
DuckDuckGo's traffic keeps growing - TekMol
https://duckduckgo.com/traffic?2019
======
kilo_bravo_3
DDG has gotten better to the point that I have switched all of my browsers to
them and the number of times I have had to fall back to Google Search has
dwindled to almost nothing.

If you were turned off by poor results in the past give them another try.

~~~
loceng
How often do you use !g or other bangs?

~~~
dredmorbius
I use alternate bangs _all the time_ , which is a major win for DDG, as it
skips the "go to the site first, or specify "site:<host> <search>", which
actually is NOT equivalent as bang searches _use the site or service 's native
search_.

Fave bangs:

!w wikipedia

!wikisource WikiSource

!etym Online etymological dictionary

!ngram Google Ngram viewer

!trends Google Trends

!gbooks Google Books

!scholar Google Scholar

!tineye Image match search

!so stack overflow

!hn Hacker News

!twitter Obv.

!thread Threadreader App, Twitter thread presentation, preferred to above ;-)

!img Image search (now DDG, Google Image is !gimg)

!worldcat Worldcat union catalog

!osm Open Streetmap

!wayback Internet Archive Wayback Machine

!archive Internet Archive global (non-Web + web) search

!dict & !define Word look-ups

!s startpage (proxied Google search)

!bangs will give you a list of bangs / search form for patterns.

------
marcoseliziario
DDG is more neutral in political themes. You usually see some results that you
wouldn't see on the first page on google. Google still has a slight advantage
when searching for technical info, but most of times DDG is good enough for
them too.

~~~
paulddraper
Obviously lacks the privacy aspect, but I've noticed Bing is also politically
neutral.

This seems to be a Google-specific problem.

\---

Example that I just double-checked: (I don't claim any political views here;
_JUST an example_ )

Reddit's largest subreddit for a political candidate is r/The_Donald.
Objectively, a rather popular site.

Google (with or without SafeSearch) returns _zero_ results for "Reddit
The_Donald" linking to the subreddit. [1] It's only results are indirect
discussions about the subreddit.

Whereas DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Yahoo show the subreddit itself as the very
first result. [2] [3] [4]
([https://np.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/](https://np.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/)
which is Reddit's public non-logged in site.)

So Google won't display a high-traffic site. I can only assume they find the
content objectionable and so will not link directly to it. I understand how
some may want that, but that's not a simply not a service I want my search
engine to perform, especially when SafeSearch is disabled.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Reddit+The_Donald](https://www.google.com/search?q=Reddit+The_Donald)

[2]
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Reddit+The_Donald](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Reddit+The_Donald)

[3]
[https://www.bing.com/search?q=Reddit+The_Donald](https://www.bing.com/search?q=Reddit+The_Donald)

[4]
[https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Reddit+The_Donald](https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Reddit+The_Donald)

~~~
chaz
r/The_Donald is "quarantined" by Reddit, which means you get a gateway page if
you visit for the first time, asking if you really want to visit it (try an
incognito window). In the HTML, you'll see that there's a "noindex" metatag
that Reddit is instructing Google not to index it.

Also, np.reddit.com seems to be excluded from all search engines:
[https://np.reddit.com/robots.txt](https://np.reddit.com/robots.txt).

I'm not sure why Bing is ignoring both the robots.txt and the "noindex"
metatag.

~~~
paulddraper
In another comment [1] I compare this with a pro-Marxist subreddit which is
similarly "quarantined" and has noindex.

Google indexes it perfectly. [2]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316065)

[2]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Reddit+ChapoTrapHouse](https://www.google.com/search?q=Reddit+ChapoTrapHouse)

~~~
chaz
I understand why one might expect r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse to have
similar results, since they're both politically extreme subreddits. But after
having worked in SEO for a pretty long time, I can't conclude that Googlebot
is evaluating political affiliation with n=2 examples on n=1 sites. Instead,
incoming links quality/quantity, popularity, competition, newsworthiness, age,
and dozens of other ordinary differences between these pages and queries are
usually the reason. Even the underscore in The_Donald likely matters.

It can get pretty frustrating to rank #1 or #2 for a query, and not rank at
all for a _slightly_ different, higher-traffic query, like using the plural, a
hyphen, different capitalization, or an article.

------
SmallBets
Switched to DDG + Brave browser on my laptop and I am surprised how subtly
different browsing feels with this combo. Simply you realize how "watched" you
feel on Google products and the tracked internet.

