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Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 46% in 2021

bleepingcomputer.com

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Re: Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 46% in 2021

#2

Post by beebeepka »

Not surprising. I also migrated after ixquick/startpage started their aggressive monetisation efforts earlier this year.

Frankly, the results are bad. Always have been for me. If it's still powered by bing, that would explain it because it assumes everyone is somewhere in North America. Still beats having to deal with Google, though

Re: Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 46% in 2021

#3

Post by CurrentB »

beebeepka wrote: post #2

Not surprising. I also migrated after ixquick/startpage started their aggressive monetisation efforts earlier this year. Frankly, the results are bad. Always have been for me. If it's still powered by bing, that would explain it because it assumes everyone is somewhere in North America. Still beats having to deal with Google, though

I agree the results are bad unfortunately. I really do want to like duck duck go. I want to get away from Google and am still in the middle of a full switch to ddg, but I don't know how much longer I can last.

The problem is even if 90% of the time the results are good enough on ddg, wondering if I'm missing out on a better result causes me to do a !g google search almost every time I'm searching for something non trivial. And doing two searches for each query gets old after a while.

Re: Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 46% in 2021

#4

Post by cassianoleal »

beebeepka wrote: post #2

Not surprising. I also migrated after ixquick/startpage started their aggressive monetisation efforts earlier this year. Frankly, the results are bad. Always have been for me. If it's still powered by bing, that would explain it because it assumes everyone is somewhere in North America. Still beats having to deal with Google, though

> it assumes everyone is somewhere in North America

It really doesn't. The country selector is right below the tabs (All, Images, Videos, etc). Click the toggle and select a country.

Re: Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 46% in 2021

#5

Post by Xevi »

beebeepka wrote: post #2

Not surprising. I also migrated after ixquick/startpage started their aggressive monetisation efforts earlier this year. Frankly, the results are bad. Always have been for me. If it's still powered by bing, that would explain it because it assumes everyone is somewhere in North America. Still beats having to deal with Google, though

I use it on my phone as my default browser. There's a toggle on the search page to switch between US and local search results. Doesn't that work for you?

Re: Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 46% in 2021

#6

Post by johnebgd »

I switched to DDG in 2017 on desktop and in 2019 on mobile. I still revert 1 in 500 searches back to Google since the results aren’t as good.

That said, I wouldn’t trade better results to lose the benefit of increased privacy.

I also use PI Hole to block tracking at the network level, use UBlock Origin at the browser level, and use Mozilla containers on Firefox to silo my social media accounts so they can’t track my browsing as easily.

Most people don’t do these things.

Re: Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 46% in 2021

#7

Post by typon »

I havent had the need for Google Search as much anymore. I find that the content is lower quality and truly useful information is hard to find.

If I need a product review I use YouTube or Reddit search.

I increasingly use Github search for code.

I use Google Maps for restaurant or store location/hours, then go to the linked website from there.

I use wiki search (Firefox prefix) to find quick information on a topic.

I use imdb search (Firefox prefix) for movies/show information.

And so on.

Ten years ago my internet experience would start from Google Search, now its a lot more diverse.

Re: Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 46% in 2021

#8

Post by skinnymuch »

Does any one know if statcounter’s data skews any way for the data to be biased in any way? Duck Duck Go on pace to surpass Yahoo at some point in 2022 and not be too far behind Bing is pretty wild to me.

Perhaps Bing’s lack of market share is what is more surprising but should not be. Duck Duck Go’s share makes sense. And for Yandex to round out the top 6 at 0.08%. A decade ago AOL and Ask.com still had some relevancy.

Also, I wonder if there are any countries outside Russia, Belarus, Turkey, South Korea (technically North Korea too), Japan, and China, where Google doesn’t have at least 80% market share. Or another search engine with at least 5% market share like Vietnam just getting to that.

Re: Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo grew by 46% in 2021

#9

Post by bb88 »

typon wrote: post #7

I havent had the need for Google Search as much anymore. I find that the content is lower quality and truly useful information is hard to find. If I need a product review I use YouTube or Reddit search. I increasingly use Github search for code. I use Google Maps for restaurant or store location/hours, then go to the linked website from there. I use wiki search (Firefox prefix) to find quick information on a topic. I…

At the start of the internet the meta search engines (search aggregators) were big a long time ago -- HotBot, etc. They still exist but are really popular with the travel crowd. So it may be time for a comeback.

I also just want a browser plugin to "wrap" "my" "google" "query" "in" "quotes", because that's apparently the only way to get good search results these days.

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