Search Milestone Gives DuckDuckGo Something to Quack About

DuckDuckGo, the search engine that prioritizes privateness, reached a big milestone final week, racking up greater than 100 million searches in a single day.

In line with the search engine’s web site, it recorded 102,251,307 searches on Jan. 11, an historic excessive for the 12-year-old firm. For the month, it’s averaging greater than 90 million searches a day, a 73 p.c enhance over the identical interval in 2020, when the common was round 52 million searches per day.

Whereas nonetheless a paltry quantity in comparison with the greater than 5 billion every day searches carried out by market chief Google, the milestone is a significant one for the search engine that doesn’t retailer any of its customers’ private info, doesn’t archive their search histories, and doesn’t monitor their search exercise.

“It’s a big milestone, particularly because it surpassed Bing and Yahoo to get there,” mentioned Charles King, the principal analyst at Pund-IT, a know-how advisory agency in Hayward, Calif.

“That’s a stable signal of DuckDuckGo’s vitality but additionally displays the waning affect of what had been as soon as dominant trade platforms,” he informed TechNewsWorld.

“There actually hasn’t been a big competitor to decrease gamers like Bing and Yahoo within the search engine sport for a while,” added Liz Miller, vp and a principal analyst at Constellation Analysis, a know-how analysis and advisory agency in Cupertino, Calif.

“To cross the 100 million line is promising for DuckDuckGo,” she informed TechNewsWorld.

Leg Up in Cell

Whereas DuckDuckGo is in sixth place within the search engine market worldwide, with lower than one p.c of the search pie, it’s quantity two within the necessary cell search market, with a 2.25 p.c share, adopted by Yahoo with 1.94 p.c and Bing with 1.13 p.c, in response to Statcounter.

The overwhelming chief out there is Google, with a 94.48 p.c share.

“Cell web site views surpassed conventional PC views in 2016,” King mentioned. “The approaching wave of subsequent gen 5G-enabled smartphones and different gadgets is probably going to assist cell search develop considerably.”

“Individuals are residing on their cell gadgets much more than they used to. Having that type of energy in cell is helpful,” noticed Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst on the Enderle Group, an advisory companies agency in Bend, Ore.

“The desktop phase is locked up,” he informed TechNewsWorld. “Cell isn’t a lot, so there’s extra alternative in cell.”

Miller famous that 60 p.c of searches at the moment are carried out on cell gadgets.

“I don’t anticipate that to gradual any time quickly,” she mentioned. “Even within the pandemic when you could possibly argue that extra people had been in a desktop setting, cell search nonetheless surged.”

“DDG has super alternative right here due to their multi-source search and consumer opt-in controls that give customers the sensation of accuracy with management,” she added.

Promoting and Privateness Coexistence

Plenty of components are driving DuckDuckGo’s progress, not the least of which is its emphasis on privateness.

“DuckDuckGo has been rising steadily over time,” mentioned Greg Sterling, vp of market insights at Uberall, a maker of location advertising options primarily based in Berlin.

“It’s growing adoption is by folks involved about privateness,” he informed TechNewsWorld. “It’s probably the most well-known of the privateness pleasant search engines like google and yahoo and browsers.”

“Shoppers and companies have gotten more and more conscious and uninterested in how their private search information is getting used for focused internet advertising,” added King. “On the similar time, DuckDuckGo has crafted a stable answer that makes personal looking out easy and efficient.”

DuckDuckGo emphasis on privateness doesn’t imply it has forsaken the promoting enterprise mannequin, Miller famous. The distinction between DuckDuckGo and others, although, is its use of opt-in promoting controls.

“Ultimately of the day, they’re — and are clear about — being an ad-powered enterprise,” she defined. “The important thing distinction is that they put the controls of advertising-based leads to the arms of customers.”

“DDG has embraced the notion that personalization and privateness can coexist in amassing much less information that customers outline as related to what they need to obtain,” she continued. “So persons are having fun with the expertise of management and are being rewarded with outcomes they really feel are correct for them.”

Not Massive Tech

DuckDuckGo’s progress can be being fired by its picture as a participant not underneath the umbrella of Massive Tech.

“DuckDuckGo has been lumped into this band of anti-big-tech, free-speech options with a little bit privateness tucked in there, albeit with out an correct definition or understanding of privateness within the fashionable world,” Miller mentioned.

“With headlines and breaking information items from politicized camps saying that Massive Tech is out to get the common citizen within the U.S., alternate options are being provided up because the remedy,” she defined. “DDG is a part of that providing.”

The search engine’s latest progress was additionally fueled by seasonal components and present occasions.

DuckDuckGo Vice President for Communications GoKamyl Bazbaz defined that the corporate usually sees a bigger than regular uptick in searches and downloads across the New 12 months as folks attempt to clear up their digital instruments and footprint round that point.

“The latest Fb-WhatsApp privateness coverage announcement appears to have had some impression, growing search much like the way it has pushed folks to personal messaging alternate options like Sign,” he added. “We’ve seen this occur earlier than, when a high-profile privateness difficulty is uncovered, we usually see a rise in use.”

The Google Behavior

Constructing market share will proceed to be a difficult job for DuckDuckGo. “Most individuals proceed to make use of Google out of behavior and since they’re tied into many different Google companies, similar to Gmail, Maps, Information, YouTube, Android telephone and so forth,” defined Sterling.

“There’s additionally a notion, which is partly justified, that Google is the very best search engine accessible,” he continued.

“It’s unlikely that DDG will ever be a critical challenger to Google however they are able to construct a sustainable enterprise,” he added.

To try this, DuckDuckGo might want to develop and maintain their prospects blissful.

“With a purpose to reduce down on monitoring, I switched from Chrome to Firefox and from Google to DuckDuckGo,” defined Dan Kennedy, a professor of journalismat Northeastern College in Boston.

“I wasn’t involved about privateness particularly, however I used to be uninterested in wanting up, say, a product a scholar had written about so as to verify the spelling after which seeing a relentless stream of advertisements for that product for the following six months,” he continued.

“Sadly, I didn’t suppose the outcomes from DuckDuckGo had been superb, and I discovered myself utilizing Google often once I couldn’t discover what I used to be in search of,” he mentioned. “So after perhaps a few months I switched again to Google. I’ve caught with Firefox, and that appears to have all however eradicated the monitoring.”