Without realizing it there is a "how would this search/page visit etc. look on
a tracked profile" process running in my head that is greatly reduced by
DDG+Brave. A chilling effect not just on speech, but on browsing behavior that
we have to counteract.

~~~
MiroF
I've found that it's becoming increasingly hard to browse the internet in
Brave and Firefox because a. the increasing monopoly of Blink (doesn't apply
to Brave) and b. how interconnected a lot of this tracking seems to be with
the routine operation of sites i visit

~~~
colordrops
So why do you mention Brave if your comment doesn't apply?

~~~
MiroF
It does apply to part B and Firefox also has tracking protection.

------
AdamGibbins
I've replaced my usage of DDG sadly, with startpage, I get superior results.
Found myself way too often prefixing queries with !g especially for technical
or localised (UK) stuff.

~~~
Shank
From Startpage: "You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So
we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results in order to remove all
trackers and logs."

It sounds like you're just using Google without the branding/tracking.

~~~
trident1000
And now the question is, how is Startpage paying Google without monetizing its
users?

~~~
taborj
If the product is free, you're the product. I don't know anything about
Startpage, but I bet we'll find they're tracking something...

~~~
saagarjha
Startpage shows ads, just like DuckDuckGo:
[https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic...](https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/180/20/how-
can-startpage-be-free-how-do-you-make-money)

~~~
taborj
Makes sense. So I was right; you are the product. They want to get ads in
front of users. Note that there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

------
jbarberu
I made the switch to DDG from Google back around 2013/2014\. Rarely do I ever
need the !g to find anything, and frankly with all the inline ads on Google,
I'm having a harder time navigating those results these days.

~~~
CryptoBanker
Every time I see a comment like this on HN, I'm quite frankly shocked that so
many tech oriented people don't use ad blockers. I use UBlock Origin, and I
haven't seen an ad on Google in years at this point...

~~~
jbarberu
Turns out I don't see the inline ads on Google anymore. Not sure when that
changed.

I was using NoScript from 2010 until FireFox Quantum came out and broke
things. Since then I've been on UBlock + UMatrix.

Agreed, seeing the internet without an ad blocker is a terrifying experience
indeed.

------
berti
I’ve been using it almost exclusively for a few months and I think I’m going
to switch back. DDG is really bad at showing results from my own country near
the top, which is really annoying when I wish to purchase something. I imagine
the experience is much better in the United States as that’s where all the top
results come from.

~~~
FabHK
1\. I really appreciate that DDG shows me results deemed relevant globally or
pertinent to the search query (and its language), rather than trying to guess
where I am and what I want to see based on that. Now I find using Google,
particularly when using a VPN, rather annoying (no, I don't speak Swedish and
I don't want to know about Swedish Python groups, thanks).

2\. You can easily _ask_ DDG to show you country specific results by the
switch on top, though (and you choose which country).

------
thorwasdfasdf
I use DDG for almost everything now because it's mostly just as good as
google. I think there's still some cases where Google is a little better: for
example with Developer/technical searches.

------
excalibur
This statistics page is amazing, giving annual, monthly, and daily query
counts dating back to April 2010, and no other data.

When I first read it I was expecting to see a list of the most frequently
searched terms, which would be front and center in a Google report, but goes
against everything DDG stands for. :)

------
HHalvi
Context is google's strong suit: Local search, using my email/location/phone
data to enhance or outright create a new category of results. For everyday
search terms DDG wins hands down.

I end up using both accordingly to the use case at hand.

------
venchy_123
Competition is always a good thing for consumers, of course. I'm loving it.

------
graeme
How long would it take to overtake Google at this growth rate, if maintained?

I'm not saying it's realistic to maintain the growth rate, just want to get an
intuition for what the current speed means.

~~~
pmoriarty
I don't have an answer for you, but just want to mention that Google is a
moving target, and if DDG ever became a significant threat to them it's very
likely that they'd do something to counter it, such as just buying DDG and
possibly killing it off, releasing a separate DDG competitor product, or
changing their own modus operandi.

In fact, for all we know, DDG might be owned by Google already.

~~~
aerovistae
uh what that last line is real conspiracy theory territory

~~~
colordrops
What does "conspiracy theory territory" mean, and why would something as
commonplace as a large company investing in small competitors in the same
space fit this?

------
deftturtle
It’s my understanding that StartPage is a proxy for Google Search, and DDG is
both a proxy for Bing, Yahoo, and other places, with some “instant answers”
thrown in, like JS minifiers, color pickers, and other tools.

I’d like to see DDG do some of its own indexing or perhaps indicate where
results come from. Is this Bing? Is this Yahoo? Is there a percentage weight
from both engines? This analysis would be cool.

