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Over one billion searches were made on DuckDuckGo in 2013
- interstitial 13y agoI was hoping for some snark, like: "Top search trends on DuckDuckGo for 2013: We don't know, we don't track your searches!"
- Spittie 13y agoThey could, https://duckduckgo.com/privacy https://duckduckgo.com/privacy >We also save searches, but again, not in a personally identifiable way, as we do not store IP addresses or unique User agent strings.
- Houshalter 13y agoI'm sure they keep statistics on searches, in fact it would be pretty bad if they didn't as they'd have no data to improve search results.
- buckbova 13y agoSwitched to DuckDuckGo for searches from the desktop a year ago. Just to give someone else a chance.
- drakaal 13y agoIf you are giving chances try http://www.plexisearch.com/ http://www.plexisearch.com/
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y agoDoes anyone know the numbers from last year?
- aidos 13y agoThey have their data up here https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html
- oh_teh_meows 13y agojust to provide some perspective, a quick google search (oops) informed me that google sees 5.9 billion searches a day (about 2.16 trillion searches in 2013). Before the Snowden revelation, DDG enjoyed a slow but steady growth, getting around 50 mil queries a month, and rapidly increased to over 100+ mil after the leak. http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/ http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/ https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html
- Spittie 13y agoAnd I'm happy to say that my searches where in this billion too :) I still find myself looking at Google for some queries, but this seems to happen every day less and less. Mostly local searches, as DDG is still very "english-centric". I don't know if they trying to "fix" this, but I sure hope so. Overall I still find it an awesome search engine, thanks to the 0-click box, and the !bang syntax.
- hnriot 13y agoDon't you mean >1B searches were proxied to Bing, Google etc? Aside from being an anonymizing proxy, I don't see any real reason for DDG. Maybe i'm wrong, maybe the news meant you served > 1B searches from your own inverted index, but I didn't see anything that suggested that.
- nazgulnarsil 13y agoI use a lot more than !g or !b
- cshimmin 13y agoAgreed, would be interesting to see how many of those searches ended in "!g"...
- bigphishy 13y agoAre you implying that there's no value to an anonymous search engine?
- nazgulnarsil 13y agoFor anyone reading this who doesn't know (because i didn't until someone explained and linked me) bang notation is amazing. https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html
- dredmorbius 13y agoI've been using DDG as my primary search engine since June, 2013. That's not my first attempt to make a go of it, I took a couple of stabs at DDG over the past year or two, but found that the results were less than satisfactory: slow response, no response, and often, poor matches on queries. With the Snowden revelations and the abundantly clear trend of Google to aggregate as much personally-identifiable information as possible, I made a clean break in June, 2013. The performance and search quality are vastly improved. And while I don't eschew all Google products (though I'm making drastically less use of them, and as little as possible while authenticated), I find that using DDG as my first cut generally works. For fallback, my usual scheme is DDG, !SP (StartPage, another proxying search aggregator making more full use of Google), and if I'm still not fully satisfied, Google itself. There are areas in which Google's search tools are still hugely superior: ⚫ Searching within a date range. DDG doesn't offer this option. ⚫ Some specialized search, in particular Google Books and Google Scholar. Where Google focuses on its core competency of providing search and not on grabbing as much user data as possible, I find the company far more acceptable. ⚫ Some deep-site searches. Google seems to crawl sites more deeply and in more detail than DDG. I particularly rely on it for Reddit, whose own site search excludes comments. As I've noted, Google's biggest liability is that, no matter its best intentions, it cannot provide any guarantee against a government-size advanced persistent threat, especially not one with the law (constitutional or otherwise) at its disposal: http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1u356d/schmidt_my_biggest_mistake_is_still_not_realizing/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1u356d/schmidt_... But overall, I'm hugely impressed with DDG. For those who use console / terminal browsers such as w3m or links, the 'lite' version puts the "search" button one tab following the search dialog: https://duckduckgo.com/lite https://duckduckgo.com/lite And DDG's TTY mode (command-line interface) is teh awesomenessedness: https://duckduckgo.com/tty/ https://duckduckgo.com/tty/
- thrownaway2424 13y agoExactly what guarantee does ddg provide against state snooping that Google doesn't?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- PhasmaFelis 13y agoOne underappreciated advantage of DuckDuckGo is that it doesn't censor results as Google does, which is really useful for finding, e.g., torrent sites.
- mdwrigh2 13y agoYou mean it doesn't respect DMCA takedown notices? Because I bet it does.
- venomsnake 13y agoIs DDG US Company?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- higherpurpose 13y agoYes. Startpage on the other hand is European, and so is Faroo.
- magicalist 13y agostartpage is just a google proxy to anonymize it, though, so it's not like they can add DCMAed results back in.
- joosters 13y agoIt probably receives fewer takedown notices than Google though...
- magicalist 13y agoGoogle posts all their DCMA takedown notices (which must include the URLs to take down) on https://www.chillingeffects.org/ https://www.chillingeffects.org/, though, so you can access them anyway.
