DuckDuckGo Search Engine – All You Need To Know

DuckDuckGo has been here since 2008. Its founder, Gabriel Weinberg, says it’s one of the best anti-Google search engines that you can use to enhance your search and boost your privacy on the internet. 

Yes, DuckDuckGo indeed has a lot to offer you if you are looking for privacy when using the internet. DuckDuckGo records over 1.8 billion searches every month. It accounts for at least 30 million searches daily in the United States alone. 

Related: Search Engines To Use Instead of Google

That tells you how much people value their internet privacy and how popular the search engine is to 91% of Americans who believe that they don’t have control over the data privacy.

In this article, I let you know all about DuckDuckGo and how you can optimize your website to make it more visible on it.

1- It Assures You Internet Privacy 

Internet privacy must be the primary reason why Weinberg came up with the idea of DuckDuckGo. Search engines like Google and Yahoo track your online journey and share your digital footprints with advertisers. That is not the case with DuckDuckGo. The search engine is not concerned about your location or the sites you visit when you browse the internet.

Instead of relying on your location and browsing history to customize your experience or share adverts on your screen, the search engine simply uses the keywords to determine the kind of results you need on the SERP.

Related: How To Do SEO Keyword Research?

Although DuckDuckGo cannot trace your exact location, it can easily approximate your location using the GeoIP lookup. For example, if you search for “Hotel Near Me” the search engine is most likely to give you search results that are a bit close to your physical address.

With DuckDuckGo, you have the best platform to search anonymously. The search engine does not care about whom you are or ties your searches back to you. 

Unless there is a court order for the search engine to provide your personal information, DuckDuckGo may be obliged to do so. However, the search engine may not provide any personal information to third parties because it does not collect or store such information in the first place. 

2- It Lacks The Search History Option

DuckDuckGo does not have the Search History option because it is not interested in saving or sharing what you search. That means, with DuckDuckGo users cannot go back and track what you were searching for whenever you go online. There is no such browsing history that third-party companies can use to trace back your search. 

The fact that the search engine does not share any personal information with advertisers is an advantage to users who may often have a history of uncomfortable personal content. 

For instance, if you are going to search “How to Avoid Paying Business Tax” or “How To Fix a Bad Credit Score,” the search engine cannot share this kind of information to any concerned individuals. Simply put, DuckDuckGo does not share your search history with any employer or institution that may ask them to do so.

3- There Is No Auto-complete Feature On the Search Engine 

Most search engines like Google have the auto-complete feature that makes it easier for you to search the internet more comfortably. However, DuckDuckGo does not have this feature. Instead, it allows you to type any keyword on the search tab and feed you the information you want. 

Since the search engine is more concerned about user-generated keywords, it simply allows you to write anything and feed you the information for the particular search query.

The search engine filters out any search results that they believe is full of adverts and strives to feed you with relevant and informative search results.  

Some users have seen the lack of auto-complete feature on DuckDuckGo as a disadvantage because it makes it a bit challenging for those who cannot come up with a definite search query. The auto-complete feature makes it fast to enter search queries.

4- How Does It Make Profits 

DuckDuckGo is also out to make money just like most search engines do. The only difference with this search engine is the kind of approach they employ in making money. DuckDuckGo does not collect data to share with third-party companies and advertisers. Instead, it uses a different approach – keywords.

The search engines only need keywords to custom your search results. For instance, if you enter ‘motorbike’ as your search query, the search engine may feed you a motorbike advert. Depending on the keyword that you use when searching the internet, DuckDuckGo can personalize your experience on their platform.

5- It Is One Of The Fastest Growing Search Engines 

Although DuckDuckGo has a global market share of 0.45%, it is still one of the most promising search engines. In 2019, DuckDuckGo had over 38 million daily searches and just 20 million in the previous year. 

The minimal interface and assurance for data privacy to users make the search engine to gain popularity and attract new users. 

Most people prefer using the search engine to browse the internet because it limits the number of adverts on the search results and assures them privacy. 

Today, most users are making the most use of DuckDuckGo because they have realized the importance of data privacy. 

Although it is growing faster, most website owners or e-commerce store owners have not been paying some attention to optimizing their sites to meet its unique algorithms.

6- It Contains Bangs That Save You Time

DuckDuckGo is one of the fastest search engines in existence. Unlike other search engines, it makes it hassle-free to search for information on other sites without having to visit those sites first. 

The search engines contain over 12k bangs that you can use to search for information directly. 

A bang is a search engine shortcut for visiting a site more conveniently. With DuckDuckGo, you can visits Amazon.com, Twitter, Reddit, Search Engine Watch, and many other sites directly from the search engines’ home page. 

For instance, if you want to search for the word ‘SEO’ on Search Engine Watch, you can simply type “!searchenginewatch SEO” and wait for the search results. 

