DuckDuckGo Search Queries Grew 47% in 2021

"The privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo continues to grow rapidly, with the company now averaging over 100 million daily search queries and growing by almost 47% in 2021..." reports BleepingComputer: In 2020, DuckDuckGo received 23.6 billion total search queries and achieved a daily average of 79 million search queries by the end of December.

In 2021, DuckDuckGo received 34.6 billion total search queries so far and currently has an average of 100 million search queries per day, showing a 46.4% growth for the year.

While DuckDuckGo's growth is considerable, it still only has 2.53% of the total market share, with Yahoo at 3.3%, Bing at 6.43%, and Google holding a dominant share of 87.33% of search engine traffic in the USA. However, as people continue to become frustrated with how their data is being used by tech giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple, we will likely see more people switch to privacy-focused search engines.
This year DuckDuckGo also released their own email forwarding service, and announced work on the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser for Desktop — which will be built from scratch and not be based on Chromium.

Yahoo at 3.3%?

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

I'm surprised it's even that high. I can understand using Google over DDG, but what exactly does Yahoo bring to the table in 2021?

Re: Yahoo at 3.3%?

[dknj]

Old people.

Re:

[oogoliegoogolie]

Old is relative. Even at 20 you're already "old" to people who are only a couple years younger.

Welcome to your future, it comes quick.

Re:

[The New Guy 2.0]

Verizon merged Yahoo! with AOL.com, so there's quite a bit of news content there.

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[Aighearach]

I would bet a big chunk of it is people using the search box at Yahoo! Finance, which remains one of the top stock market news aggregators

If only it was reliable.

[JimMcc]

I periodically try DDG. The last time was this summer. I searched for a tech support web page for Windows that I knew existed. Nothing. I search for the exact title of the page. Nothing. The page wasn't on some obscure site, it was on Microsoft's main support site and was a year or two old. I'd like to avoid Google, but more importantly, I need to find accurate information so I can do my job.

Re:

[brunoblack]

I find it pretty reliable. I use DDG by default since I use a VPN and Google keeps nagging me with captcha when I try to search. I rarely use Google when I can't find what I am searching for on DDG but seldom find what I am looking for then. YMMV I guess...

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[transporter_ii]

Yeah, sometimes I search for solutions to a programming issue I'm having, and if you click on more than three or four results google returns, they will throw you to the captcha for unusual activity. This is exactly why I use DDG about 95% of the time now. However, if I'm on a deep dive and I don't think DDG is returning everything out there, I will fall back to google. Also, I find google image search to be much better than DDG image search.

Where I will give google cudos. If your bandwidth is a little limit

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't disagree but still use DDG because Google is not an acceptable alternative for search. Unfortunately I still rely on Google for maps and email. Kind of a shit sandwhich but I don't take every bite.

Re:

[brunoblack]

Be careful about what you write and even what you receive in your emails then. Apparently, Google scans everything and reports you to authorities, why would they limit themselves to child porn and the like? Child porn is the perfect excuse to spy on everybody, think of the children etc.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]

Re:

[Bearhouse]

Open Street Maps has gotten much better...

Re:

[BeaverCleaver]

I've found openstreetmap.org to be very reliable here in .au. I don't use it for turn-by-turn navigation though, I use it to look up an address and then drive there. It's old-school, but sometimes I'll also print out the last mile on a piece of paper and keep that in the car... Part of the reason for this is our government's extremely aggressive policies banning the use of handheld devices by drivers.

Re:If only it was reliable.

[ras]

DDG is privacy minded front end for bing. They do occasionally tweak the bing results, but if you prefer the results Google returns over what you get from bing, you are going to feel the same way about the results returned by DDG.

Startpage [startpage.com] does for Google what DDG does for bing. For some DDG reason is the flavour of the month in the privacy world, you never hear anyone mention Startpage. But if you like Google search results and object to them building a search profile on them, then Startpage is the obvious choice.

Re:

[gardyloo]

Or you use the g! shortcut and search google via DDG.

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[yuvcifjt]

I honestly don't know why those shortcuts ("bangs") exist?

All it does is just redirect me to Google, thereby allowing them to fingerprint me and also capture my search query!

Perhaps it's for people who search from the browser's url field, and want instead to get results from Google.
But I wish it would act as a proxy, so perform a Google search (from their end) and direct me to DDG's own site for the results, thereby not revealing myself or my query to Google.

DDG is privacy minded front end for bing.

This isn't quite true [duckduckgo.com], they have their own crawl

Re:

[gardyloo]

You're right: a g! search takes me to google directly. I think the bangs /used to/ use DDG as a proxy to them (am pretty sure I used to get google results in the DDG search page), but that's changed. I totally agree that that's how they should work.

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[c120plus]

I honestly don't know why those shortcuts ("bangs") exist?

They are great if you use DDG as your main search engine.

First search attempt with DDG, if you're not happy with the result, add !g to your search term an try again with google.

This means that over 90% of my search traffic goes to DDG and only the specialist ones go to google.

And that's just "!g", there's loads of other site, like "!w" if you want wikepida, "!a", want amazon in a specific country, like germany, do "!ade". Search for a film "!imb"... DDG bangs are the reason why nott having a the most accura

Re:

[Luckyo]

I used to use startpage as my primary search for about three years before switching to DDG about two years ago. Reason being the new owner of startpage which had its majority stake bought by System1, which is a pay per click behavioural advertisement company.

