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Why is this called a plugin? As far as I can see it's just an additonal search term (hn).

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hn+startup+ideas

Compare with DDG's existing bang code for HN: !hn + startup + ideas

That searches hnsearch.com directly, and gives good results on hnsearch for the search terms.

The "plugin" search from the post has an hnsearch box at the top of DDG's results page, but when you follow the hnsearch link, those results are not as good as the !hn search (IMO).

The nice thing about the "plugin" search is that there are results from the rest of the web. But that's normal.

Am I missing something?



Bang syntax (like !hn) will take to directly to the sites search. Try for example "!g hacker news".

Plugins, or goodies I think ddg calls them keeps you within the site and provides more info in that zero-click box.


Understood, but I don't see the plug, or the in. They've just added "hn" as another term in the search string. Did I lose or miss something?


The plug part is http://duckduckhack.com/ -- that is, these are open source components that plug into the system via this glue. This one in particular is at https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice/blob/maste... and https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice/blob/maste...

The in part is they get submitted and we try hard to make them all useful and thus "in" DDG by default. However, ultimately you could a) consume them in your own applications (off DDG); and b) choose to turn some off or on more of the time.


You're right actually. I think at the moment you can't turn off individual "goodies" either.

That would be a good set of options however.




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