DuckDuckGo Next and an Updated Alfred Workflow

Back in March of 2013 I whipped up a little Alfred 2 workflow for searching DuckDuckGo by way of Google Suggest. In short: you get all the benefits of Google’s auto-completions right from Alfred while using a search engine that doesn’t bubble you.

As noted by Chris Herbert at MacStories, the folks at DuckDuckGo recently launched DuckDuckGo Next, a beta of a massive overhaul of both the design and functionality of the upstart search engine. I really love the way DDG Next looks and works. They’ve done an amazing job of offering context-specific results without obscuring more general ones.

For example, searching for “chicken recipes” on both DuckDuckGo Next and Google brings up two very different pages.

DuckDuckGo Next vs. Google

In a browser window that was originally 935 x 1013 px, DuckDuckGo offers nine results and a single ad. Four of those nine are to specific recipes, accompanied by a photo and a brief ingredient list. Even better, the recipes up top can scroll horizontally, where a total of thirty-five recipes can be seen without leaving the page. In the same size window, Google returns six ads and six results, two of which are filed under “News for chicken recipes.” In this instance, one of these search engines is an order of magnitude more helpful than the other.

The first I heard about DuckDuckGo Next was actually in the comments section of my Alfred workflow. It turns out there are quite a few regular users of the workflow. A few started asking for an update that pointed to DuckDuckGo Next. I whipped one up, available for download now.

The workflow still relies on Google Suggest for autocomplete. If and when I can figure out how to switch that over to DuckDuckGo’s new autocomplete I will make the change. Until then, enjoy searching the lovely DuckDuckGo Next from the comfort of Alfred.

Download Google Auto Complete to DDG Next.zip