10 ms·

DuckDuckGo Hits 14M Searches in a Single Day

291 points by riqbal 10y ago

muninn_ 10y ago
I use it. It's not as good as Google, but it pretty much gets the job done when I need it to.
philfrasty 10y ago
The key for switching to DuckDuckGo for me was to set it as the default searchengine / startpage on all browsers. While the relevance of search results is slightly (noticable) worse than Google, I think the tradeoff between privacy VS result-quality is worth it. Thanks for making such a great product!
- AdamSC1 10y ago
  Hey Phil, DuckDuckGo employee here - Be sure to use the 'feedback' button that you find on the search results page whenever you feel a search isn't up to standards. Our team has been working hard at increasing relevancy, but the best changes come when users let us know what they need. Since we don't filter bubble results (https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...) results certainly feel different when making the leap, and that takes an adjustment period for most people. But, if you actually feel you have examples where you can't find what you're looking for, then we want to know so we can provide you a seamless search experience as well!
  - johnnyg 10y ago
    Thanks for the tip. I'll do that. I use DDG as primary but any time the search results aren't relevant, I fall back to Google. I fall back a lot right now and I think this is the area for DDG to focus in.
  - ximeng 10y ago
    Google has a list of scheduled flights when you put in two airport codes which is useful, doesn't look like DDG does the same.
    - tyingq 10y ago
      Google paid $700m to get that functionality though.
      - ximeng 10y ago
        This is a significant subset of what ITA does though - just a list of what flights go on each day of the week and at what time. I expect that can be built for significantly less than 700 million, certainly among the popular airports that most people search for. I suspect they might have had it before the ITA purchase as well but not 100% sure. The Google flights search with pricing and custom dates and routes came after ITA was bought I think.
        tyingq 10y ago
        It's basically QPX. Not just flights and times, but prices as well. It is the most significant part of ITA. Flights, times, and fares is deceptively hard to get right. There's a reason there are only a few providers. Edit: Ahh. If you're saying DDG could get by with just flights and times, and no fares, I see what you mean. That seems to be reflected in the pricing for the FlightStats product vs Google's flight/times/fares API pricing, yes. Parity with Google search requires fares though.
    - AdamSC1 10y ago
      At DuckDuckGo we've got open-source Instant Answers that currently pull in information from over 1100 sources: (https://duck.co/ia https://duck.co/ia) If you know of a good data source for scheduled flights you can easily contribute an Instant Answer, or leave the source as a suggestion for our community!
      - ximeng 10y ago
  - philfrasty 10y ago
    Hey Adam, thanks for the tip! Will do for sure in the future. Edge cases I have in mind are usually related to indexing of forum posts, where I search for a specific-term (say bookkeeping) and roughly know the Google results of the most important forums by heart, but DDG does not even show them. Second case I just used yesterday was searching for an exact match for an @gmail address of a priest (for our marriage) where Google had a lot more results than DDG. Keep up the great work!
  - hedora 10y ago
    There was a long HN thread talking about DuckDuckGo results vs Google behavior. Some people are put off by the fact that you don't substitute synonyms as aggressively as google. A concrete example was "foss [search term]". Google seems to rewrite this to "[open source] foobar", even with bubbling off. I prefer the duck duck go behavior (and google's aggressive query rewriting drove me nuts back when I used google -- it makes it hard to run precise searches!). After all, if I bothered to type an obscure acronym, I'm looking for results that actually contain the acronym! Maybe a "did you mean 'open source [search term]'" link at the top of the page, and even a preference toggle to enable aggressive query rewording by default would help.
    - chrisper 10y ago
      I believe if you do "foss" (with quotation marks) in Google it will not rewrite it. But I am not sure.
  - gingerlime 10y ago
    Not sure how this might affect privacy, or maybe you're doing it already, but couldn't you guys sample every time someone runs a search and then the same search with !g ?
    - AdamSC1 10y ago
      Hi Gingerlime, Thanks for the suggestion. Part of the reason we don't do this is the returned search results on Google are Google's commercial property. To use them in such a capacity would require us to reach a commercial agreement with them. These agreements come with stipulations that we don't feel represent the privacy interests of our users, so we don't pursue such agreements. The other reason, is because of the 'filter bubble' Google tailors results based on user tracking, which is what helps with result accuracy. So the results we as DuckDuckGo see on a query would be different than what you see. Plus, even if we could see your results, we wouldn't want to. We don't think it is good to be filter bubbled, we want to serve you the best results we can without censoring you. It should be your decision to a view a certain website, not ours!
      - ximeng 10y ago
        You could still identify searches where there's room for improvement even without comparing with Google results.
        tfigment 10y ago