------
newscracker
I wonder how much of this increase is people using bang commands to search
other sites using DDG (where DDG just redirects the search to the destination
site, like how the Firefox search bar has the option of searching on other
sites, but with additional network trips). Whenever I have to use a non-
Firefox browser that doesn’t have a separate search bar (with configurable
search engines), I use bang commands to get to Wikipedia or IMDB, for example.
I also use !s (for Startpage) and !g (for Google) when the DDG results aren’t
satisfactory.

DDG is still not a perfect replacement for Google for me, but it is a
replacement most of the time, and it is my default search engine on browsers I
use.

One feature I don’t have on DDG after all these years is limiting the search
results to the past year. I go to Startpage whenever I need that.

~~~
bn7t
>One feature I don’t have on DDG after all these years is limiting the search
results to the past year. I go to Startpage whenever I need that.

They added it just recently. You can now limit the search results to the past
year.

~~~
newscracker
Thank you for pointing that out! This makes my search life and sticking with
DDG a lot more easier than before.

------
p1necone
I switched to DDG recently when google stopped showing URLs in search results
- that was the last straw for me.

------
syphilis2
I'm glad to see DDG growing in popularity, largely because Google won't place
my website in search results. Bing does, DDG does, Yahoo does, but Google does
not (unless I explicitly search for the exact URL). Depending on your view
this is why Google's results are so good or bad.

~~~
setheron
I'll bite. What's the site ?

~~~
syphilis2
I'm not interested in posting it on HN (though that is a good way to improve
ranking on Google). It's a small static website with a political theme. The
title is fairly unique, but not made of uncommon words. Every now and then I
search for it on Google and get a good laugh from all the garbage that shows
up.

------
dredmorbius
Still about 1% of Google's traffic. DDG sees <50 million queries/day, Google
sees 63,000 per second, or 226 million/hr.

[https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/seo-
statistics](https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/seo-statistics)

Google actually lost some share beginning August 2018, to Baidu.

I've been using DDG as my principle search since about 2013, and very happily.
It's fast, relevant, bangs are awesome (see earlier comment), and there's now
a "most recent year" date-range search, which is useful.

I still use Google when I'm interested in (rough) results counts, specific
date ranges, or soem specialty searches such as Google Books or Scholar
(though I'm finding alternatives).

~~~
freediver
Being 1% of Google's anything is a commendable achievement.

------
mobilemidget
Are there any details regarding the hardware setup they run/use/own to run
this all?

~~~
bn7t
Duckduckgo uses AWS for hosting. Although they have some crawlers hosted
inhouse. IIRC their CEO told this once in an interview.

------
pkilgore
On my phone I installed Firefox mobile using DDG default search about a year
ago. But, whoops, it's a Pixel and so I occasionally use the OS's Google
search.

I've not noticed a difference in result quality since the switch.

~~~
farisjarrah
I was in the same boat and then started using the "LawnChair" launcher. The
only major feature its missing from the pixel launcher that I can tell is that
it doesn't have the most recent Android 10 gesture navigation yet. Aside from
that it seems to be a fully open source implementation of the Pixel Launcher
but with the added ability to remove the search bar from your android home
screen.

~~~
taborj
I tried LawnChair (get it, it's a pun on the word "launcher"!) a while ago,
but switched back to Nova. I may have to give it a try again.

~~~
farisjarrah
I love how much you can customize Nova launcher, but the lack of ability to
completely turn off animations was a deal breaker for me. Even with android
developer mode turned on and all animations at the system level were turned
off, nova still seemed to do a lot of animating.

------
atlgator
I still don't care for their search results UI. There's a lot of wasted space
on widescreens, content isn't centered, and the font blows. It really triggers
me.

~~~
thekid314
Try adjusting the settings, you can fix all of them:
[https://duckduckgo.com/settings#](https://duckduckgo.com/settings#)

~~~
atlgator
Mother of God, you are right! You just changed my life for the better.

------
markkat
I repeatedly tried to switch to DDG from Google for the past several years.
DDG kept improving, but always fell short. About a year ago, I felt that DDG's
results surpassed Google's in quality. Ironically, I think Google's
"personalization" has something to do with it. I don't think Google is serving
results for my benefit because serendipity is part of why I am searching in
the first place.

I also swapped Chrome for Brave. Thank you, DDG.

~~~
plopz
Isn't Brave the browser that steals peoples branding and sets up fake accounts
on their behalf without consent?

