't host malware or anything like that on my website. I am careful about what I have on it. I don't even host unsigned executables on it. 🥴
Bing also hides me, too, I guess.
@shironeko dude I could write a better web crawler than this. clown town
@cancel Wow that stinks. I just shared feedback to DuckDuckGo about it.
@cancel@merveilles.town I don't think it's DuckDuckGo though; it's probably just that Bing hides our sites for whatever fucked up reason and they also disappear from DDG because DDG sources so much of its results from Bing
@amolith Not DDG's fault? They're the ones showing the results. If the results are bad it's their fault.
@cancel@merveilles.town they're definitely both at fault but I personally think Microsoft is /more/ at fault than DDG
@amolith "Sorry I kicked you. I'm wearing my auto-kicking boots today."
@cancel@merveilles.town well like I said, DDG gets its results from Bing. If Bing yeets a site, how's DDG going to surface it to you?
Yes, they should host their own index or diversify their backends; I blame DDG for basically being a Bing frontend with extra features. The de-indexing of our sites from Bing is solely Bing's fault though.
] Gerblin Taffer 
@cancel @amolith DuckDuckGo pulls their search results from Yahoo and Bing.
Similarly, we are not "purging" YouTube-dl or The Pirate Bay and they both have actually been continuously available in our results if you search for them by name (which most people do). Our site: operator (which hardly anyone uses) is having issues which we are looking into.
... I literally use that feature all the time
@katnjiapus @amolith As I showed in the screenshots, normal search results also do not show my site at all.
@katnjiapus @amolith contact who?
@katnjiapus @amolith > For feedback regarding DuckDuckGo Search, use the “Send feedback” link in the side of the results pages.
@amolith@mk.nixnet.social @cancel@merveilles.town yea
seems my site dissapeared too
@amolith@mk.nixnet.social @cancel@merveilles.town i read somewhere that it was bing and ddg later explicitly re-added them to their results? i dont have a source on that though
@pie@misskey.bubbletea.dev @cancel@merveilles.town i heard about that for some piracy sites, yes. Didn't realise Microshaft was into de-listing regular people though
I think that if a site like ddg relies on someone else then they're taking responsibility for that, even if it's not "their fault" it's still "their problem" or something like that
it's like using a library
@cancel@merveilles.town now do the same search on bing. i'm curious.
@cancel what's the site for
@Manyeyedgirl Some links to personal projects on GitHub, but mainly my software project Ripcord
@cancel I'm also having issues with DDG, where it completely ignores keywords I try to exclude with the - operator sometimes. I don't want to use Google, and I'm not sure what else to use.
@maddiefuzz @cancel the problem is they're all bad :(
@maddiefuzz @cancel try startpage! it fetches results form google
It's been a long time since I've had to go to google for good results so frequently. :/
@cancel this is frustrating to hear. I hope it’s fixed soon. I hope one day we have a reliable non-centralized index to search with sensible features and controls.
@tendigits It's not so frustrating, except that I spent effort to not do anything I thought would be considered shady on my website, so that feels like a waste of time now. Just more dumb web crap in a long list of web crap.
@cancel
> I don't host malware or anything like that on my website. I am careful about what I have on it. I don't even host unsigned executables on it.
That may be the answer. Try with ton of js, adds, newsletter poopups and stuff normal sites do :P
@cancel @SwooshyCueb yeah, I dealt with this at one point. This is entirely Bing's fault and I had to sign up for the Bing Webmaster Tools and file support requests and do all sorts of shit. It eventually came back but it was a pain in the ass and the support requests, which had an estimated turn around of 10 days, came back 2 months later saying it was fixed. Absolute trash search engine.
@cancel @SwooshyCueb I honestly think this has been happening to websites that don't host binaries but link to GitHub for the binaries, because so many people host malware on GitHub. My entire site got flagged as malware despite hosting no code. No JavaScript. Nothing.
@vikxin @SwooshyCueb I host the binaries on my own site, and they're all signed with code signing certificates. (The fancy kind, too.)
@cancel @SwooshyCueb dunno, but you'll need to use Bing Webmaster Tools to have any chance of figuring it out. It sucks and it's been happening to a lot of people. But Bing is basically just totally unresponsive and hasn't even acknowledged the issue.
@vikxin @SwooshyCueb Yeah I'm not signing up for that. Guess bing and DDG users can just download malware instead, or w/e. 🤷
@cancel oh yeah this happened to @endrift with mGBA recently too: https://nitter.eu/endrift/status/1479319923654488064
@cancel Duckduckgos searches come mostly from the bing api. But yes the duck is starting cencorship now.
If so, then the fault is Bing's, as DDG uses mostly their index. But DDG does their own censorship as well, so they are not innocent.
@digdeeper Not DDG's fault? They're the ones showing the results. If the results are bad it's their fault.
It's like blaming invidious for youtube's censorship. You do you, though.
@digdeeper invidious doesn't describe itself as a video platform, just as a youtube frontend ui. duckduckgo says it's a search engine.
@cancel Huh, mine too, but only the English site. Bing Webmaster Tools doesn’t tell me there’s anything wrong with it on its own (only that it hasn’t appeared in any searches). When I explicitly check the root URL it says it was discovered but not indexed ‘for some reason’ (paraphrased).
@cancel
Oh darn, I was just on your website (bookmarked) and was going to say how cool Ripcord is, but damn - that sucks!
@cancel Ugh that sucks. Is there something that can be done about this?
@rostiger It seems they've fixed it since then. (Took a couple of weeks.)
@cancel Ah, good to hear! Did you reach out to them?
@rostiger mentioned in a tweet, I guess
