{"id":2365,"date":"2016-03-01T13:46:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T13:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/03\/01\/going-over-to-the-duck-side-a-week-using-duckduckgo\/"},"modified":"2019-11-05T17:12:35","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T17:12:35","slug":"going-over-to-the-duck-side-a-week-using-duckduckgo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/03\/01\/going-over-to-the-duck-side-a-week-using-duckduckgo\/","title":{"rendered":"Going over to the duck side: a week using DuckDuckGo"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve heard about DuckDuckGo<\/a> a few times over the years, mostly as a name uttered in hushed whispers behind closed doors \u2013 \u201cYou don\u2019t have to use Google. There is another way.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

As far as I knew, it was a small, scrappy start-up that had nevertheless managed to make its mark in the world of search, dominated as it is by the vast and all-knowing Google.<\/p>\n

Frustration with Google might be at a high at the moment with tax-dodging, increasing dominance of search (and now the mobile web<\/a>) and removing ads on the right hand side<\/a> at the expense of organic search results.<\/p>\n

Therefore I was intrigued by the comments from DuckDuckGo<\/a> fans on Jason Tabeling\u2019s article on whether you should be paying more attention to DuckDuckGo<\/a>, urging people to switch to DuckDuckGo<\/a> and discover the \u2018real internet\u2019. How would searches from such a small engine stack up against Google\u2019s, in everyday situations? Would using DuckDuckGo be an exercise in frustration, or a revelation?<\/p>\n

I decided to test the waters, using it as my ‘go-to’ search engine<\/a>\u00a0every day for a week.<\/p>\n

Privacy and customisability<\/h2>\n

The first thing I did was to install the app on my phone. DuckDuckGo has native apps for both iOS and Android, and compared to most apps which oblige you to sign away your first-born child before installing, its requirements are refreshingly simple.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, this is DuckDuckGo\u2019s main ethos: it \u201cdoesn\u2019t track you\u201d, as the desktop version of the search engine likes to remind you, and protecting your privacy is front and centre of its concerns<\/a>. The mobile app has a straightforward and flexible set of privacy settings, including an option to enable Tor<\/a> (this requires installing a proxy app like Orbot).<\/p>\n

Compare this with Google\u2019s rather lacklustre \u2018Accounts &\u00a0privacy\u2019 settings:<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

The desktop version also boasts a range of privacy options, including the option to prevent sharing your search with sites you click on (a shame for anyone who tracks analytics, but great for privacy-focused users<\/a>) and the ability to save your settings anonymously to the cloud.<\/p>\n

DuckDuckGo lets you customise it in a whole variety of other ways, including changing the theme and modifying different parts of the appearance, which I had fun playing around with. You can even opt to turn off ads, and DDG helps you to make up for this by giving you ways you can spread the word instead.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t help thinking that Google tries to customise your experience of using its search engine by gathering vast amounts of data and trying to intuit what you want, whereas DuckDuckGo simply lets you choose.<\/p>\n

Fun with features<\/h2>\n

So now that I was all set up, how did it deliver with search? The first test came when I wanted to look up more information about a story a friend had mentioned on Facebook, about a baby dolphin dying after it was pulled from the ocean and passed around for selfies.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t quite believe it was true, but a quick Duck (DuckDuckGo\u2019s equivalent of the verb \u2018Google\u2019, though I\u2019m not sure whether this one is going to\u00a0catch on) confirmed that it was:<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

DuckDuckGo aims to win users over by being helpful without being intrusive. So it won\u2019t amass vast stores of data in order to be unerringly, creepily accurate in predicting what you\u2019re after, but it will, say, present you with a carousel of recent news stories on the topic you just searched.<\/p>\n

One such useful feature is Instant Answers, which highlights information designed to give you a quick answer to your search query at the top of the page, similar to Google\u2019s Knowledge Graph<\/a> or Bing\u2019s Snapshot Search and Autocomplete<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a great idea in theory but falls down a little in its coverage of topics. A search for \u201cWho is Thomas Jefferson\u201d, for example, summons a little Wikipedia bio and a huge range of \u2018related topics\u2019 at the side, ranging from \u201cburials at Monticello\u201d to \u201cAmerican deists\u201d; whereas a search for \u201cwhat is a leap year\u201d just returns a regular results page.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

DuckDuckGo is an open source project, so Instant Answers, like many of its features, is community contributed: if you spot an area that doesn\u2019t have an Instant Answer associated with it, you can get involved and add it yourself.<\/p>\n

This has its advantages and disadvantages; on one hand, it gives users a practical way to improve the search engine in ways that are relevant to them. On the other, it requires Instant Answers to be added and refined one by one, which takes time and can be frustrating for users who just want to access the information they need in that moment, with the minimum of effort.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t get to truly put many of DuckDuckGo\u2019s features through their paces with just a week of using the search engine, but it gave me a sense of how most of them could be used.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed the way that search results scroll vertically into infinity instead of requiring you to click onto the next page to see more. It feels effortless and gives the impression of diving deeper into a topic, instead of the stigma which tends to surround \u2018the second page of results<\/a>\u2019 on Google.<\/p>\n

