If you change the "365 Day Average" above the graph to, say "7 day average" you'll see a recent uptick that does justify the "exploding right now" language. It

If you change the "365 Day Average" above the graph to, say "7 day average" you'll see a recent uptick that does justify the "exploding right now" language. It went from 23.5 million/day to 27.9 in the last 51 days, which is 134% annualized growth. Something happened around 7 August. Google's privacy policy change in 2012 is perhaps the closest comparable past event - over two months DDG traffic trebled. Recent stories about Google might be driving this.