12 ms·
DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)
- Udo 13y agoThey got a huge boost out of the whole NSA fallout, which they consequently used to great effect for marketing. Good for them! I still hate the name, though.
- gboudrias 13y agoSame here, good for them, I think they are really good people who deserve the success. Also hate the name, but I guess silliness is hip.
- throwaway420 13y agoTo each his own, but I think the name is endearing and cute. I've been using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine ever since the NSA fallout came, and the results are surprisingly usable for most common tasks. In some cases they feel better than Google because I'm seeing some useful sites that Google doesn't ordinarily show. The only area where DuckDuckGo searches have been lacking for me is in finding useful technical articles and code results. Sometimes when I have to search for a complicated error message or research some programming problem to see how other people have approached it DDG will not work for me and I have to resort to Google or directly search Stackoverflow or something. But it's already usable for the average person IMO.
- denis1 13y agoFrom my experience, code search is not that bad. Usually the relevant SO posts are on top (maybe even "featured"). I've encountered this problem on obscure code searches though.
- boyter 13y agoOut of curiosity are you getting good code search results in the zero click box or the general search results?
- denis1 13y agoThe results are pretty good, but ,as I said, usually the searches are not too complex. YMMV.
- boyter 13y agoSorry should have been more clear. I run the site that provides ddg with the code results (usually) so a search like "php mysql_query example" will trigger my API. I am always interested to find people using this and seeing if the result was OK for them.
- marssaxman 13y agoIt's not so much endearing and cute as it is just confusing and weird; it makes the project sound like it must be kind of a joke, not a serious attempt at building a high quality search engine. I don't understand what they were going for.
- charlieflowers 13y agoI can see that, but remember that "Google" and "Yahoo" hardly sounded like uber-mature names when they came out either. They sound like serious products/companies now, but that's merely because of their sucsess.
- marssaxman 13y agoA fair point. I still think "Yahoo" is a dorky name, but perhaps that's because I don't really understand why they still exist. Google, on the other hand, has earned my respect and thus I have stopped noticing what a silly name they have.
- mchusma 13y agoI think one fewer syllable and fact that neither yahoo or google were commonly written (or said) make them better names. I use DDG, but think the name is terrible. It also can't become a verb as easily, as google has.
- lostlogin 13y agoTrue - but saying that I'll Google it then jumping on Duck Duck Go is more amusing.
- pessimizer 13y agohttp://www.collegehumor.com/video/5072264/googling-with-bing http://www.collegehumor.com/video/5072264/googling-with-bing
- tokyovapr 13y agoYou do realize there is nothing DDG and do to shield you from the NSA, right?
- baby 13y agoI think it's better than "bing" and "yahoo".
- stephanos2k 13y agoEven 2 of my friends who don't even know the difference between Chrome and Internet Explorer recently talked about "this new search engine, something with duck...". It's catching on :)
- alan_cx 13y agoSounds just like when google was new. As good sign, I'd say.
- andrewcooke 13y agoif anyone is curious, the first article in the guardian based on snowden's data was on 5 june, about where P is marked.
- geekam 13y agoHow transparent is DuckDuckGo when it comes to privacy that they claim?
- Ihmahr 13y agoIn case they can't handle scaling fast enough: www.startpage.com
- dewey 13y agoI like the idea but I don't understand how you could switch to a site that ugly.
- lh7777 13y agoI agree, but I've always found DDG results to be pretty terrible, so I just ended up using Startpage with some custom CSS.
- mortalkastor 13y agoFortunately, there is a userstyle, aptly named "startpage clean & minimal", for fixing the ugliness. http://userstyles.org/styles/85728/startpage-clean-minimal http://userstyles.org/styles/85728/startpage-clean-minimal
- hardtke 13y agoThis increase in traffic are not being seen in the unique visitor counts measured by Compete (https://siteanalytics.compete.com/duckduckgo.com/ https://siteanalytics.compete.com/duckduckgo.com/). It appears as if a loyal core of duckduckgo users are switching to it entirely. Alternatively, duckduckgo users are not tracked by Compete, which is entire possible since I believe Compete gets their data from browser extensions that don't respect privacy. Note, Compete data is old, and wouldn't reflect this surge.
- denis1 13y agoJudging by my own experience and some of my colleagues, this seems to be the case. I switched to DDG about a week before the whole NSA thing. At first it was awkward, queries are slower than google (sometimes the results are worse), but after a while I stopped noticing it. I don't mind waiting a second more if it means not being tracked, and most of the time my queries are simple and the results are on par with other search engines. *edit changed <<worst>> to <<worse>> the results aren't that bad...