- navs 13y agoI know this is a silly nitpick but I do wish DuckDuckGo had a simpler URL. It's so quick and easy to type in bing, google and even blekko. How's about some variation on DDG? That aside, I especially love DDG's Goodies: https://duckduckgo.com/goodies https://duckduckgo.com/goodies I use it for simple password generation, lorem ipsum text, color code conversion, etc. I know Google has its extras but I don't believe it comes close to DDG's goodies offering
- zck 13y agoddg.gg redirects to https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/ .
- dredmorbius 13y agoif you set DDG as your default browser, you don't have to enter the URL. Just your search term and <enter>.
- anigbrowl 13y ago1,000,000,000 /365 = ~3m/day; Alexa suggests 5.6 pageviews/user so ~600k unique users.
- thrownaway2424 13y agoI choose to give people the benefit of the doubt regarding their own points of view, so I am forced to consider the idea that "Duck Duck Go is a good search engine" is a true fact to some people. That forces me to consider how this can possibly be true. I find it's not true for me because of all the ways I typically use Google, DDG does almost none of them. DDG doesn't have local results (search "Chinese" on Google and then on DDG). DDG doesn't have recent news (search "Earthquake" on Google and then on DDG). DDG does not have the coverage to answer a narrow technical question like "does a c++ derived class need to define its own destructor" (answer nowhere to be found on DDG; perfectly relevant stack overflow result is #1 on Google). What DDG does have is plain old search results, albeit not with Google's quality and, of course, without any personalized input. So for those of you who find DDG's generically mediocre retrievals sufficient, I am interested to know what you use for my other cases. When you want to eat Chinese food, do you always use Yelp? What do you use for recent event news?
- randlet 13y agoI'm in the same position I tried (default search in all browsers for a month) but found that I was using a !g on virtually every query. Eventually I just gave up and went back to Google.
- dredmorbius 13y agoMy suggestions: ⚫ Stick with it. DDG's improved hugely in the past 12-18 months. ⚫ Report your problems to DDG. I've done this in a few cases, and have been stunned to get personal replies in a couple of days. Try getting that from Google (without landing three stories on the top of HN for a day or three).
- NigelTufnel 13y agoI'm sold. For the next week (or couple of minutes if DDG isn't for me) I'll use DDG instead of Google.
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- blantonl 13y agoI'm curious how this compares to the amount of searches on Google's platform. 1 billion searches in 2013 sounds like a huge number, but placing that into context might be a better way to announce this.
- femto113 13y agoIt's about 4 hours worth of Google searches, according to this: http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/ http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/
- jusben1369 13y agoHoly smoke. That's depressing and fascinating all at once.
- jeffbr13 13y agoI'm just gonna say that by far the best features, for me, are the "Goodies" (had to look that up[1]) which let you query other services through the same interface. For example, `!wa ...` will query Wolfram Alpha, `!m {location}` will give me a map, `!w ...` will search Wikipedia, and `!g ...` will redirect me to a google search if DDG's results aren't comprehensive enough. For 90% of my queries, DuckDuckGo gives me exactly what I need, or enough data to drill down and make a more effective query. And, more importantly, it provides a single interface to all other major search engines, making it a hell of a start page to have[2]. [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/goodies https://duckduckgo.com/goodies [2]: https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/
- Semaphor 13y ago90%? Wow. It's less for me. But still, they got better, I now usually (60-70% I guess) get a result I want on the first page (compared to google where there are several useful results on the first page) and that together with the !keywords is enough for me. Now the only thing left I need to replace is google calendar and I'll be google free :)
- _RPM 13y agoInteresting fact: http://duck.com http://duck.com redirects to Google.com
- dredmorbius 13y agoAnd was registered in 1995. Though WHOIS doesn't return the full registration transfer history. We don't know who's owned it over the interim.
- higherpurpose 13y agoBy the way for people who really care about privacy, there's Epic Browser, which has some anti-tracking stuff built-in, and is based on Chromium: http://www.epicbrowser.com/ http://www.epicbrowser.com/ I wish they'd allow people to change the Omnibox search engine, though, or offer DDG and Startpage as options, especially if they can partner up with them and take a cut of revenue, but I guess it's not a huge deal breaker.
- dublinben 13y agoPeople who really care about privacy are using Tor Browser.
- ilaksh 13y agoI'm pretty sure most DuckDuckGo searches go straight to Bing.
- drakaal 13y agoWe don't track searches,at http://www.plexisearch.com/ http://www.plexisearch.com/ And we don't have ads, so there is that too. We want to make search better. Not out of the goodness of our heart, but because we figure if we do a good job someone will buy us, and then we will get paid, and the bad guys at Google or Bing will at least offer you better results when they are being creepy. That's what it is all about right? We are about 1% the size of DDG.