How You Can Approach SEO for DuckDuckGo Search Engine 

There is very little information about how you can optimize your site for DuckDuckGo. Ideally, all other SEO tips for optimizing your website for search engines still apply for DuckDuckGo.

Related: What is SEO? Complete Guide To Optimize Your Site

Here is how you can do SEO for the DuckDuckGo search engine:

1- Focus On Attracting Quality Links 

When creating content for your website, you should focus on what the readers want. That is, put yourself on the customers’ shoes and imagine you are the one looking for such content. 

When you create user-centered content, you can be confident that your site will rank at the top of DuckDuckGo search results.

Get links from high-quality websites such as Wikipedia, Wikihow, and other authority sites. These sites have a lot of traffic, and linking your site to them improves your visibility on any search engine, including DuckDuckGo.

Related: Free Backlink Checker Tools

You can use link building tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Ubersuggest to come up with the best links that you can include in your content.

2- Know What Searchers Are Looking For

Ideally, most DuckDuckGo users are usually looking for direct or exact results based on their search queries. While they want to keep their data private when searching the internet, they also want to save their time with the kind of content they get. 

Therefore, before you can publish anything on your site, you must first ask yourself if it is what your target audience may be looking for on DuckDuckGo.

Segment your audience and come up with content that is relevant and highly informative based on their search queries. 

Most searchers on DuckDuckGo are likely to adjust their search queries because they are more informed than the search engine does not track their location. Therefore you can expect a regular DuckDuckGo user to include a geo-qualifier to their search queries and get the exact information they are looking for.

To truly understand what your visitors want, you will have to dig more into keyword research. Create content with a recommended keyword density. You can use keyword research tools such as Seed Keywords and Demographics Pro to get more insights on how people are searching on DuckDuckGo and create content that targets them. 

3- Optimize Your Site For Yahoo and Bing 

DuckDuckGo has a direct relationship with Yahoo and Bing search engines. It pulls its major features from these two search engines. Therefore, when optimizing your site for DuckDuckGo, you should not forget to have Bing and Yahoo in mind. 

Yahoo and Bing also have a significant share of the market. Once you optimize your website to make fit for the search engines, you are increasing your online visibility and audience. Here are some tips to optimize your site for the search engines:

• Review your site XML sitemap before you can submit it to Bing Webmaster Tools. 
• Use Bing Webmaster Tools to monitor your crawl, indexation on DuckDuckGo, and check the overall health of your site.
• Submit your site to other search engines like Yahoo, Google, and Bing to increase the possibility of DuckDuckGo indexing your site. 
• Add your website shortcut or bang on DuckDuckGo. This is significant if you want users to have direct access to your site. 
• Use other sites to get ranked on DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo uses over 400 sources, and you can optimize your site for such sources. Use the best content marketing strategy that will improve your site visibility on DuckDuckGo.

4- Use Semantic Search Strategy 

If you want your site to rank at the top of DuckDuckGo search results, you just focus more on semantic search techniques. Just like Google and Yahoo, DuckDuckGo also depends on a contextual library to learn about the searchers’ intentions before it can feed them any results. 

Here is an example of how you can use a semantic search strategy. DuckDuckGo gives you this kind of search results when you type ‘Amazon.” 

The first three results have the “Amazon” properties, which show how the search engine is more interested in providing searchers with the exact results based on their queries. The fourth result is from Wikipedia, one of the leading authority sites. 

You can expect Wikipedia to be among the top ten sites that will have almost any kind of information you are looking for and DuckDuckGo knows that better. It, therefore, provides you with a link to that site on the search results. 

The kind of semantic tilt that DuckDuckGo offers makes it more engaging for the user. You can easily find precise search results based on your intent when you search using DuckDuckGo.

5- Use Hyperlocal Search Terms 

Local search results are less common with DuckDuckGo. The search engine uses a more general method for producing local search results for users.

 Unlike Google, DuckDuckGo does not know where the users are located. The search engine will use your IP address to gauze where you may be browsing from and therefore feed you information based on that.

If a user is searching for anything with a keyword ‘Near Me’ DuckDuckGo is going to give them results that are almost close to their GeoIP. DuckDuckGo relies on the user to provide more information that can help it to provide exact local results. 

Therefore, to optimize your site for DuckDuckGo, you should ensure the content you publish on your site caters to the ‘near me’ keywords, especially if you want your website to rank at the top of DuckDuckGo search results.

Final Thoughts

DuckDuckGo is one of the fastest-growing search engines that assures you maximum privacy. To optimize your site to rank up on the search engine, you have to go the extra mile. 

Employ the tips I have shared here to rank on this forgotten search engine and market your brand to customers that value their data privacy more than anything.