- ics 13y agoI soft-switched a month or two ago and in the beginning was adding !g to pretty much every query out of habit. Over the last week however I decided to poke around more (checking out the other ! tags, understanding what sorts of special queries would get answers) and have only asked for Google results once since to compare with DDG. Google's presentation is still much better (i.e. if I type in Yankees on Google I get a fully styled box score and schedule... with DDG I get some Wikipedia suggestions and a small blurb from MLB/ESPN news underneath.) but for web results I haven't been too disappointed. It's far less frustrating than I remember it being for regular use, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if recent events have prompted more casual users to commit to it. Edit: For a good example of its biases, search "hacker news" on ddg, bing, then google.
- sveme 13y agoInteresting. DuckDuckGo shows news.ycombinator.com as the featured site, while Google does not show this exact link at all on the first site, neither via g! nor s!. Only the HN jobs site is in the top ten search results. Bing has it correctly again.
- lettergram 13y agoJesus that's a spike
- mtgx 13y agoStartpage.com is doing pretty well, too (and is not based in US). They've just reached 4 million searches per day: https://startpage.com/eng/press/pr-four-million.html https://startpage.com/eng/press/pr-four-million.html
- helloworld99 13y agoWow, now that's a spike. Kudos to DDG. Aside from spying on you from every angle, Google is now unusable, almost everything on page one is ads, ads, ads and Google "content." http://news.yahoo.com/google-search-displays-only-13-organic-results-rest-174055430.html http://news.yahoo.com/google-search-displays-only-13-organic... What a shame, they sold their soul for short term and temporary gains. We should go a little out of our way to support new search engines, having so much power in one hand is too dangerous for the web and businesses.
- ck2 13y agoI have to admit I was skeptical about DDG chances but hard work and being in right place at the right time with privacy has given it the success it deserves. (and it's written in perl of all things) ps. bonus points for deleting eHow from results
- rickdale 13y agoI also think that their name is part of the reason for their success. It's different from 'google' or 'bing' or 'yahoo' and it yet it is specific for what it does and I think lends people a partial understanding as to what the benefits are, right out of the box. I've been getting the DDG newsletters since day 1, but I can't seem to fully adapt to duck duck go. I guess I just am addicted to using google. =EDIT= For those commenting that they aren't familiar with the name, its interesting that you still understand its a search engine. Thus for you, understanding the context of the name is irrelevant. But for those not familiar with search engines, but do know duck duck goose, I think its pretty logical to explain 'duck duck go' as a search engine.
- andrewcooke 13y agohuh. ok, can someone explain the name, please? i think it must be specific to some (american?) culture.
- carb 13y agoIt's a play on the name of a popular children's game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck,_duck,_goose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck,_duck,_goose
- shmerl 13y agoI've never heard of this game. I thought that the name hints to the duck test: "if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test I.e. that Duck Duck Go is what it looks it is - it's a search engine. And not some tool which secretly harvests data of its users for its own benefit.
- anonymousDan 13y agoCan anyone who uses duckduckgo tell me whether it does anything to hide your identity when you tell it to drop to google using !g ?
- yuvadam 13y agoIt does not, because !g effectively redirects you to google.com/search?q=foo, where the g00g tracks you as it always does.
- arscan 13y agoFrom what I can tell, not a heck of alot. It can't do anything about the fact that I will send google my cookies when I go to google.com It does point to https://encrypted.google.com https://encrypted.google.com, which is slightly better, but not much... http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/32367/what-is-the-difference-between-https-google-com-and-https-encrypted-google-c http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/32367/what-is-th...
- jmilkbal 13y agoNope, it's just a redirect to Google with your query filled in for the appropriate query string argument. If you want to use Google privately, use Start Page (http://startpage.com http://startpage.com) or Ixquick (http://ixquick.com http://ixquick.com).
- cinquemb 13y agoThe query from ddg to startpage is !sp and to Ixquick is !ix
- mike-cardwell 13y ago"!s" also works for startpage
- pyrocat 13y agowelp, time to switch to DDG full-time. Thanks!
- tommaxwell 13y agoI'm really glad that DDG has been able to capitalize on the NSA fallout. I remember checking the site out awhile ago but defaulted to expecting failure (hey, I'm not a VC). The only real reason I haven't switched is that I'm VERY wired into the Google ecosystem. I use Google Apps heavily and have a Nexus phone. Search results on DDG aren't always great but that was never really a problem for me.