        I may be wrong but the reason is again privacy (and probably cost). If they tracked your queries and tied them back to you for future then they need to store your information or enough to tie to you and what you clicked on and the history to improve things. These all become things that they can be subpoenaed for which is anti-privacy. Don't believe for a second that governments are not already banging at the door for access. The only ways to combat is either hosting in neutral offshore datacenter and incorporating there and living there is to not collect "useful" information in the first place on users. I think they went for the latter.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    I've had a lot of problems with literal searches on DDG over the years. That is, searches containing search terms in double quotes, like this: "my search terms". DDG is committed to returning literal search results for the exact query that the user typed within double quotes, right? Sometimes I wonder if DDG is going the route of other search engines and trying to return "relevant" results instead of only results containing the exact search term the user asked for within double quotes. Could you make clear exactly what DDG's policy is on exact search terms within double quotes? Does DDG honor such requests?
  - asb 10y ago
    I'd be really interested in a write-up of how you use and process feedback.
    - AdamSC1 10y ago
      Hey Asb, That's a great idea - I'm not personally involved in the feedback process, but I'll certainly bring this up to the relevant team!
  - nof 10y ago
    I often experience that ddg gives me results from really old websites. In cases this is OK, but when used for tracking down bugs or software errors it can be frustrating. Still love you though!
- speg 10y ago
  I have it set in only one of my browsers and am always jarred when DDG results come up, quickly falling back to !g Switching over everywhere would probably help me adapt more quickly.
  - mikemee 10y ago
    Yes, I encountered this. Soon after I had set ddg to the default on all my browsers (mobile & desktop), I found that DDGs results have been perfectly acceptable most of the time. Further, I find that I use shortcuts like !w, !yt, or plain "!" much more often than I use !g due to poor (or simply less targeted) search results.
- burger_moon 10y ago
  Setting it to default was what also got me using it daily. I've known about it for a long time but never used it much simply because when I open a new tab I want to search from there. I'd say I'm happy with the search results I get and never find myself going to google unless I need a map. I also really like that they adopted the quick results if you hit something common and get a excerpt which usually has my answer in it right at the top of the search results.
nerdponx 10y ago
I'm a professional data scientist. Apart from donating, how can I support the project? It's my default search engine everywhere now.
- muse900 10y ago
  That ^, I think a lot of us would like to volunteer some of our time to help duckduckgo
- charlieegan3 10y ago
  DuckDuckHack https://duckduckhack.com/ https://duckduckhack.com/ might be a good starting point. There are also a number of zeroclick related projects on their github profile: https://github.com/duckduckgo https://github.com/duckduckgo
- AdamSC1 10y ago
  As some others have mentioned you can check out https://duckduckhack.com/ https://duckduckhack.com/ our open-source community that powers our Instant Answers (the answers that appear before the search results/ads). Our community has helped us pull in data from over 1100 sources to make amazing experiences. The value of this is that you can build out anything you are passionate about. It creates some great niche experiences. Maybe you want to look up who is in space right now: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=people+in+space&ia=answer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=people+in+space&ia=answer Or you need to look up some NFL games: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=patriots+games&ia=nfl&iai=641 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=patriots+games&ia=nfl&iai=641 Or you can't remember the details of that card from your Magic The Gathering deck: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mtg+boiling+seas&ia=games&iax=1 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mtg+boiling+seas&ia=games&iax=1 We encourage people to build out the answers they want to see!
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    I've had some problems with DDG's bang searches on some sites where the sites' search URLs moved or could use better search parameters. Where can users report broken bang searches or suggest better options? DDG has a lot of open source code on GitHub. A list mapping bang search terms to site URLs could be maintained as a simple text file on GitHub so contributors could test them or suggest improvements.
rangibaby 10y ago
I switched to DDG as my default search everywhere a few months ago, and I recommend everyone does. The results are passable and when they aren't there is always !g
- bogomipz 10y ago
  I am curious why you recommend everyone else switch since you say "The results are passable." That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.
  - zokula 10y ago
    Agreed just use Startpage.com for better results and privacy than you can get from DDG.
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      Wow this is great. I had no idea this existed. Thanks for the tip!
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rangibaby 10y ago
    It's good enough and they are not spying on me. I am going to start installing it on people's computers that I fix. They usually have Ask toolbar or something anyway lol.
AdamSC1 10y ago
For the team here at DuckDuckGo, we were excited not only to hit 14M searches in a single day but to also cross the threshold of 10B total private searches served. Of which 4B were from last year alone. We wrote a post covering it in our newly launched blog: https://spreadprivacy.com/10-billion-fc7808c91343 https://spreadprivacy.com/10-billion-fc7808c91343 It is always an amazing and humbling moment when we hit a new milestone in our metrics. Our team is so incredibly passionate about what we do. To have people from all over the world rally around this concept of raising the standard of trust online and build this product is one thing. But, for users to endorse that mission at such a growing pace and to share us with their friends and family -- it lets us know we're truly making a difference for people who want to be more private online, and that is incredibly rewarding. So thank you, to all of you who search with us, all of you who know privacy matters, and all of you who work along side us to show that privacy is not a fringe interest but something we can all have!