Then there are \u2018!bangs\u2019, a much-touted DuckDuckGo feature, which mystified me when I first saw the little exclamation point next to the search box in DuckDuckGo\u2019s mobile app.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

By typing an exclamation mark and a keyword<\/a> \u2013 usually the website name \u2013 followed by your search term, you can search directly within a site from DuckDuckGo. So searching for \u201c!ebay teapot\u201d will take you straight to the search results for \u201cteapot\u201d on eBay.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a neat little time-saver which has benefits for DuckDuckGo as well, as it collects a commission from eBay and Amazon for anything that you purchase from those sites after visiting them through DuckDuckGo.<\/p>\n

!bangs work with many more websites than just those two, of course; the list of !bangs<\/a> is currently over 7,800 sites long, and you can add any site that isn\u2019t already covered by filling in a form<\/a>. It\u2019s unclear how long these take to process, though \u2013 after discovering that Search Engine Watch wasn\u2019t on the list, I submitted it as a !bang, but at the time of writing it isn\u2019t yet up and running.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Where DuckDuckGo falls down<\/strong><\/p>\n

When it comes to search engines<\/a> that aren\u2019t Google, I definitely consider DuckDuckGo to be ahead of the flock. With its unwavering emphasis on privacy, fine-tuned customisation and strong community, it has something genuinely different to offer users instead of just playing catch-up to Google with its features.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s still a search engine that isn\u2019t Google, and in spite of DuckDuckGo\u2019s best efforts to offer a \u201csmarter search\u201d, it\u2019s not able to match Google for sheer accuracy and intuition. A number of times as I researched articles throughout the week, I resorted to Googling something rather than waste any more time trying different keywords on DuckDuckGo.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Where DuckDuckGo falls down<\/em><\/p>\n

Part of the problem is likely to be that as a lifelong Google user (except for a brief fling with Ask Jeeves in the very early days), I\u2019ve moulded my search habits to fit with what I know works on Google, and I expect Google\u2019s uncanny levels of accuracy in return.<\/p>\n

The best example of this came up while I was researching a piece on what to consider before jumping on a new social media bandwagon<\/a> for ClickZ. I couldn\u2019t remember what the account verification icons on Vine, the equivalent of Twitter\u2019s \u2018blue tick\u2019, were called. So I searched for \u201cVine green tick\u201d on DuckDuckGo.<\/p>\n

After several frustrated attempts and pages of nonsense results about grape vine pests and the comicbook superhero \u2018The Tick\u2019, I searched Google for \u201cVine green tick\u201d. It immediately returned this as the top result:<\/p>\n

\"A
\n<\/a>Google: you have to admit, it gets results.<\/em><\/p>\n

Whether Google used its semantic search<\/a> techniques to know that I had been spending a lot of time on social networks and reading articles about social media to give the correct context to my search, or whether it was able to use its vast stores of data on what previous users had searched to intuit the right result, it was able to find in one search what DuckDuckGo couldn\u2019t manage in four or five.<\/p>\n

The question is, am I indignant enough about Google\u2019s knowledge of my browsing habits (and everyone else\u2019s that feed its all-knowing algorithms) to trade the convenience of instantly finding what I\u2019m after for that extra measure of privacy online?<\/p>\n

My assessment of DuckDuckGo after spending a week in the pond is that it\u2019s a search engine for the long term. To get the most out of using it, you have to make a conscious change in your online habits, rather than just expecting to switch one search engine for another and get the same results.<\/p>\n

Many of its features require you to actively contribute to the search engine to help make it better; you have to put in what you expect to get out. And you have to sacrifice some of what Google has trained you to expect from a search engine in order to ease yourself out of the filter bubble<\/a>.<\/p>\n


\n<\/a>\"A<\/a>Does this bother you enough to change your search engine?
\nPhoto by Patrick Barry, some rights reserved<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

A lot of people are already bothered enough by what Google (and other huge, omnipresent online entities) has been doing to make the switch. As for me, while I\u2019m not sure whether I\u2019m ready to make the break with Google just yet, I\u2019m listening.<\/p>\n

I do think that DuckDuckGo is the only search engine offering something substantially different enough to challenge Google. It\u2019s not backed by a huge corporation, but it doesn\u2019t need to be. Actually, that would defeat the object of it.<\/p>\n

Unlike most major search engines whose main offering is, let\u2019s face it, \u2018basically Google but slightly worse\u2019, DuckDuckGo offers users genuine privacy, control, customisation, a certain amount of hipster street cred and an opportunity for endless duck puns.<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019re still not convinced, take a look at our mega list of alternative search engines<\/a>\u00a0to find your favourite.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this article, check out our piece on the recent popularity of privacy-focused search engines: What’s behind the trend towards private search engines?<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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