54th Parallel Profile picture
Feb 8, 2020 25 tweets 11 min read Read on X
I tried @DuckDuckGo (DDG) at work and at home for 3 weeks and the product experience was quite good. What's surprising is that the search engine itself can sometimes be a better product when compared to $GOOG (G) given DDG's ads take up ~60-80% less space.

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DDG takes us back to the days in which doing a search on Google was like stepping into a library - a place to go to for information. Today, Google resembles something closer to a shopping mall - it mistakes an innocent question with intent to spend money.
This begs the question of whether consumers could become overwhelmed with ads. For example, if you search for "marriott" the results page on Google is 303 inches. On DDG, the area is a bit smaller, coming in at 210 inches. ImageImageImage
The G results page contains 2 ads - one at the top and another further down the results (the Hotels Module). The DDG page shows 4 ads. Despite DDG having more ads, G's ads take up 15% of the results page real estate, while DDG's ads take up only 3% (DDG is less crowded). Image
Interestingly, while G shows you other relevant results through modules like "people also ask", the number of organic search results on G actually amounts to just 5, while DDG presents you with 10 organic search results (see screenshots above). Image
The first G search result is the Marriott (MAR) website plus 6 sub-links. It's not until you scroll past the 'Hotel' and 'People Ask' modules that you get to the 2nd search result (!). ImageImageImage
The 3rd result is MAR's Wikipedia page, the 4th result is a MAR Bonvoy Moments link, and the 5th result is the MAR Vacation Club site. Image
By comparison, on DDG the first result is the MAR page, followed by a News carousel and then the MAR Wikipedia page. Further down DDG's results, you get 8 MORE organic links with no interruptions. ImageImageImage
Not only am I surprised that DDG has provided me with more organic links with info I may find useful but the links also seem more informative.
For example, the search turned up MAR's travel agent login page as well as the company's extranet portal, both of which I didn't get on G's results.
Just because someone searches for "marriott", it doesn't mean they are looking to book a hotel, so I appreciate that DDG is showing me results that aren't necessarily places where I would TRANSACT.
I know that Google has a lot of data and that it's likely that the company knows that if someone searches for "marriott", the majority of the time that person may actually have the intention to book a hotel.
However, in a lot of cases as well, the intent is to seek information and not transact, which begs the question of whether DuckDuckGo is a better search engine for research or simply browsing the web leisurely.
To an extent, I believe that consumers could become overwhelmed by Google's increasingly crowded results page, which is even worse on mobile. At the same time, consumers are becoming more aware of Google's privacy practices.
When I did another search, this time using the keywords "google stadia", the # of organic links was higher on DDG vs G, and the ads on G occupied 60% more real estate than the ads on DDG (a similar pattern as the Marriott search, despite the large Hotels Module not being present)
The results were similar for other search queries as well and I encourage you to try some on your own and decide for yourself which are better!

Product experience aside, Google Trends seems to confirm DDG's growing popularity both in the US and around the globe. ImageImage
Bing and Google seem to have declined in popularity over the same time frame. However, this makes sense considering people typically search on Google directly from their URL bar, so it's not entirely comparable to DDG since people aren't searching on Google for "Google". ImageImageImage
By far the most interesting Google Trends observation is that DDG has been growing organically, whereas Bing grew in popularity because it was the default search engine on Microsoft Explorer/Edge (Bing was launched in 2009). Image
DDG's growth can also be confirmed by analyzing the number of search queries on the platform. In 2010, the annual number of search queries was 16.4 million. In 2019, this had grown to 15.1 billion. Interestingly, growth has accelerated over the past 3 years. ImageImage
I suspect that Google will continue to dominate search going forward since changing consumer inertia is very difficult. Not to mention, Google also pays handsome sums to Apple to be the default search engine on Safari (although users can change this option at any time).
Also, I actually like Google's search results on other occasions, such as when I type a city's name + "weather", or when I search for "movie times". HOWEVER, for other use cases, DDG seems to be a more pleasant experience, especially on mobile where you have less screen space.
In conclusion, I have found that the best way to learn about @Google Search has been to learn about @DuckDuckGo, and along the way, I discovered what I believe to be a superior product offering for the majority of use cases.
Useful links:
How information is collected on search engines: duckduckgo.com/privacy
DDG traffic stats: duckduckgo.com/traffic
Bing Ads Accreditation Study Guide (ads on DDG are managed by Microsoft's ad network): about.ads.microsoft.com/en-us/resource…
It's not just me, people are increasingly complaining about Google search results.

See thread above ☝ for a comparison between DuckDuckGo and Google and below 👇 for a flurry of complaints

$GOOGL

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