- themihai 10y ago
  Did you consider changing the domain name?
  - muninn_ 10y ago
    This is the biggest turn off for me for the service. I use it, because I like it, but I really don't like the name.
    - dchuk 10y ago
      If you use it, and like it, why does the name matter anymore? Is it an embarrassment thing?
      - eganist 10y ago
        Google is basically a verb at this point. It's hard to tell people to DuckDuckGo it. GoDuck might be interesting. "GoDuck it."
hyperpape 10y ago
I couldn't find anything obviously authoritative, but various sources suggested Google does 3500m or so daily searches. That puts DDG at less than 1%, but their percentage growth is huge. It can't continue forever, but they could be a significant search engine if it doesn't peter out too soon. I tried DDG several times, but it finally stuck earlier this year. I'm really happy it's available as an alternative.
- tiffanyh 10y ago
  >> " Google does 3500m or so daily searches" It's difficult to define what constitutes a "search" these days. Since google release autocomplete search in 2004 [1], each letter you type into the search bar results in a search query. So simply searching for "superbowl 2017" would result in 14 searches because there are 14 characters. So, do you count that as 1 search or 14? [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/how-googles-autocomplete-was-created-invented-born/278991/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/how-go...
  - Tepix 10y ago
    Good point. However when you switch to a different search engine in your browser, you'll likely still have incremental search for the new search provider.
  - puzzle 10y ago
    No, search as you type only happened with Instant Search, which launched in September 2010. From 2004 on, you still needed to press Enter to perform an actual search. Even now, you can inspect JS traffic and see that usually there aren't 14 searches when you enter [superbowl 2017]. Internal metrics reflect a lot of that nuance and more. Source: I own a Google Instant shirt because I was in one of the teams involved in months of testing and in the launch.
- altern8tif 10y ago
  I suspect the main reason for Google's stranglehold is that it's usually set up as the default search engine for many web browsers (both for desktop and mobile) and the vast majority of users don't change that. In spite of its good growth rate, DDG will have to change tack if it wants to make the leap to the next stage. *FYI, DDG is my default search engine.
verandaguy 10y ago
>In addition, the search engine is celebrating a combined total of 10 billion searches performed, with 4 billion searches conducted in December 2016 alone. This can't be right, can it? DDG's been around for years, and nearly half of its total use volume has been in the past month?
- altern8tif 10y ago
  It should be 4 billion in 2016, not just Dec 2016.
mkj 10y ago
Just trying it now, when you go "back" after clicking Images you go to duckduckgo.com, not the previous page you were on. The url changes, so it's a bit strange. Results are decent, though the results page seems harder to skim read.
- actualdc1 10y ago
  I've been using DDG as my primary search engine for years, and this feature continues to trip me up on a daily basis.
decasteve 10y ago
I've been using DuckDuckGo since @yegg's first announcement of it (on reddit iirc). The relevance of the results compared to their competitors' has been noticeably improving over the years. When a search doesn't quite give me what I'm looking for, I prepend !sp on my query (to use startpage.com). I use this less and less and for most things DDG gets me where I need to go. I'm a huge fan. I'm thankful services like this are available--that respect our privacy. I did have good intentions of contributing to duckduckhack.com but have regretfully not gotten around to it yet.
- zegerjan 10y ago
  I still insert `!g` in about 25% percent of my searches. Loved to see a metric on how many people do the same or append it on the search box after seeing the results. I like DDG a lot, but I feel that Google knowing so much about me prevents it from showing ruby gems over ruby lang search results. Must say, this has improved greatly last year, but I don't trust DDG just yet fully.
  - deftturtle 10y ago
    What would DDG have to do to earn greater trust?
  - eridius 10y ago
    I use !g if a DDG search doesn't give me anything useful, but this is far less than 25% of my searches, and in nearly every case, Google didn't have anything useful either. Really the only times !g actually turns out to be useful is when I'm searching for something that's well within my filter bubble on Google, but generic enough that I get the wrong results when outside of my filter bubble (e.g. DDG). But that's not really all that often.
yclept 10y ago
Congratulations on the big growth. I'm annoyed that I can't set DDG has the default search engine in Chrome (Android). I hold a bookmark though so 'duc' autocompletes to duckduckgo. Not too inconvenient.
- AdamSC1 10y ago
  Hi yclept, we understand the frustration! We're always exploring our options here. There are other Android browsers that do/can include us!
- striking 10y ago
  There's a patch floating around the interwebs that lets you do just that. But that's a real pain.
- darkparticle 10y ago
  1) Install Chrome Canary. 2) Type duckduckgo.com in the address bar. 3) Do a search from the search box. 4) Repeat step 2 and 3 for a decent number of times (say 5 to 8 times). 5) Go to settings->Search engine. Here you should see duckduckgo.com in the recently visited section along with the usual options.
ecommerceguy 10y ago
Given the climate of political discord that is occurring on Google sites, especially google "news" (which gets prominent placement in many google searches now), I've switched my iPhone default search in Safari to DDG. I've been pleasantly surprised that I don't need to google things for 90% of searches.
RodericDay 10y ago