- apaprocki 13y agoWell I'd like to believe correlation is causation and that the Bloomberg TV appearance made it skyrocket :)
- sdoowpilihp 13y agoI really like duck duck go. I just wish they would register ddg.cm so I don't have to type out the whole url. I would register it myself and forward it if it wasn't for the fact that cm registrations cost nearly 100 dollars.
- Voxie 13y agoTry ddg.gg
- Skalman 13y agoTry http://ddg.gg/ http://ddg.gg/.
- sdoowpilihp 13y agothanks!
- jivid 13y agoWhy not just create a URL alias? Firefox and Chrome both have pretty good add-ons for creating aliases.
- cpeterso 13y agoFirefox has built-in support for Keyword Search bookmarks. You don't need to install an add-on to create aliases. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address... If you bookmark any website's search results page, you can add a keyword and edit the bookmarked URL to include a printf-style %s placeholder. When you enter the keyword plus some string, Firefox opens the bookmarked URL, substituting your string for %s. For example, I have a "w" keyword search for Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?search=%s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?search=%s and a "yt" keyword search for YouTube https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s&search=Search https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s&search=Searc...
- cenhyperion 13y agoI've moved to using it as my default search provider. I'm using it well over half the time and if the results aren't great I add !g to the end to get google's results.
- jeltz 13y agoI personally think the 7 day average gives a better picture than the 28 day for the usage trends. 1 day has too much noise with the day of the week variations. In th 7 day average you can see a decrease after the last spike.
- Kiro 13y agoIs there any reason to switch if you don't really care about privacy? For me DDG is just a skin on top of the Bing search index with a silly name. Why would I use it?
- trafficlight 13y agoBing is only one index source. They have their own crawler, plus they pull from dozens of other sources. http://help.dukgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216399-sources http://help.dukgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216399-source...
- schrodingersCat 13y agoThis myth won't seem to die! Thanks for posting the link
- Kiro 13y agoThe majority of their results come from Bing so how is it a myth?
- schrodingersCat 13y agoIt is true that ddg gets some content from bing, but also from yandex, wolframalpha, and yahoo. Also, ddg does some indexing themselves. Saying that they are "just a skin for bing" doesn't really describe what they are
- mda 13y agoHow much is "some"? There should be a reason why they never say anything about proportions of their secret sauce :)
- ufo 13y agoI kind of like the !bang syntax for searches. Its easier than curating a big list of specific search engines (stackoverflow, wikipedia, amazon, google, ...) yourself.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- xpose2000 13y agoAnd if that then becomes the new average for DDG, is it still misleading? According to the chart, it has a great chance of maintaining its post-Bloomberg new levels.
- xpose2000 13y agoDDG is headed in the right direction. But it still isn't quite ready for me to use it daily. I start typing a query in and have to wait a minute wondering why the suggestions aren't showing up. I am completely used to how Google works. A critical feature I would like to see are real-time search results that Google added a few years ago. Autocomplete suggestions are also critical.
- tippytop 13y agoI use the Wikipedia auto-suggest url [1], it works great for my needs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=opensearch&search=%q https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=opensearch&search=...
- Ellipsis753 13y agoI've got to say that I read the title as "DuckDuckGo gets 28 queries a day on average". It was a lot more impressive when I actually looked at the graph.
- afternoon 13y agoI switched to DDG for a week. I found the results very good considering they don't track at all and can't improve ambiguous terms. I found the performance a bit disappointing however and the lack of Chrome instant suggestions a minor annoyance.
- greghinch 13y agoI like DDG in theory a lot, and have switched my default search to it, but admittedly still end up going back to Google a lot, as DDG often doesn't bring up what I'm looking for, whereas it'll be the first result on Google.
- noloqy 13y agoSame here. I used DDG a couple of years ago, for about 2 months. I also ended up going back to Google for at least 30% of my queries. As a result of the reduction in productivity, I decided to switch back to Google. Besides the anonymity there are a couple of features I like, but content wise there is no match to Google at the moment. One thing I like is the bang feature (!stackoverflow hello world), but realize that Chromium offers something more convenient built-in, which I also rarely use in practice. Still waiting for something that brings the best of both worlds.
- TimJRobinson 13y agoMy take: In 2 months of using DDG I've only had to go back to Google twice, and there were quite a few queries where it was even better than Google (mainly because of the meta information it showed at the top https://duckduckgo.com/?q=4+largest+countries+in+the+Caribbean https://duckduckgo.com/?q=4+largest+countries+in+the+Caribbe... surprised me)
- GhotiFish 13y agoI have a few bookmark keywords I use for searching so ohgodhelpme will search stackoverflow for ohgodhelpme g will search duckduckgo go will search google. I have noticed that as well, I gradually migrated from typing in "g whatever" to "go whatever" Kind of depressing actually. Because I do like DDG.
