DuckDuckGo: A different approach to web search
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that aims to be different from Google. It was started in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg in Paoli, Pennsylvania, 15 minutes from where I grew up. The fundamental difference in the way DuckDuckGo approaches search is that it tracks nothing about its users – each visitor receives the same search results, regardless of their search history. The results are pulled from Yahoo, which are pulled from Bing, but the emphasis goes to the top few results – the ones that 80 to 90 percent of users will look at. The advantage of not tracking users is supposedly threefold – to preserve users’ privacy, to provide better search results, and to streamline the search experience. Naturally, DuckDuckGo has been compared to Google. Weinberg states that he does not intend to compete directly with Google, but to offer a ‘pure’ search experience unaffected by ads, algorithms, and search histories, to anyone who prefers searching that way.
DuckDuckGo pure search algorithm allows for a potentially very different set of results than a Google search would. It allows PageRank to function as intended, giving more visibility to pages linked to by a greater number of more prominent hubs. In theory, this allows the popularity, visibility, and importance of certain pages to happen naturally. Because Google collects lots of information on, and forms profiles of, its users, the results are not purely based on PageRank. Results are manipulated by Google to provide what Google thinks will be more relevant based on a user’s search history, and businesses can pay to put their pages at the top of the results for certain search terms with AdWords. Since 2008, and since 2012 when this article was written, DuckDuckGo has grown significantly in popularity, but is very far away from competing with Google or Bing in terms of daily search count, indicating that while people are definitely interested in pure web search, the appeal is not yet strong enough to change users’ collective minds.
Our right to privacy on the Web is very much in question. It will certainly be interesting to see how people’s interests in avoiding tracking, as well as valuing search results ordered completely by relevance, will change over time.