DuckDuckGo is great and I've actually had surprising success in getting non-tech people to try it out, and stick with it! My girlfriend has set it as default it in all of her devices, she loves the !bang searches (imdb, wiki, etc.) and lack of ads. Also, half of my co-workers. !python, !mdn, etc. I think the biggest hurdle going forward is the fact that DDG is much better for English results than in other languages (we work half in French), but I hope the project grows and grows. Google needs to go down eventually!
pcora 10y ago
DDG is a great search engine. I missed the lack of personalized search that Google gets you, but once you get used and learn how to search properly, you start loving it. And I moved from Google on my phone due to the AMP crap.
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jbmorgado 10y ago
The only thing I miss in DDG compared to Google, is the ability to search in time during the last year. As a researcher and doing some coding, it's invaluable for me to filter results that way.
BEEdwards 10y ago
I want to like DDG, but the results are never good. Much like when I use bing, I more often than not I must re search for whatever I want on google to find it.
- adventurer 10y ago
  I have used it for about a month. I feel like it may be good for most people, but google is far more precise for hard to find pages and answers to programming questions, error strings, etc.
tdkl 10y ago
Is there any official reason why DDG isn't among the list of possible search engines on Google Chrome Android build ?
- kyrra 10y ago
  It will be there soon. Looks like all the changes to support this landed recently. Though it's not so much DDG being in the list, but the available search engines will be the last 5 search engines you visited. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=348360 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=348360
  - tdkl 10y ago
    Thanks for this, tried it in Android Canary version and it works great.
nueded 10y ago
duckduckgo have significantly changed the way i use the web. namely the bangs feature. simply put it's ingenious. https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang the search has improved in the past few years but when it fails i merely have to add a !g to the query.
- bwidlar 10y ago
  Yes, bangs are great.
kerkeslager 10y ago
I'd love to see if there's a similar uptrend in usage for other services who advertise privacy as part of their value. Anecdotally, a large chunk of my social network has joined Signal just in the last few days, and without any prompting from me. This is speculation, but it may be that many people who were ambivalent about surveillance under Obama are concerned about surveillance under Trump, and we'll see more user demand for privacy for the next few years.
agumonkey 10y ago
I don't appreciate ddg results much, but I realized not long ago the feeling of joy by knowing I'm not being tracked for any thing I search. I can throw anything at it carelessly.
rodionos 10y ago
What's interesting is that growth has accelerated since September 2016. http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/13/ http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/13/ Any good reasons behind it?
- dhfhduk 10y ago
  If you increase the time scale, the acceleration doesn't seem so big--it looks like there's a fairly linear trend. What's interesting to me is that there's such a consistent drop in searches around the holidays. I'd expect some drop, but not that big, relatively speaking.
jackskell 10y ago
I've been using DDG for a couple years, not that too many people would know about it. Heh. Good enough for what I do, and having to go a few pages deep sometimes doesn't really bother me, and in fact routinely exposes me to resources that I was not aware of. I have, and will continue to, pass good privacy practices on to others, particularly non-tech users, even though people don't always have the time for privacy discussions, they become aware of the issues.
cygned 10y ago
I recently submitted a bug in the search to DDG. It's very nice to be able to help improve the project. And the bug reporter is neat. Never seen anything comparable in competitive products.
majkinetor 10y ago
I wonder why DDG bang search is praised like its a first time phenomena ? What ? ... did people live in a cave all this time ? It existed for more then a decade all around. Some examples include early Opera, chrome, vimium plugin, Surfraw (linux CLI search tool) etc... Anyway, DDG is refreshing. You can even turn off adds in the options. Google may be a great search engine but as far as I am concerned, it can delete 'don't be evil' phrase from its mission statement.
patrick96 10y ago
With 4 billion searches in December 2016, DDG would have had on average 129 million searches every day of december. I have to assume this actually meant 4 billion searches in 2016
escritor 10y ago
DDG has become habitual for me, mainly because of the bang feature. I have a blog on DDG's best bangs (and how to use them): http://duckgobang.com http://duckgobang.com
beebeebush 10y ago
Bigup ! I hope people start to use more your search engine. Im very happy duckduckgo user. I would not care a less about google's search or how they try to control/hide/penalty website owners.
go_ghoti 10y ago
One very useful differentiating feature DDG could add would be a discussion forum search filter, like Google used to have before discontinuing it in 2014.
korzun 10y ago
With or without API?
raresp 10y ago
I've seen that some peoples talk about a name change. They say that: "duckduckgo" is too much (and they're right in my opinion). It's interesting to see that duck.com is owned by google. This is what they call competition :) The duckduckgo team should be smart enough to keep secret an upcoming name change/rebranding. See for example how comodo tried to register "let's encrypt" trademark: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/06/23/1946249/comodo-attempting-to-register-lets-encrypt-trademarks-and-thats-not-right https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/06/23/1946249/comodo-atte... . It's not easy to beat google at it's own game. Good luck!

