It's time to take Duckduckgo.com seriously

[zeus]

We all know the search engine as webmasters, but slowly the rest of the world wakes up, many dont want Google looking over there shoulder all the time. Also Google is getting a little scary as company, if you look at all the companies they own. Not much space for good old fashion competition.

Now why take them serious?
The visitor numbers increase every year - [duckduckgo.com...] 62mill. a day.
Apple could be a possible buyer of DDG - [forbes.com...]
In Germany there are for the first time advertising on billboards from DDG

There comes interesting times

[lucy24]

This morning when I ran my website logs, I found two consecutive humans sent by DDG. Two different humans, that is. This was unusual enough that I noticed it.

[NickMNS]

They are also running ads on NPR (National Public Radio, in the US)

[phranque]

They are also running ads on NPR

essentially promoting "privacy", not "search".

[dstiles]

Be a shame if it was bought out by apple or anyone. The ddg team seem to be doing quite well enough without potential compromising.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

DDG doesn't seem to have its own database, isn't it ? They more look like a meta search engine.

[zeus]

i would really like to see a real battle again, like in the days of yahoo, altavista and upcoming google. It would also make the lives of webmasters easier, when they are not dependent on one SE.I bet lucy24 remembers .

[lucy24]

I bet lucy24 remembers.

I find it isn’t always safe to put my name and “remember” in the same sentence :(

The earliest thing I remember is when some people liked Ask Jeeves because, unlike other search engines of the time, it let you put your query in plain English, like “Who was the first person to fly across the Atlantic?” Today, this selling point would be greeted with “And your point is...?”

[zeus]

ahh i thought of the member energi, its some time since i was here, sorry.

[dstiles]

> DDG doesn't seem to have its own database

They do crawl, although they (used to?) get results from, I think, Bing as well.

[Digmen1]

I have been using DDG for 2 years now
Google censor my site as it mentions American Politics
So I am Defunding Google
By telling all of my users and friends not to use Chrome or Google

[zeus]

I dont use Google since 2015.
On all sites I creat, I have added Google free, so users can be sure not to be tracked.
Also recommend all to use DDG or ecosia.org if they search for health related topics, Google just filter to much research, if it incl a natural solution.

[zeus]

Oh wanted to add this :
DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources,[9] including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, Yandex, its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot) and others. It also uses data from crowdsourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the results.

[lucy24]

Seriously now, there’s absolutely no reason for every individual search engine to do its own crawling. Raw data is raw data. What matters is how you use it.

[Digmen1]

On Duck Duck Go my forum is at the top on page 1
On Bing my forum is at the top of page 1
On Google my forum is on page 5, after many results that are not even forums.
Google is censoring forums.
if someone searches for a forum, they should be shown all the forums, regardless of the number of pics, or H2s or the amount of idle chat.

So for that reason, I am defunding Google.

[tangor]

DDG is one of many out there. If they work for you, go for it.

I keep it pretty simple. I have a robots.txt. If you honor it for six months I might let you in. If you DON'T HONOR IT you are toast, no butter, no jam.

DDG passed the test. HOWEVER, their traffic as been minuscule (and I am talking <10 referrals per month).

Others have had much better luck. Waiting to see that happens to me. If it does: Yay! If not, they still have permission to play ... for now.

[ecommerceprofit]

I like to think of DDG as just duck.com...sounds better. I think they should rebrand.

[lucy24]

I like to think of DDG as just duck.com

No reason why you shouldn't; it's a straight redirect. (Meaning, incidentally, that they chose to use the longer name.)

[iamlost]

I’ve always mentally changed duckduck to tuk-tuk (motorised rickshaw) and envisioned it as the SE taking me where I wished to go...

When the Google limousine just can’t cut to the chase... [m.youtube.com].
Note: iamlost, leave me my delusions and fantasies.

[lucy24]

Funny to see the motorcycle in the last shot, because where I come from, an auto-rickshaw is generally known as a scooter.

Today I Learned ... that YouTube employs user-agent detection: clicking a link to m.youtube.com brought me straight to youtube.com.

[iamlost]

Yes, I posted from my phone. When I type-in YouTube on it I get m.youtube. Never tried the reciprocal just presumed it would behave as you discovered. Some interesting deletions in the mobile version.