And if you still think there's any privacy left at System1's startpage, they had a campaign with an online survey company Pollfish some time after this purchase to "target parents in the U.S. with children between five and sixteen". How the accurate dem

Re:

[jon3k]

DDG does have it's own indexing ("DuckDuckBot") but I don't know what percentage of results are returned from their own database vs Bing. My understanding is that it is steadily growing.

I used DDG for a few months earlier this year but gave up. Google results were just so much better.

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[sjames]

OTOH, if you want information that the subject would prefer to keep secret ( unofficial register documentation, etc) DDG is sometimes more useful than Google.

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[Maxo-Texas]

Odd. I usually find the results comparable. I used DDG first and if I can't find something I try the other guys as a backup.

Bing

[Latent Heat]

Yeah, yeah and yeah, Bing is trading one Big Bad Monopolistic Corporation for another.

But someone tell me that Bing cannot find a page on Microsoft's main support site?

Re:

[Anonymous Crowded]

I switched a critical device earlier this year and I have to say that it's godawful painful. I was working on a co-worker's PC and it sent me to bing so I just use it. SO much more helpful than duck-duck-go . . ..

I am part of that increase

[motang]

I am part of that stats, as I started to use DuckDuckGo way more this year than before. They have gotten better and I can just find what I generally need. Brave Search is also pretty decent in my usage.

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[JRZO]

I've been using DDG on all my devices for the last several years. I think their strengths compared to google are 1) clean interface between results and ads 2) privacy and 3) equal or sometimes superior results to google. I use internet for 3-4 hours every day and I haven't made a query with google for at least two years now. Enjoying the experience!

I like it

[VeryFluffyBunny]

For me, DuckDuckGo returns results of the search I enter rather than a search based on a profile of me & whatever deals Google has made with its sponsors, e.g. Remember when BP paid Google to hide negative information about its Gulf of Mexico oil disaster? How many other companies do you think are paying Google for similar search censorship? Of course, there's nothing to stop Microsoft's Bing, which DuckDuckGo uses its APIs for search results, from doing the same. The difference is that we know that Google's already doing it. Microsoft? I don't know. Hopefully, they don't?

The World Belongs To Google.

[westlake]

Not to rain on anyone's parade. But StatCounter's global stats show a 91% market share for Google, 3% for Bing and 7/10 of 1% for DDG.

Re:

[yuvcifjt]

Never good to have a monopoly particularly as Google is a window to the Internet for most, and they can manipulate individuals without realising [ted.com], and even control democracies (if it's not already happening).

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[meisdug]

Like preventing another "Trump situation"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk]

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[Aighearach]

*holds hand out* Where is the rain?

Nobody cares that you use something else. It doesn't cause rain to fall on us.

Just try to search for something "controversial" I

[carcomp]

Pick your favorite "controversial" thing, and put the words "I hate" in front of it. Google will tell you that you are wrong and a bad person. Duck duck go is like, "here you go!"

Frequently I'm forced to go back to G

[Bomarc]

DDG search - will frequently not return the results/type of results I'm looking for (usually it's results are not useful); so I'm forced to use Google. It would be nice if DDG would have a "our results suck; here is a click for a google result" button. (Bing just sucks; and never returns anything of value)

I have a website - and cannot submit it to DDG (I have had the website longer than DDG has existed); and it cannot be found with DDG. DDG search results also has a heavily right wing --- conspiracy bi

Re:

[Maxo-Texas]

I find DDG gives me what I ask for.

If I put in covid vaccine benefits-- I get that.
If I put in covid vaccine problems-- I get that.

No infobubble.

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[Bomarc]

There is more to life than vaccine issues. That is just the start of their (DDG) issues; all be it life critical (that is DDG will push fake info & disproved theory more than a proper response to the disproved theory). An example for what I see all the time: looking for actor "a"; who had a role in Star Trek; returns actor "b" and Star Trek; with out actor "a".

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[The-Ixian]

(Bing just sucks; and never returns anything of value)

I hear people say this a lot. However, I have been using Bing exclusively for years now and, on the rare occasion I am not able to find something, the same search query on Google doesn't do any better.

Routing around censorship

[cascadingstylesheet]

DDG tends to return what's actually out there, not just what Google wants you to read.

It's a nice feature.

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[raftpeople]

DDG tends to return what's actually out there...It's a nice feature. Remember, we're talking about the internet.

Won't it be funny

[Eunomion]

When DDG pivots into a more typical business, and its users suddenly find themselves inundated with targeted ads for privacy-related products?

DDG Honeypot?

[rilister]

Trust is a strange, slippery thing on the internet: can anyone tell me why I should trust DuckDuckGo? Beyond, 'it's founded by this guy who seems pretty cool'?
I mean, if the CIA can set up and run a (compromised) Cryptography company in Switzerland for over 20 years (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-cia-bnd-germany-intelligence-report), a 'privacy focused search engine' is well within their abilities... and an excellent honey-pot for people to keep an eye on.

147% of almost nothing is still almost nothing

[brunes69]

DuckDuckGo would need exponential growth - 500% to 1000% or more - for multiple years in a row before it will actually matter in terms of market penetration. 47% growth is basically failure, especially when you consider what a negative year its been for Google... if they can't capitalize on it now, then when?

doesnt google own duckduckgo

[mcbain9000]

i have seen better search engines like startpage.com and even some better ones, why i didnt save the other one is beyond me

Better

[Socguy]

I've been using DDG for a couple years now and on the rare occasion that I do give Google a try, I'm actually annoyed by how many adds/sponsored results come up.