I don't know what they did but several weeks ago DDG got magically better at geographic local search (I do not live in the US and pound my head on that one too).

One day I actually DID need to find something local and so I dutifully typed my search into the FF url bar and hit enter. My default search is DDG but my brain stroked off for a second because the results that came back were 100% what I was looking for and I thought I was on Google. Give it a shot again, they're getting better.

Useless? "Plumber Timbuktu" returns plumbers in Timbuktu.

I'm on Launceston Tasmania, DDG returns results for Launceston Cornwall England.

I'll try again though as your sibling comment suggests it's improved.