- jghrng 13y agoI did exactly the same and I unfortunately also really got used to the "go" prefix by now.
- sinkasapa 13y agoYou can always use Startpage to use Google https://startpage.com/ https://startpage.com/. I use both Startpage and DDG frequently. Sometimes the results of one are what I want and sometimes the other. The whole idea of there being just one useful search engine doesn't make sense to me. I only wish these companies would do more to differentiate themselves and that there were more options.
- fear91 13y agoGood. Google monopoly is bad for everyone except their shareholders. I'd love the search market to be split into 3-4 entities with similiar market share - not one getting 80-90% of the cake. Google extracts way too much value out of web traffic, killing the small business - and this phenomenon increases quarter by quarter in its intensity.
- andrewhillman 13y agoI was floored to hear my Uncle tell my mother to download the DDG app because it's the best search engine.
- SolarUpNote 13y agoIf the NSA is recording search requests from the wire, does it matter which search engine you use? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6021008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6021008
- sdp 13y agoIf the connection between you and DDG is over SSL, what does it matter that they've scraped your encrypted packets?
- Domenic_S 13y agoSSL: Intercepted today, decrypted tomorrow http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/06/25/ssl-intercepted-today-decrypted-tomorrow.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/06/25/ssl-intercepted...
- hunterjlang 13y agoWe now support PFS.
- jerf 13y agohttps://twitter.com/duckduckgo/status/349948709418696706 https://twitter.com/duckduckgo/status/349948709418696706
- bluelu 13y agoSo why does the bot counter jump deom 160k to 4 million and goes back to 160k? Do 4 million bots watch bloom berg tv?
- deveac 13y agoI was momentarily taken aback and impressed by "I" until I noticed "J" right beneath it...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lazyjones 13y agoIt surprised me to see how DDG actually succeeded in getting noticed by mainstream media and millions of users despite operating on a very small footprint in an extremely difficult market dominated by Google, arguably by making a few right business / ethic choices. That may be encouraging for people who'd like to keep developing for the web, but found too many interesting areas already well-covered by industry behemoths (with weaknesses?).
- twentyfourseven 13y agoI didn't think I could ever get off the Google habit, but I for one welcome our new DDG overlord! I use it for 100 percent of my searches now. Data point: unlike some, I love the name and branding.
- pvnick 13y agoGreat job to DDG! Remember to change your default search engine: http://help.dukgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216440-chrome http://help.dukgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216440-chrome http://help.dukgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216441-firefox http://help.dukgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216441-firefo... Let's make protecting privacy a good business decision.
- laxatives 13y agoIs there a way to make the change on an iPhone? Or is that change pointless since you're on an apple product anyways?
- yardie 13y agoBTW, where is Gabe (yegg)? I haven't seen a post from him in a while.
- medde 13y agoDo people that switch really think that their privacy is better off? I though the NSA was logging everything that travels the network at some large backbones?
- bajsejohannes 13y agoSource? Storage is pretty cheap, but storing everything? That's a lot of data. (You'd have to store a copy of that netflix movie every time it's played back)
- jacobheric 13y agoFor privacy, I'd love to switch to DDG. I try them out almost every time I read about them. But I always end up switching back to GOOG because I just can't find what I want. Here's how today's switch went: 1. Install DDG chrome extension 2. Set DDG as default search provider 3. Search "duck duck go bang feature" (for a refresher) 4. What I wanted (https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html) was nowhere in the search results 5. Switch default search provider back to GOOG 6. Search "duck duck go bang feature" 7. #1 result: https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html Alas, I wish it weren't so...
- ics 13y agoGranted you probably don't have to worry about this on Google but if you'd typed the name as one word (which it always is, AFAIK) you would have gotten the proper results. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duckduckgo+bang+feature https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duckduckgo+bang+feature You can consider that a shortcoming given how specific the query was. However, once you realize its behavior it isn't that difficult to find what you want– in some cases, it's actually very helpful.
- clarky07 13y agothat search doesn't seem to get the right page for me...
- ics 13y agoI just switched my region to "No Region" and you're right, the top result is https://duckduckgo.com/newbang https://duckduckgo.com/newbang. Switching back to Japan gives the proper result. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Edit: UK gives the proper result. Canada as well.
