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

21–30 of 556 posts

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

#21

Post by bko »

> 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 number of iOS users hit download on the app though, with installs seeing an average week-on-week growth of 33% and a peak of 69.9%.

Why do they report only relative numbers? These numbers alone are meaningless. This is just lazy reporting.

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

#25

Post by bee_rider »

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…

They wanted to write a story where this was a negative consequence for Google, I suspect, but the absolute numbers wouldn’t have supported that (they mention that it is inconsequential to Google a couple paragraphs in, if your browser can sustain the site for that long. Mine had trouble).

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

#27

Post by NDlurker »

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

Thanks for the tip; I didn't know about that.

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

#28

Post by osigurdson »

I actually like AI mode in Google. My main reason is if I just have a quick question it seems a lot quicker than logging into ChatGPT/Claude as I can just type it in the address bar.

Of course DDG / others can do the exact same thing as they already have an AI mode. Maybe you can even set up ChatGPT as a search engine - not sure. The key for this use case is speed - it has to be nearly instant.

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

#29

Post by bratsche »

There have been a few times where I found Google's AI mode useful. But most of the time I just want regular search results.

I'm among the people who finally moved to DuckDuckGo as my default. And for the occasional time when I want some AI mode I know how to get to Google.

Post reply on HN