DuckDuckGo was recently profiled in the New York Times, where it was revealed the search engine is now handling around 40 million searches a day.
At last count, in January 2019, DuckDuckGo was serving around 34 million searches a day. This continues the steady growth of the niche, privacy-focused search engine.
Growth has tripled over the past two years. A report released back in April shows that DuckDuckGo was the only one of Google’s competitors to gain organic search share in the first quarter of 2019.
How does DuckDuckGo compare to Google?
This leads to the inevitable comparison of DuckDuckGo versus Google. Though DuckDuckGo is growing, Google still holds a decidedly larger share of the search market.
That may always be the case, as DuckDuckGo’s focus on user privacy comes with limitations.
For example, DuckDuckGo is less capable of delivering personalized search results because it doesn’t track the behavior of its users.
DuckDuckGo’s maps results and local searches may also be less accurate because it doesn’t track user location the same way Google does.
Google tracks users’ search history which makes it capable of delivering (arguably) more relevant results.
Google also tracks users’ exact locations, allowing it to deliver more accurate results for maps and local searches.
Privacy isn’t yet enough of a selling point for users to give up the search experience they’re used to.
The important thing, at least from a business standpoint, is whether DuckDuckGo is turning a profit.
DuckDuckGo has been profitable for the past 5 years, according to the Times’ report, and recent growth should help ensure that remains the case for the time being.
In other words, DuckDuckGo isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
