Tag Archives: Duckduckgo

DuckDuckGo: privacy, breadth, and answers

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We should all know by now that DuckDuckGo is scrupulous  about not keeping any record on what you search. There is no search history! I have recommended this search engine to everyone I  know who is at all concerned about the very obvious  use of search history at Google or Bing to influence search results.

This article explains how DDG does that through use of HTTPS encryption.  Get your privacy ducks in a row with DuckDuckGo by Alex Wawro, PCWorld (April 19)

We also learn that DDG, while it has its own crawler, also sends the query to over 30 search engines including Google   Yahoo, Bing and Blekko. It’s a meta-search engine – but with a difference – it employs Web of Trust ratings to assess results — these are two more reasons to add DuckDuckGo to your search tool kit. It’s not only private – it has breadth and screens the results.

Note this correction: DDG does not search Google, but it does use the Bing index and Blekko.  More information about sources  here.

Zac at DDG reminded me that there are also  instant answers obtained from many sources – see this page about goodies and try a few.

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“Google tracks you – we don’t”

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Duckduckgo and founder Gabriel Weinber were spotlighted in a feature article at Neowin ( ) Meet Gabriel Weinberg, the man taking on Google and Bing

DuckDuckGo, the little search engine that could, is now handling 1.6 million searches a day. Its main distinguinshing feature is privacy – no tracking, which Weinberg put up on billboard in San Francisco – Google tracks you – we don’t.

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Under the Hood at DuckDuckGo

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More and more I like what I see at DuckDuckGo – especially with the add-on I use to show DDG’s best result whenever I run a search through my browser. (You can get this from DuckDuckGo’s list of browser addons.)

Through this interview with Gabriel Weinberg, founder and CEO, we learn more about his approach to search.

DuckDuckGo Architecture – 1 Million Deep Searches A Day And Growing, High Scalability (Jan 28)

There’s a great deal of technical information on databases and caching. Searchers will be interested in some of the search points.

  • “try to figure what a query is about and then route it to the appropriate datastores and APIs that are appropriate for it. And in some cases bring it back, parallelize it, and mix it together”
  • “Link results are API driven, though top links may come from other sources. Link sources include: Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Blekko, WolframAlpha, and many others.”
  • “Matches don’t have to hit exactly. It’s a big datastore of definitions, links categories, disambiguation pages, and the many other features they have.”
  • “Core of the engine is deciding how to route searches to the correct backend components.”
  • “Goal is to get to 80% search coverage by adding 1000s of sources to provide Instant Answers on everything. Wikipedia gets you to 20%.”
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DuckDuckGo for default search

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DuckDuckGo – quietly and steadily makes itself known as an alternative – maybe THE – alternative to Google.  DuckDuckGo doesn’t track your history, it exercises some quality control over the sites it indexes, and it has syntax for narrowing the search. But if our tendency is to use Google, we need some help to redirect our searches.

The answer – set up your browser to default to searching  DuckDuckGo  from the browser bar.

DuckduckGo has add-ons for all the browsers. Review the list at http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/topics/292237-desktop/articles

If you use Chrome, this article -  DuckDuckGo Vs. Google – The War Gets Dirty  from Search Engine Journal (Nov 22) -  describes the method for setting DuckDuckGo as the default search engine in Chrome.

You’ll note some acrimony in Gabriel Weinberg’s view of Google.

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DuckDuckGo as a real competitor

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Could DuckDuckGo Be The Biggest Long-Term Threat To Google?, Nathan Safran, Search Engine Land (Apr 26)

Many more people are using Duckduckgo – they’re going in droves. Of course there is the privacy reason – DDG doesn’t track, but Safran suggests the real reason is search performance – the results and the display. There are several comparisons for different queries.

“The conclusion from our Google – DuckDuckGo SERP comparison for several query types is that DDG is clearly innovating in search ‘presentation’ — an area that has arguably decayed over the years as the large search engines rush to cram ever more (images, video, local, advertising, social…) into the search results.”

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