DuckDuckGo hit a new record in January of over 1 billion searches served throughout the month.
1 Billion! That's how many monthly searches we served in January. (Yes, that’s a record.) We're publicly loving this very private start to 2019 🙂🎉 pic.twitter.com/8FS0QcGhJ2
— DuckDuckGo (@DuckDuckGo) February 2, 2019
That represents a 78% year-over-year increase from the 654 million searches served in January 2018.
Another company record was broken last month when DuckDuckGo served 36.4 million in a day on January 29th.
As an advocate for transparency, DuckDuckGo makes its data publicly available.
Here’s a snapshot of the company’s search data in the month of January.
The growth of DuckDuckGo keeps accelerating. In comparison, DuckDuckGo grew 56% year-over-year from January 2017 to January 2018.
This could be an indication that people are becoming more aware of the amount of personal data collected by Google.
Last December, DuckDuckGo was pushing a study in which it claimed Google personalizes search results even when users are logged out, creating a “filter bubble.”
However, Google was quick to refute the study and debunk the claims made by DuckDuckGo.
Though it’s still interesting to note that DuckDuckGo hit a new company record a month after those claims were made.
Another interesting development that occurred in December is Google transferring ownership of the domain Duck.com to DuckDuckGo.
Previously, Duck.com pointed to the Google homepage. That was a point of contention for DuckDuckGo in the past as they said it was confusing for users.
Could that have had anything to do with the increase in searches from December 2018 to January 2019?
One thing that’s certain is DuckDuckGo has momentum on its side right now. It will be interesting to see what else is in store for the niche search engine this year.