Edit: Yeah, I found this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999)

------
stunt
I'm using DDG for less than a year now as my primary search engine.

One day I just decided to switch to DuckDuckGo and give it a try for at least
two months before giving up. And it turns out two months was enough to kill
the bad habit. Also it turns out Google being the only good search engine is
just a myth. I hope more users give it a try.

I sometimes use Google search for online shopping or as spell checker.

------
Jack000
how does ddg get its google results? Last I checked the api is gone. If I
wanted to do the same thing as ddg, is it still possible?

~~~
gatesphere
DDG is an entirely different search engine, they don't use Google.

If you want to build your own engine, go ahead :)

~~~
Jack000
I mean the !g bang - DDG has the option of getting results from Google and
Bing. Bing offers an API for $6/10000 queries, but Google does not - I'm
curious how they have access to Google search results.

~~~
gpm
!g doesn't load googles results on duckduckgo's page, it just forwards you to
the appropriate google page. A quick test suggests the format is

    
    
        https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=<query>
    

(Google might have redirected me after whatever ddg directed me to, but just
using this format should work)

------
kmos
The www.startpage.com is not so bad either.

~~~
jszymborski
Whenever I feel I'm not getting what I want from DDG (which is rare), I'll re-
type my query as "my query !sp" to get startpage results. Between the two, I
_never_ need to visit google for search.

------
gnufx
Why do people who use DDG -- presumably for privacy -- then use !g if they
feel the need, and not !sp?

~~~
robbya
That's a good tip. Presumably fewer folks know about startpage. But even
reducing the number of searches that you send to Google is a privacy
improvement.

------
markandrewj
Does anyone know how these statistics were generated? I am curious if the data
takes in to count traffic generated by bots. It is cool to see growth from a
search engine other then Google. It would be nice to see more diverse options
like in the past.

~~~
tagawa
These traffic numbers are the number of anonymous searches we serve per day.
We don't know how many individual users we have, but we do try to take into
account bots.

Disclaimer: DuckDuckGo staff

~~~
markandrewj
Thank you for your feedback.

------
jakeogh
Nice to see the competition. Qwant (without JS) is interesting too.

~~~
konradzikusek
DDG without JS - [https://duckduckgo.com/html/](https://duckduckgo.com/html/)
Even lighter DDG -
[https://duckduckgo.com/lite/](https://duckduckgo.com/lite/)

------
pippy
I started using DDG after Google settled the lawsuit with Getty Images. The
"view image" button is incredible handy.

------
m3kw9
Yeah because Catalina switch the default Safari search bar search to it.

------
paul7986
Hopefully they will add an email service and or integrate iCloud email into
DDG as they did with Apple Maps.

I loathe Google!

~~~
lostmsu
Why do you want email service to be provided by the same company? Also, what's
wrong with Outlook.com for example. AFAIK they don't sell your data.

~~~
paul7986
I want to stop using Google .. Gmail.. Maps, etc.. and want to move over and
use one company's integrated services I trust.

~~~
reificator
> _I want to stop using Google .. Gmail.. Maps, etc.._

Agreed.

> _and want to move over and use one company 's services I trust._

What do you think got you in this mess in the first place?

------
Angeo34
I really don't get how people can trust US companies who have privacy as one
of their main selling points. You are aware US/UK companies by definition
cannot be private regardless what they say themselves.

If you want privacy use EU companies. If you don't want to use EU companies
use Google since contrary to DDG they are heavily controlled by law. If you
like the bangs of DDG use a native app like Albert or Alfred which is way more
accessible anyway.

~~~
paulddraper
> You are aware US/UK companies by definition cannot be private regardless
> what they say themselves.

There is a HUGE difference between "we give your information to advertisers
(or ourselves, if an advertiser)" and "we give your information to law
enforcement when legally required."

\---

"You are aware US/UK banks by definition cannot be secure regardless of what
they say about themselves."

Yes, but it's a far cry from just leaving my cash on my doorstep.

Replace your checking account with Bitcoin if you want, but a bank offers
enough security/privacy for most people.

\---

> If you want privacy use EU companies.

The EU has gone back and forth on wanting to allow/forbid backdoors.

~~~
Angeo34
That wasn't my point. My point is that US/UK companies are known for selling
data that they are supposed to protect. Compare that to EU companies.

~~~
paulddraper
I understood your point to be "US/UK companies _by definition_ cannot be
private" (i.e. for legal reasons). Which I think is true but a relatively
minor problem compared to the status quo.

If your point was "US/UK companies _in practice_ are not usually private",
that is probably true.