291 points by riqbal 10y ago

I use it. It's not as good as Google, but it pretty much gets the job done when I need it to.

The key for switching to DuckDuckGo for me was to set it as the default searchengine / startpage on all browsers. While the relevance of search results is slightly (noticable) worse than Google, I think the tradeoff between privacy VS result-quality is worth it. Thanks for making such a great product!

AdamSC1 10y ago
Hey Phil, DuckDuckGo employee here - Be sure to use the 'feedback' button that you find on the search results page whenever you feel a search isn't up to standards. Our team has been working hard at increasing relevancy, but the best changes come when users let us know what they need. Since we don't filter bubble results (https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...) results certainly feel different when making the leap, and that takes an adjustment period for most people. But, if you actually feel you have examples where you can't find what you're looking for, then we want to know so we can provide you a seamless search experience as well!
- johnnyg 10y ago
  Thanks for the tip. I'll do that. I use DDG as primary but any time the search results aren't relevant, I fall back to Google. I fall back a lot right now and I think this is the area for DDG to focus in.
- ximeng 10y ago
  Google has a list of scheduled flights when you put in two airport codes which is useful, doesn't look like DDG does the same.
  - tyingq 10y ago
    Google paid $700m to get that functionality though.
    - ximeng 10y ago
      This is a significant subset of what ITA does though - just a list of what flights go on each day of the week and at what time. I expect that can be built for significantly less than 700 million, certainly among the popular airports that most people search for. I suspect they might have had it before the ITA purchase as well but not 100% sure. The Google flights search with pricing and custom dates and routes came after ITA was bought I think.
      - tyingq 10y ago
        It's basically QPX. Not just flights and times, but prices as well. It is the most significant part of ITA. Flights, times, and fares is deceptively hard to get right. There's a reason there are only a few providers. Edit: Ahh. If you're saying DDG could get by with just flights and times, and no fares, I see what you mean. That seems to be reflected in the pricing for the FlightStats product vs Google's flight/times/fares API pricing, yes. Parity with Google search requires fares though.
  - AdamSC1 10y ago
    At DuckDuckGo we've got open-source Instant Answers that currently pull in information from over 1100 sources: (https://duck.co/ia https://duck.co/ia) If you know of a good data source for scheduled flights you can easily contribute an Instant Answer, or leave the source as a suggestion for our community!
    - ximeng 10y ago
- philfrasty 10y ago
  Hey Adam, thanks for the tip! Will do for sure in the future. Edge cases I have in mind are usually related to indexing of forum posts, where I search for a specific-term (say bookkeeping) and roughly know the Google results of the most important forums by heart, but DDG does not even show them. Second case I just used yesterday was searching for an exact match for an @gmail address of a priest (for our marriage) where Google had a lot more results than DDG. Keep up the great work!
- hedora 10y ago
  There was a long HN thread talking about DuckDuckGo results vs Google behavior. Some people are put off by the fact that you don't substitute synonyms as aggressively as google. A concrete example was "foss [search term]". Google seems to rewrite this to "[open source] foobar", even with bubbling off. I prefer the duck duck go behavior (and google's aggressive query rewriting drove me nuts back when I used google -- it makes it hard to run precise searches!). After all, if I bothered to type an obscure acronym, I'm looking for results that actually contain the acronym! Maybe a "did you mean 'open source [search term]'" link at the top of the page, and even a preference toggle to enable aggressive query rewording by default would help.
  - chrisper 10y ago
    I believe if you do "foss" (with quotation marks) in Google it will not rewrite it. But I am not sure.
- gingerlime 10y ago
  Not sure how this might affect privacy, or maybe you're doing it already, but couldn't you guys sample every time someone runs a search and then the same search with !g ?
  - AdamSC1 10y ago
    Hi Gingerlime, Thanks for the suggestion. Part of the reason we don't do this is the returned search results on Google are Google's commercial property. To use them in such a capacity would require us to reach a commercial agreement with them. These agreements come with stipulations that we don't feel represent the privacy interests of our users, so we don't pursue such agreements. The other reason, is because of the 'filter bubble' Google tailors results based on user tracking, which is what helps with result accuracy. So the results we as DuckDuckGo see on a query would be different than what you see. Plus, even if we could see your results, we wouldn't want to. We don't think it is good to be filter bubbled, we want to serve you the best results we can without censoring you. It should be your decision to a view a certain website, not ours!
    - ximeng 10y ago
      You could still identify searches where there's room for improvement even without comparing with Google results.
      - tfigment 10y ago
        I may be wrong but the reason is again privacy (and probably cost). If they tracked your queries and tied them back to you for future then they need to store your information or enough to tie to you and what you clicked on and the history to improve things. These all become things that they can be subpoenaed for which is anti-privacy. Don't believe for a second that governments are not already banging at the door for access. The only ways to combat is either hosting in neutral offshore datacenter and incorporating there and living there is to not collect "useful" information in the first place on users. I think they went for the latter.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  I've had a lot of problems with literal searches on DDG over the years. That is, searches containing search terms in double quotes, like this: "my search terms". DDG is committed to returning literal search results for the exact query that the user typed within double quotes, right? Sometimes I wonder if DDG is going the route of other search engines and trying to return "relevant" results instead of only results containing the exact search term the user asked for within double quotes. Could you make clear exactly what DDG's policy is on exact search terms within double quotes? Does DDG honor such requests?
- asb 10y ago
  I'd be really interested in a write-up of how you use and process feedback.
  - AdamSC1 10y ago
    Hey Asb, That's a great idea - I'm not personally involved in the feedback process, but I'll certainly bring this up to the relevant team!
- nof 10y ago
  I often experience that ddg gives me results from really old websites. In cases this is OK, but when used for tracking down bugs or software errors it can be frustrating. Still love you though!
speg 10y ago
I have it set in only one of my browsers and am always jarred when DDG results come up, quickly falling back to !g Switching over everywhere would probably help me adapt more quickly.
- mikemee 10y ago
  Yes, I encountered this. Soon after I had set ddg to the default on all my browsers (mobile & desktop), I found that DDGs results have been perfectly acceptable most of the time. Further, I find that I use shortcuts like !w, !yt, or plain "!" much more often than I use !g due to poor (or simply less targeted) search results.
burger_moon 10y ago
Setting it to default was what also got me using it daily. I've known about it for a long time but never used it much simply because when I open a new tab I want to search from there. I'd say I'm happy with the search results I get and never find myself going to google unless I need a map. I also really like that they adopted the quick results if you hit something common and get a excerpt which usually has my answer in it right at the top of the search results.

