For example, if you wanted to see a list of all the first generation Transformers toys for sale on eBay, you could simply type in “!e transformers g1” in the search bar. !bang allows you to execute a search on a specific website. It’s similar to those Google results that display multiple links from the same site – Quora, Reddit, etc. The !bang syntax is another differentiator and one of DDG’s coolest features. It earns money by working with ads from the Yahoo-Bing network and by a relationship with eBay and Amazon. Traditional links in the search results use the Yahoo-Bing engines, among other sources. Additionally, DDG has an intelligence engine that selects the optimal sources for a particular search and displays answers in real time (recipes, products, images, etc). DDG also has an open source community called DuckDuckHack that allows contributors to add answers to common questions. They are informed by a number of different sources. Instant Answers appear at the top right of the screen after a search. The premise behind the Instant Answer is that specialized sites such as Yelp, MetroLyrics, and StackOverflow do a better job at answering searches for their respective genre (restaurants, song lyrics, programming questions). One of the ways DDG accomplishes this is by the Instant Answer function.

Finding an answer to a specific question is the most common use case for search engines. DDG doesn’t want to simply provide links to users, it wants to provide answers. But how effective is it? How does the search engine work differently than the norm (Google)? What started with an idea of a better search engine that doesn’t track search history has seen exponential growth to an anticipated 14 billion searches for 2019. With a new headline almost every day about data breaches and the ethical concerns of internet behavior tracking, people have been turning to DDG. We disagree and have made it our mission to set a new standard of trust online. DDG’s mission is simple: Too many people believe that you simply can't expect privacy on the Internet. The fervor and sense of the DDG mission clearly resonate with users across the internet. A real contender for the most effective search engineĭDG delivers a back-to-basics search function powered by unbiased contentĭuckDuckGo has steadily carved out a place among the top search engines since its debut in 2008.

Duck and go