- haldujai 13y agoPart of the reason Google has seemingly perfect search results is because of the bubble, and because it knows us so well. It's quite the dilemma of whether the loss in privacy is worth the better search results. For example when I search 'Egypt' on Google all of the search results (except for Wikipedia) are on the competing political factions, something I've read extensively out of interest. The same search on DuckDuckGo results in a mix of travel, encyclopaedia, a dictionary.com definition of the word Egypt, linkbait, and a couple of relevant news articles. The trade-off here is I would have to start being much more specific with my search queries to get what I want out of DDG, and often times I can't put into words what I want so being specific is not an option, Google knows what I want to see. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts after the next big media fad comes and everyone forgets about the NSA.
- graue 13y agoInteresting. My experience is different; I never use Google Search signed in (except once in a blue moon by accident) and clear their cookies every time I restart my browser (daily, at a minimum). Consequently, they don't know that much about me. I still find their results better than DDG's, unfortunately, and reverted my default search from DDG to Google after I found I was prefixing almost every search with !g. But unlike you, I rarely search for anything as general as "Egypt". I wouldn't even think to. For general info about a whole country I would go to Wikipedia or Wikivoyage or similar instead. I hit Google when searching for something more specific, like info on a particular protest in Egypt, or monad libraries for JavaScript.
- haldujai 13y agoI find the main usefulness of general queries like 'Egypt' or 'Syria' is in current events. I don't know what's happening in a country or about a specific subject/object (i.e. 'Xbox') and a general query gives me a wide variety of information about that subject, after which I can be more specific. Google has become my gateway into current events. I don't read news or blog sites often so I'm not sure of what's going on, by querying a general topic I am instantly presented with a multitude of topics from a variety of sources that I can then follow up on with specific results. Google's cookies and data about me help it select subtopics I'd be interested in. I.e. I don't care that Kuwait has offered Egypt an aid package (found on DDG) but I do care about the new protests.
- Raticide 13y agoIs it safe to unblock adverts on DDG as long as I block third party cookies?
- mehwoot 13y agoWow I didn't realise how little traffic they got previously. They must have had like... 5,000 regular users? Hopefully a lot of the new traffic sticks around.
- gilgoomesh 13y agoThis data covers roughly 3 years. Obviously, they started small but they've been around 1.5 million queries per day for a while. The "28 days" in the title is a little misleading. It's just the smoothing applied to the graph, not the total time period.
- mehwoot 13y agoOhhhhhh I see. This makes a lot more sense. I saw Multiple "July" and increasing numbers and thought it was days.
- zenocon 13y agoThe http://dontbubble.us/ http://dontbubble.us/ site did it for me -- in a contest to see who filters the most accurate results for my brain between my brain and their artificial intelligence...I will always win.
- cldr 13y agoThe numbers on the left are literally off the charts. I can't read them, they go under the graph.
- taylorbuley 13y agouseful thing to do to traffic charts: log scale
- mattbarrie 13y agoCOMING SOON TO PRISM! DuckDuckGo (Aug '13)
- jbranchaud 13y agoWhat data?!
- amrit_b 13y agoI am doing 90% of my searches in DDG. And its just a matter of time to also do the remaining 10%. Meanwhile, if they add the something like google apps, it will be awesome. Specially a free email service.
- josteink 13y agoI've finally managed to make the switch to DDG and this time it seems to stick. Every time I've tried before, I've quickly gone back to google, not finding the results good enough. Either the results have improved since then, or I'm more conscious about my provacy and thus avoiding using and depending on Google products all over the line. The last 2 months I've completely dropped at least 4 Google products, and I can see the list getting longer. Thanks to the DDG-team for being one of the actors out there who respect my privacy!
- gprasanth 13y agoQ = "HN Front Page". 15 hours ago.
- voicereason 13y agoIt's been on HN front page several times in the last 4 years.
- znowi 13y agoI love the ducky. From the idea of privacy to the name and the cutest logo. Yes, the quality of the search is not as finely bubbled as Google's, but it's actually a feature. I'm very glad that Gabriel was brave enough to start a new search engine and stuck to the project, which really paid off. We have a viable, non-tracking alternative to Google now.
- tokyovapr 13y agoBlog post about why DuckDuckGo cannot provide any real privacy assurances when it comes to the NSA... http://etherrag.blogspot.jp/2013/07/duck-duck-go-illusion-of-privacy.html http://etherrag.blogspot.jp/2013/07/duck-duck-go-illusion-of...
- eshizhan 13y agoHave IP location statistics?