Explore The World Of DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is emerging as a potential competitor to the major players in the domain of search . It was founded in 2008 and its USP stands for safeguarding user’s privacy . Personal data , browsing history and past searches based information is neither collected nor stored as per the claims of the firm .
They are not storing your search history, which means that they are not able to sell this data to advertisers. Moreover, there’s no tracking in the private browsing mode, which sounds encouraging for everyone who is interested in a search engine that won’t track every single search.
Data privacy as a topic has gained prominence in recent times as a result of which the adoption of data protection laws across the globe has gathered momentum . Currently no search engine offers to protect privacy of users .
DuckDuckGo uses its web crawler, DuckDuckBot, and up to 400 other sources to compile its search results which includes other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex, and sites like Wikipedia.
Layout of displaying search results is similar to that of Google’s initial version (SERP’s with 10 organic search results , ads at the top and bottom of the result pages, Knowledge panel wherein information is drawn from wikipedia, information is also pulled out of user review sites such as Yelp etc ) . User experience remains more or less the same in terms of navigating the information architecture in the result pages wherein web, images, videos , map tabs are enabled .
The New Dark Horse of The Search Ecosystem
There are more than 30 million searches happening on DuckDuckGo every day. Its data indicates a constant growth. It’s currently the fourth largest search engine in the U.S. counting more than 1 billion searches every month all over the world. It has garnered 1% market share with a loyal base of users for whom privacy and security are issues of paramount importance .
Day by day everyone is increasingly concerned about their online data being compromised by companies and governments . A concern is a threat to an established organization, but an opportunity for a rising one. Those fears can become a value proposition . This is what DuckDuckGo has precisely done consolidated on the theme of privacy as its core value proposition and service offering. Firm has positioned and differentiated itself in the marketplace by offering an unique value proposition to the end users .
Revenue Model
Untracked Advertising : Ads based on keywords and not based on the person’s preference or past search behaviour
Untracked Affiliate Marketing : Purchases made on ecommerce sites like Amazon, E-Bay via DuckDuckGo results in commissions . This mechanism operates in an anonymous manner as no PII (Personally identifiable information) is exchanged between DuckDuckGo and the ecommerce firms
To make it a sustainable model in the long run , they would have to explore new avenues for growth and revenue on a continuous basis .
Crawling & Indexing Mechanism
DuckDuckBot does not contribute to indexing of pages . It uses its own crawlers and API’s of search engines excluding Google to build its index. DuckDuckBot in isolation does not contribute to indexing of pages . Ranking is created by adding a layer of intelligence on the core algorithm configured within the search engine set up.
Ranking Factors
- Backlinks : Quality inbound links to the site from authentic and trustworthy sources
- Presence of the site across Bing, Yahoo and Yandex would play a key role
- Relevant content based on user’s intent
- Strong internal linking and simplification of site structure
- Create structured data in the form of JSON-LD
- Keywords in headers, meta description and browser titles would help
- Provide locale specific information on the pages as well in the meta data as deemed fit
Future of search is re-imagined as privacy, regulatory laws and user’s preferences will become a cornerstone in the digital framework for industries as well as firms.
Are you ready to cut the clutter & navigate through new dimensions of the digital world ?
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