DDG uses typed-in search query data from Bing/Yahoo?

[Keys4]

DDG is the best search engine (I'm a heavy searcher) but I have a question...

The DDG bot doesn't do much as most their results come from 3rd party scrapers like BingBot and YahooBot.

So my question is does DDG use;

1) Bing/Yahoo user search queries matched with what they click on to adjust rankings, OR
2) does DDG use their own user search queries with what they click on to adjust rankings?

What I mean is that it's easy to match a search query with scraped website content in a database but IF you track a user after they enter a search query (i.e. track what results they click) it gives a better indication of webpage quality.

If DDG tracks their own users then how do they determine legitimacy if they don't record IP or JS fingerprinting? If they use Bing/Yahoo's data then they are just "kicking the privacy can down the road"?

[Brett_Tabke]

DDG is getting nearly all its results from Bing (near 100%) as far as I can tell. They grab a bunch of results and then toy with it.

As far as I can tell - there is no personalization at all.

They can certainly track clicks and searches. They don't claim not too as far as I can tell - they only claim not to record or track your ip.



from the faq on their homepage: [duckduckgo.com...]

Unlike some other search engines, we don’t alter search results based on someone’s previous search history. In fact, since we don’t track our users we don’t have access to search histories at all! Those other search engines show you results based on a data profile about you and your online activity (including your search history), and so can be slanted towards what they think you will click on the most based on this profiling. This effect is commonly known as the search filter bubble, but using DuckDuckGo can help you escape it.

This does not mean our search results are generally “unfiltered” because, for every search you make online, a search engine’s job is to filter millions of possible results down to a ranked order of just a handful. In other words, a search engine has to use algorithms programmed by people to determine what shows up first in the list of results, what shows up second, and so on. Otherwise, for every search you’d just get a completely random set of results, which of course wouldn’t be very useful.