Could DuckDuckGo overtake Bing?

What is DuckDuckGo you ask? Many people have never heard of this search engine before but it is essentially a search engine just like Google. It does generate its SERP (Search Engine Results Page) a bit differently though. It uses incoming links from external sources as a huge ranking factor, it puts a lot of weight into links like Yellowpages, Wikipedia and Yelp just to name a few. It even seems to ignore the “nofollow” link rule and give those links equal ranking to the “follow” links.

DuckDuckGo was founded in 2008 and has been consistently increasing its audience over the last 6 years to the point of having over 1 billion searches performed on the search engine. This could be set to skyrocket as Apple is ready to release its IOS 8 for mobile devices featuring this new search engine. Will people start using this feature on their Iphones? Only time will tell but it is a huge advantage over some of the major search engines in the market.

Online Privacy

With peoples growing concern over online privacy DuckDuckGo could get a substantial boost in the market place as they boast a much more stringent online privacy policy. In fact they guarantee the privacy of its users for all search queries. For many users this is becoming an issue and with the major search engines focus on trying to get to know their uses better and almost too good, people could be making the move over to DuckDuckGo.

They still have a very long road to hoe if they want to catch up to the majors search engines link Bing and Yahoo but the boost they may receive with their online privacy guarantee and being added to Apples IOS 8 might turn the tables.  Let’s be honest, they are still light years away from catching up to Google but I believe that a little healthy competition is good for any marketplace as it forces businesses and service providers to step up their game and become more attentive to their user wants and needs.

Chris.K
www.shineonseo.com