Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

pcgamer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 556 posts

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#31

Post by mossTechnician »

bko wrote: post #21

> Just for a start, visits to its AI-free search page noai.duckduckgo.com between May 20 to May 25 are said to have increased by 22.7% on average week-on-week, with the figures peaking May 24 at 27.7%. > The DuckDuckGo mobile app saw installs spike in the US by 18.1% on average compared to the previous week. TechCrunch reported this growth was sustained over six days, peaking at 30.5% on May 25. An even greater numbe…

noai.duckduckgo.com probably receives much less traffic than the main domain, which enjoys placement in many prominent browsers (and offers AI overviews by default, although they are far smaller and less likely to appear than on Google). It would be much more interesting to see absolute numbers... in the context of the main site.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#32

Post by dylan604 »

al_borland wrote: post #5

My friends who previously had no interest in technology and never talked about it, are suddenly following tech news closely all because they hate AI being pushed so hard. One was just messaging me this morning about alternatives to Google search and maps. He ended up downloading DuckDuckGo. If Google isn’t carefully they’re going to push people away from their golden goose.

Search is not the golden goose. Ads are. If search was the golden goose, they wouldn't be trying so hard to replace it with AI.

Just because Google used to do search as their main point of business does not mean that holds true today. Holding on to the false premise will only add to your confusion about their decisions.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#33

Post by mrweasel »

qsort wrote: post #20

I truly don't get Google's move. I'm sure the model is fine, but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. If I wanted to ask an AI, why can't I ask the one from my subscription... that I'm already paying for... that's actually good... that can also search the web? I assume it's a play to test the waters for how the ad market is going to work, because as a product I really can't see why I would ev…

> I truly don't get Google's move.

Users aren't adopting their AI at the rate shareholders expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#34

Post by Hugsbox »

noncoml wrote: post #22

DuckDuckGo have to change their brand name if they want non-technical people to take them seriously

This has been my issue with DuckDuckGo from the start... it needs to be something a little more catchy and that rolls off the tongue. Saying "I'll DuckDuckGo it" feels so clunky. As small of a gripe as it sounds like, it really does matter.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#35

Post by floralhangnail »

teejmya wrote: post #13
NDlurker wrote: post #11

I've been going back and forth between DDG and Google. I have DDG set as default and only use Google if DDG isn't giving me good results.

Same. If I need to Google it, I add "!g" to the search terms. https://duckduckgo.com/bangs

I use !s for my fallback. I usually don't need the !g unless I want to see CAPTCHAS.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#36

Post by jeffwask »

qsort wrote: post #20

I truly don't get Google's move. I'm sure the model is fine, but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. If I wanted to ask an AI, why can't I ask the one from my subscription... that I'm already paying for... that's actually good... that can also search the web? I assume it's a play to test the waters for how the ad market is going to work, because as a product I really can't see why I would ev…

> it's not Google Search

...and it really hasn't been for a good number of years now. I left a while ago when results were all SEO copy pasta blogs this is just a final nail in the coffin.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#37

Post by ctrlkctrls »

The world seems to be fragmenting, into those that see the value in the latest from Google, and those that resist changes like this. I search for how much oil does my take" and get the exact answer in a single sentence, or I suppose I could click the links and wade through all the validation for choosing and how often one should change the oil, and which brand of oil that blog is pushing etc etc.

I love Google's AI answers and their AI Mode tab. DDG is just Bing or a search vendor proxy, so I've never understood the fascination. At least Perplexity is different to Google. DDG seeing a 28% increase is like Google saying they saw a drop of 0.0000000001% in traffic.

HN crowd forget that the world isn't like us, they didn't grow up with Yahoo and Alta Vista, with Excite etc etc. Our SOP is to resist all change, anytime Apple brings out a new version it'll be the end of Apple according to HN - Apple - the biggest company in the world - what do they know about UI, "Liquid Glass sucks!" :) :)

We're a community in danger of pushing out those new to the tech world, recent graduates will be made to feel unwelcome if we continue to trash everything that the biggest companies in the world do, like we always know better. I implore the community to be more positive about the future, about the technologies that will take us into that future.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#38

Post by jeffwask »

dylan604 wrote: post #32
al_borland wrote: post #5

My friends who previously had no interest in technology and never talked about it, are suddenly following tech news closely all because they hate AI being pushed so hard. One was just messaging me this morning about alternatives to Google search and maps. He ended up downloading DuckDuckGo. If Google isn’t carefully they’re going to push people away from their golden goose.

Search is not the golden goose. Ads are. If search was the golden goose, they wouldn't be trying so hard to replace it with AI. Just because Google used to do search as their main point of business does not mean that holds true today. Holding on to the false premise will only add to your confusion about their decisions.

They only dominate Ads because they dominate search if everyone leaves Search the ad business grinds to a halt as well. These are the ying and yang of Google.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#39

Post by asciimoo »

I'm seeing the same increased activity around my search engine project (https://github.com/asciimoo/hister). While Google's decision is very controversial, it's good to see that people are seeking for alternatives - nice motivation boost to keep developing alternative search projects.
Post reply on HN