nerdponx 10y ago

I'm a professional data scientist. Apart from donating, how can I support the project? It's my default search engine everywhere now.

muse900 10y ago
That ^, I think a lot of us would like to volunteer some of our time to help duckduckgo
charlieegan3 10y ago
DuckDuckHack https://duckduckhack.com/ https://duckduckhack.com/ might be a good starting point. There are also a number of zeroclick related projects on their github profile: https://github.com/duckduckgo https://github.com/duckduckgo
AdamSC1 10y ago
As some others have mentioned you can check out https://duckduckhack.com/ https://duckduckhack.com/ our open-source community that powers our Instant Answers (the answers that appear before the search results/ads). Our community has helped us pull in data from over 1100 sources to make amazing experiences. The value of this is that you can build out anything you are passionate about. It creates some great niche experiences. Maybe you want to look up who is in space right now: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=people+in+space&ia=answer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=people+in+space&ia=answer Or you need to look up some NFL games: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=patriots+games&ia=nfl&iai=641 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=patriots+games&ia=nfl&iai=641 Or you can't remember the details of that card from your Magic The Gathering deck: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mtg+boiling+seas&ia=games&iax=1 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mtg+boiling+seas&ia=games&iax=1 We encourage people to build out the answers they want to see!
- cpeterso 10y ago
  I've had some problems with DDG's bang searches on some sites where the sites' search URLs moved or could use better search parameters. Where can users report broken bang searches or suggest better options? DDG has a lot of open source code on GitHub. A list mapping bang search terms to site URLs could be maintained as a simple text file on GitHub so contributors could test them or suggest improvements.

rangibaby 10y ago

I switched to DDG as my default search everywhere a few months ago, and I recommend everyone does. The results are passable and when they aren't there is always !g

bogomipz 10y ago
I am curious why you recommend everyone else switch since you say "The results are passable." That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.
- zokula 10y ago
  Agreed just use Startpage.com for better results and privacy than you can get from DDG.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Wow this is great. I had no idea this existed. Thanks for the tip!
- deleted 10y ago
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- rangibaby 10y ago
  It's good enough and they are not spying on me. I am going to start installing it on people's computers that I fix. They usually have Ask toolbar or something anyway lol.

AdamSC1 10y ago

For the team here at DuckDuckGo, we were excited not only to hit 14M searches in a single day but to also cross the threshold of 10B total private searches served. Of which 4B were from last year alone. We wrote a post covering it in our newly launched blog: https://spreadprivacy.com/10-billion-fc7808c91343 https://spreadprivacy.com/10-billion-fc7808c91343 It is always an amazing and humbling moment when we hit a new milestone in our metrics. Our team is so incredibly passionate about what we do. To have people from all over the world rally around this concept of raising the standard of trust online and build this product is one thing. But, for users to endorse that mission at such a growing pace and to share us with their friends and family -- it lets us know we're truly making a difference for people who want to be more private online, and that is incredibly rewarding. So thank you, to all of you who search with us, all of you who know privacy matters, and all of you who work along side us to show that privacy is not a fringe interest but something we can all have!