- dclara 13y agoI like the idea: "don't track searches". I've visited your search engine. Looks like you call Bing's API to get the result. The catch is: you don't get the images back since Bing does not have them either. So why shall I just use Bing instead? Perhaps you are stronger in the "News" search?
- drakaal 13y agoIf you do a search we have never done you get bing. If you do a popular search, or the same search 30 seconds later you get better results.
- aniket_ray 13y ago"bad guys at Google or Bing" I just thought personalized results are better for users. Does that make me a bad person? PS: I work at Google though not in search.
- summerdown2 13y agoI don't think it makes you a bad person ;) ... but I don't agree with your point of view. Personalised results are obviously better for Google because they're an advertising company. But they're not necessarily better for users, particularly the HN crowd. Beyond a certain level of computer savvy, I suspect the user prefers to have control of the output via keywords and regex, rather than have an algorithm decide for them, no matter how smart that algorithm is.
- pirateking 13y agoI have been using DDG as my starting point for all desktop searches since 2011. I use Safari as my main browser and use the hosts file method to set DDG as my default search[1]. I wish iOS had an option for similar. Using DDG started off awkward, but the bang syntax is muscle memory now. I would say my breakdown of providers is as follows: !g: 50%, !w: 30%, !gi: 10%, !az: 5%, !yelp: 5% I never use DDG directly. [1] https://duck.co/help/desktop/hosts-file https://duck.co/help/desktop/hosts-file
- 1457389 13y agoDoesn't using the bang syntax invalidate any privacy or surveillance related reasons to use DDG?
- pirateking 13y agoDefinitely. It is just a handy multiplexer - I have a habit at this point to append every query with a bang. On the occasions I forget, the DDG results seem to be improving. However, ~90% of my Google queries are computer related, and DDG (and even the !so bang) are not as relevant as Google yet for me. As soon as this use case improves enough, I will break my bang habit and use DDG directly for most of my queries.
- seeingfurther 13y agothe best thing DDG could do is to simulate Google's UI as much as possible without getting sued. Think about it.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoGoogle UI today or Google UI a couple of years ago? Current Google UI features every block with different margin and content which is neither trivial nor worthwhile to copy.
- unlimit 13y agoI have been using DDG for sometime in my office, in fact DDG is my default in firefox. I don't miss google. DDG finds me whatever I need.
- tiatia 13y agoI tried GGG but I prefer ixquick.com or startpage.com
- linux_devil 13y agoAnd I did hundreds of them.
- jimmytidey 13y agoI was looking a JS library I'd seen mentioned on here, and couldn't find it with Duck Duck Go. Was about to start posting / tweeting asking if anyone knew where it was, but thought I'd try Google first. This library came up first result. I'd have looked like a dick if I hadn't tried Google first - "Google is your Friend" is powerfully socially enforced. Now I use DDG mostly with the !g...
- ozh 13y agoQuick tip that's cool with DDG: just type in the URL bar something like "ddg.gg/things you are looking for" (providing that as soon as you type "dd" your browser will most likely auto expand it to "ddg.gg/", you need very few keystrokes)
- k-mcgrady 13y agoI'd be interested to know what browser is most popular with DDG users. Are people who use it because of privacy concerns with Google still using Chrome? Or other Google products?
- nathanb 13y agoI have DDG as my default search engine both at home and work now. As a command-line junkie, I like it that I can access everything in one place. Admittedly, maybe 1/3 of my DDG "searches" are actually commands (I can type an address and then !map to go directly to the map for that address, for example, or a term and then !img to go to an image search for that term). I think of DDG more as a command line than a search engine. The search results are generally pretty adequate, too. If you search for a simple term, you get relevant Wikipedia or IMDB results for that term, which is often exactly what I want. And if I feel like Google would be more relevant, I can just slap a !g on there. I realize "ease of access to a competitor's product" is not a fantastic selling point, but for me it's enough. 100% personal preference, obviously, but it works for me.
- a3_nm 13y ago"One billion" sounds impressive but it should be compared to over two thousand billion searches made on Google Search over the same period: http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/ http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/
- josephlord 13y agoI use it in Firefox on the computer and only occasionally use Google. I raised a bug with Apple to request the ability to set it on mobile Safari. At the moment you can only use Google or Bing (or Yahoo-Bing) File duplicates if you want it as Apple counts dupes as up votes.
- atmosx 13y agoDuckDuckGo is a Good search Engine for English-speaking countries. I'm European (Greek) and whenever I need to search the Greek-web, which is quite often, I found DDG result's lucking very basic staff. To give you an example, say the government passed a new law (which happens every day), if I try searching at DuckDuckGo 9 out 10 I won't find anything closely related. If I search Google the most prominent newspaper headlines (along with notorious news-sites) pop-up and I find what I need. I know that Google closely monitors my clicks (I own a Chromebook and Chrome is my default browser everywhere) and shows me different results than other users. But thing is, for non-English content it's too far ahead of the competition for the time being.