Is The Privacy Focused Search Engine DuckDuckGo Worth A Shot

At present, there’s no one who can come even close to Google. Many experts are concerned about this fact because too much power in one hand often leads to dictatorship.

But it seems like someone has become successful in sneaking through Google’s fort. And that brave pal is DuckDuckGo. This is the same search engine that secured headlines when it received a whopping 70% growth rate. This success was due to the new search experience they were providing to users. Unlike the giants, DuckDuckGo thrives on privacy.

They simply don’t store & sell users’ data. This made them a favorite amongst people who were highly concerned about the amount of data they shared with the search engines and how it was used.

Since DuckDuckGo is growing at an interesting speed, we did some research to see whether DuckDuckGo is good just from a user’s perspective or if it can be fruitful for marketers & business owners as well.

Growth

Some, who like to take risks & try something new, are adverting with DuckDuckGo. They have seen a 181% increase in referring traffic from DuckDuckGo, which was only 30% with Google.

While these are pretty interesting growth numbers, it is off a very small base & amount; only 0.2% of total search traffic compared to 81% from Google.

So we have a challenger here with a growing base!

Performance

Assuming similar volume across all search engines & predicted revenue from each engine (10,000 x AOV x conversion rate), Bing reigns supreme by providing the best conversion rates. Whereas, Google & DuckDuckGo both secured the second spot.

However, the above data is unidirectional, because while evaluating the performance the ratio between organic & paid search traffic was kept out of the equation.

So is DuckDuckGo worth a Shot?

The first thing you need to know is that all search listings of DuckDuckGo are powered by Bing; so be assured that you will get traffic without doing anything.  Secondly, like Mark Zuckerberg said, “The biggest risk is not taking any risk”. In this ever changing digital world, if you are not trying your hand at new tools and platforms, then you may be missing out on some good opportunities. However, it doesn’t mean that you should start running behind every shiny thing. But those which have potential can be tried at least once. Who knows, it may work wonders for you!

Conclusion

As an advertising professional myself, I am in the favor of storing data, but upto a limit. Because users are going to see ads anyways, then why not show them relevant ads using data. But of course just like every other aspect of life, it comes with a doubt that someone can use this data for something bad and that can be a real threat to a user’s privacy.

Gauging the market’s concern, DuckDuckGo opted for a clever strategy and made privacy their USP. Till date, they are the leading privacy-focused search provider. But a new player, Oscobo has also joined the game & it may give DuckDuckGo a tough competition because unlike DuckDuckGo, Oscobo is UK based and so it can’t be forced to provide data by law enforcement.

At last, we really appreciate the bold move DuckDuckGo has taken, because they came up with something which was lacking – “A different search experience”. And like I said in the beginning, too much power in one hand can lead to unfavorable results, and these little guys are trying on their level to restore the balance. If not that, then at least they have made a splash. Way to go, DuckDuckGo!

Willing to give it a try? Let us know your search experience by commenting below. You can also write to us at sales@agencyplatform.com.