themihai 10y ago
Did you consider changing the domain name?
- muninn_ 10y ago
  This is the biggest turn off for me for the service. I use it, because I like it, but I really don't like the name.
  - dchuk 10y ago
    If you use it, and like it, why does the name matter anymore? Is it an embarrassment thing?
    - eganist 10y ago
      Google is basically a verb at this point. It's hard to tell people to DuckDuckGo it. GoDuck might be interesting. "GoDuck it."

hyperpape 10y ago

I couldn't find anything obviously authoritative, but various sources suggested Google does 3500m or so daily searches. That puts DDG at less than 1%, but their percentage growth is huge. It can't continue forever, but they could be a significant search engine if it doesn't peter out too soon. I tried DDG several times, but it finally stuck earlier this year. I'm really happy it's available as an alternative.

tiffanyh 10y ago
>> " Google does 3500m or so daily searches" It's difficult to define what constitutes a "search" these days. Since google release autocomplete search in 2004 [1], each letter you type into the search bar results in a search query. So simply searching for "superbowl 2017" would result in 14 searches because there are 14 characters. So, do you count that as 1 search or 14? [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/how-googles-autocomplete-was-created-invented-born/278991/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/how-go...
- Tepix 10y ago
  Good point. However when you switch to a different search engine in your browser, you'll likely still have incremental search for the new search provider.
- puzzle 10y ago
  No, search as you type only happened with Instant Search, which launched in September 2010. From 2004 on, you still needed to press Enter to perform an actual search. Even now, you can inspect JS traffic and see that usually there aren't 14 searches when you enter [superbowl 2017]. Internal metrics reflect a lot of that nuance and more. Source: I own a Google Instant shirt because I was in one of the teams involved in months of testing and in the launch.
altern8tif 10y ago
I suspect the main reason for Google's stranglehold is that it's usually set up as the default search engine for many web browsers (both for desktop and mobile) and the vast majority of users don't change that. In spite of its good growth rate, DDG will have to change tack if it wants to make the leap to the next stage. *FYI, DDG is my default search engine.

verandaguy 10y ago

>In addition, the search engine is celebrating a combined total of 10 billion searches performed, with 4 billion searches conducted in December 2016 alone. This can't be right, can it? DDG's been around for years, and nearly half of its total use volume has been in the past month?

altern8tif 10y ago
It should be 4 billion in 2016, not just Dec 2016.

mkj 10y ago

Just trying it now, when you go "back" after clicking Images you go to duckduckgo.com, not the previous page you were on. The url changes, so it's a bit strange. Results are decent, though the results page seems harder to skim read.

actualdc1 10y ago
I've been using DDG as my primary search engine for years, and this feature continues to trip me up on a daily basis.

decasteve 10y ago

I've been using DuckDuckGo since @yegg's first announcement of it (on reddit iirc). The relevance of the results compared to their competitors' has been noticeably improving over the years. When a search doesn't quite give me what I'm looking for, I prepend !sp on my query (to use startpage.com). I use this less and less and for most things DDG gets me where I need to go. I'm a huge fan. I'm thankful services like this are available--that respect our privacy. I did have good intentions of contributing to duckduckhack.com but have regretfully not gotten around to it yet.

zegerjan 10y ago
I still insert `!g` in about 25% percent of my searches. Loved to see a metric on how many people do the same or append it on the search box after seeing the results. I like DDG a lot, but I feel that Google knowing so much about me prevents it from showing ruby gems over ruby lang search results. Must say, this has improved greatly last year, but I don't trust DDG just yet fully.
- deftturtle 10y ago
  What would DDG have to do to earn greater trust?
- eridius 10y ago
  I use !g if a DDG search doesn't give me anything useful, but this is far less than 25% of my searches, and in nearly every case, Google didn't have anything useful either. Really the only times !g actually turns out to be useful is when I'm searching for something that's well within my filter bubble on Google, but generic enough that I get the wrong results when outside of my filter bubble (e.g. DDG). But that's not really all that often.

yclept 10y ago

Congratulations on the big growth. I'm annoyed that I can't set DDG has the default search engine in Chrome (Android). I hold a bookmark though so 'duc' autocompletes to duckduckgo. Not too inconvenient.

AdamSC1 10y ago
Hi yclept, we understand the frustration! We're always exploring our options here. There are other Android browsers that do/can include us!
striking 10y ago
There's a patch floating around the interwebs that lets you do just that. But that's a real pain.
darkparticle 10y ago
1) Install Chrome Canary. 2) Type duckduckgo.com in the address bar. 3) Do a search from the search box. 4) Repeat step 2 and 3 for a decent number of times (say 5 to 8 times). 5) Go to settings->Search engine. Here you should see duckduckgo.com in the recently visited section along with the usual options.

ecommerceguy 10y ago

Given the climate of political discord that is occurring on Google sites, especially google "news" (which gets prominent placement in many google searches now), I've switched my iPhone default search in Safari to DDG. I've been pleasantly surprised that I don't need to google things for 90% of searches.

