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A Duck & a Wiki Team Up Against the Content Farms

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Re: A Duck & a Wiki Team Up Against the Content Farms

#11

Post by CurrentB »

DDG has a laughably small market share. This doesn't necessarily make them a non-threat, but it's going to take more than this to change users' search behavior (ie convert them from Google to DDG) on even a minute level. I mean Google has the whole page preview thing now anyway, and the content farm thing should be fixed soon, as mentioned. Honestly, Google Instant is the best thing in search for a long time and it's so ingrained in my expectations now that I couldn't see switching to a search engine without it.

So asking what Google will do isn't really an important question.

Re: A Duck & a Wiki Team Up Against the Content Farms

#12

Post by melvinram »

redthrowaway wrote: post #8
melvinram wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Google's prominent ranking of Wikipedia articles usually drives me nuts unless it's the only good article around.

Google's ranking of Wikipedia articles is due in large part to Wikipedia's great PageRank ranking. I don't think Google is giving Wikipedia any sort of singled-out treatment, Wikipedia just ranks highly on Google's relevance metrics.

I know... but it still ranks really high and it's annoying because it's usually not the page that has the useful info when I'm searching.

Re: A Duck & a Wiki Team Up Against the Content Farms

#13

Post by citricsquid »

Vivtek wrote: post #10

How odd that even a year ago it seemed that the search engine space was closed to new entries, even solved - and now it feels wide open again.

I don't think so, the people using DDG are still a tiny tiny minority. If they did what google did with the browser market when they released Chrome then you would be warranted in saying they blew it wide open, but for what DDG has done with search? I don't think so, not yet anyway. Maybe when they've penetrated beyond the tech "elite" they might get somewhere, but right now if I ask any of my friends (who are relatively in the know about technology) they haven't heard of DDG.

Personally I don't think DDG will show wide success because the majority of people don't care about the added extras it provides, it's just other search engines (I think their major source is the bing api? Not 100% sure [1]) data with pretty labels and positioning, which very few care for. I search a relatively large amount and what DDG adds doesn't make it worth switching for me because I've become accustomed to how Google displays search results and adapted my behaviour to that.

[1] http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go-arc... (potentially no longer accurate which is why I'm not sure)

Re: A Duck & a Wiki Team Up Against the Content Farms

#16

Post by [deleted] »

CurrentB wrote: post #11

DDG has a laughably small market share. This doesn't necessarily make them a non-threat, but it's going to take more than this to change users' search behavior (ie convert them from Google to DDG) on even a minute level. I mean Google has the whole page preview thing now anyway, and the content farm thing should be fixed soon, as mentioned. Honestly, Google Instant is the best thing in search for a long time and it's…

[deleted]

Re: A Duck & a Wiki Team Up Against the Content Farms

#17

Post by sorbus »

redthrowaway wrote: post #9
ddemchuk wrote: post #3

google's not going to do anything because they're in the business of making money off of search and duckduckgo is not

In what way is ddg not in the business of making money?

Do you happen to know how DDG is making money, then?

Re: A Duck & a Wiki Team Up Against the Content Farms

#20

Post by Matt_Cutts »

sorbus wrote: post #17
redthrowaway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is ddg not in the business of making money?

Do you happen to know how DDG is making money, then?

I know of a couple ways:

- Adding affiliate codes to the search results: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html The relevant part is "we may add an affiliate code to some eCommerce sites (e.g. Amazon & eBay)". It looks like this is where most of the revenue comes from, according to http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/01/26/can-a-start-u... . Relevant part is "The site is self-funded and saw about $15,000 in revenue last year, mostly through Amazon’s affiliate program, which pays whenever a customer buys an Amazon product after clicking on a DuckDuckGo link."

- Sponsorships where the sponsor banner displays on all search result pages: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/05/duck-duck-go-tra...

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