RodericDay 10y ago

DuckDuckGo is great and I've actually had surprising success in getting non-tech people to try it out, and stick with it! My girlfriend has set it as default it in all of her devices, she loves the !bang searches (imdb, wiki, etc.) and lack of ads. Also, half of my co-workers. !python, !mdn, etc. I think the biggest hurdle going forward is the fact that DDG is much better for English results than in other languages (we work half in French), but I hope the project grows and grows. Google needs to go down eventually!

pcora 10y ago

DDG is a great search engine. I missed the lack of personalized search that Google gets you, but once you get used and learn how to search properly, you start loving it. And I moved from Google on my phone due to the AMP crap.

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jbmorgado 10y ago

The only thing I miss in DDG compared to Google, is the ability to search in time during the last year. As a researcher and doing some coding, it's invaluable for me to filter results that way.

BEEdwards 10y ago

I want to like DDG, but the results are never good. Much like when I use bing, I more often than not I must re search for whatever I want on google to find it.

adventurer 10y ago
I have used it for about a month. I feel like it may be good for most people, but google is far more precise for hard to find pages and answers to programming questions, error strings, etc.

tdkl 10y ago

Is there any official reason why DDG isn't among the list of possible search engines on Google Chrome Android build ?

kyrra 10y ago
It will be there soon. Looks like all the changes to support this landed recently. Though it's not so much DDG being in the list, but the available search engines will be the last 5 search engines you visited. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=348360 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=348360
- tdkl 10y ago
  Thanks for this, tried it in Android Canary version and it works great.

nueded 10y ago

duckduckgo have significantly changed the way i use the web. namely the bangs feature. simply put it's ingenious. https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang the search has improved in the past few years but when it fails i merely have to add a !g to the query.

bwidlar 10y ago
Yes, bangs are great.

kerkeslager 10y ago

I'd love to see if there's a similar uptrend in usage for other services who advertise privacy as part of their value. Anecdotally, a large chunk of my social network has joined Signal just in the last few days, and without any prompting from me. This is speculation, but it may be that many people who were ambivalent about surveillance under Obama are concerned about surveillance under Trump, and we'll see more user demand for privacy for the next few years.

agumonkey 10y ago

I don't appreciate ddg results much, but I realized not long ago the feeling of joy by knowing I'm not being tracked for any thing I search. I can throw anything at it carelessly.

rodionos 10y ago

What's interesting is that growth has accelerated since September 2016. http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/13/ http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/13/ Any good reasons behind it?

dhfhduk 10y ago
If you increase the time scale, the acceleration doesn't seem so big--it looks like there's a fairly linear trend. What's interesting to me is that there's such a consistent drop in searches around the holidays. I'd expect some drop, but not that big, relatively speaking.

jackskell 10y ago

I've been using DDG for a couple years, not that too many people would know about it. Heh. Good enough for what I do, and having to go a few pages deep sometimes doesn't really bother me, and in fact routinely exposes me to resources that I was not aware of. I have, and will continue to, pass good privacy practices on to others, particularly non-tech users, even though people don't always have the time for privacy discussions, they become aware of the issues.

cygned 10y ago

I recently submitted a bug in the search to DDG. It's very nice to be able to help improve the project. And the bug reporter is neat. Never seen anything comparable in competitive products.

majkinetor 10y ago

I wonder why DDG bang search is praised like its a first time phenomena ? What ? ... did people live in a cave all this time ? It existed for more then a decade all around. Some examples include early Opera, chrome, vimium plugin, Surfraw (linux CLI search tool) etc... Anyway, DDG is refreshing. You can even turn off adds in the options. Google may be a great search engine but as far as I am concerned, it can delete 'don't be evil' phrase from its mission statement.

patrick96 10y ago

With 4 billion searches in December 2016, DDG would have had on average 129 million searches every day of december. I have to assume this actually meant 4 billion searches in 2016

escritor 10y ago

DDG has become habitual for me, mainly because of the bang feature. I have a blog on DDG's best bangs (and how to use them): http://duckgobang.com http://duckgobang.com

beebeebush 10y ago

Bigup ! I hope people start to use more your search engine. Im very happy duckduckgo user. I would not care a less about google's search or how they try to control/hide/penalty website owners.

go_ghoti 10y ago

One very useful differentiating feature DDG could add would be a discussion forum search filter, like Google used to have before discontinuing it in 2014.

korzun 10y ago

With or without API?

raresp 10y ago

I've seen that some peoples talk about a name change. They say that: "duckduckgo" is too much (and they're right in my opinion). It's interesting to see that duck.com is owned by google. This is what they call competition :) The duckduckgo team should be smart enough to keep secret an upcoming name change/rebranding. See for example how comodo tried to register "let's encrypt" trademark: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/06/23/1946249/comodo-attempting-to-register-lets-encrypt-trademarks-and-thats-not-right https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/06/23/1946249/comodo-atte... . It's not easy to beat google at it's own game. Good luck!