DuckDuckGo does not collect or share any personal information. Their privacy page has a great rundown on why privacy is important. The most important repercussion of this is that DDG doesn't use the data collected to tailor results, avoiding exposure to the "Filter Bubble".
The ads are clearly labelled as ads and are non-obstructive. The ads are based on the searched keywords and there's no tracking involved on their visibility. You just need to remember that the site the ad links to might track you.
Bangs are commands that allow searching via a different website's local search engine, using keywords or abbreviations with an exclamation mark (!). For example searching "world war ii !wiki" will automatically redirect to Wikipedia.org and show results for the query "world war ii" there, instead of DuckDuckGo, using Wikipedia's search engine.
The more common sites have shortened alternatives for these commands. Such as !g for Google, !i for images and !yt Youtube.
The whole list of bangs can be found by typing "!bang" in DuckDuckGo.
For select queries DDG pops up a box that supplies the exact answer. For example, searching "stopwatch" will pop up a stopwatch, asking for "words like..." will show a list of related words, typing "password" will generate a password, etc.
They store no information about you (theoretically a pro) but this results in absolutely awful search results, and having to modify your search terms 4-5 times to get what you are looking for.
DDG allows customizing almost any aspect of the search engine's appearance including fonts, page width, alignment, header behavior, site icons, etc and has a selection of premade themes available as well.
In a question to Weinberg, “if you were served an NSL or were commanded to compromise your service/customer privacy in any way, would you and could you just pull the plug like Lavabit did or would you run into opposition from shareholders/investors that would prevent you from doing so?” Gabriel Weinberg said: “No one is preventing me from doing that.”
A referrer is an HTTP header field that identifies the address of the webpage (i.e. the URI or IRI) that linked to the resource being requested. By checking the referrer, the new webpage can see where the request originated.” Basically it tells a website where you came from. DDG does give this out.
Common conversions do not work, i.e. searching for 15F to C does not give you the conversion but just a bunch of conversion websites. Very frustrating. It's a simple thing but makes a huge difference to the browsing/searching experience. Also location based only works for the country you're in. Searching for, say, McDonalds only gives country results for McDonalds and no local results such as where a local restaurant may be. Not very helpful.
DuckDuckGo is owned by Gabriel Weinberg who is is the founder, current CEO and controlling shareholder. Investors/shareholders include Union Square Ventures and several others. DuckDuckGo generates its income from advertising (Bing Ads) and collects affiliate revenue (Amazon, eBay).
Of course, it's nicer when enabled, but it's not required. Some browsers are too limited (mobile, terminal) or turn it off for security reasons (tor, etc.), and DDG still works.
DuckDuckGo has an API with some websites. With the help of this API, if you search for a fix of a problem in Linux, you can easily find an answer to the problem. For example, if you search for "How to update linux", you will get a message like this:
How to install updates via command line
Try this:
sudo apt-get update # Fetches the list of available updates
sudo apt-get upgrade # Strictly upgrades the current packages
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade # Installs updates (new ones)
--SirCharlo
Using these bangs will instantly connect you to the service you requested. For example typing “!g white cat with green eyes” and hitting return, drops you off on the Google website to display your results (thus logging your IP, search term and browser info immediately). It does not get you Google results inside DuckDuckGo. It is reasonable for DDG users to assume and expect a private search engine warns if there is a risk to that privacy being lost, like it does with Youtube videos but in the case of Bangs this does not happen.
It's nice to adjust the settings and all but after a couple of days you will want to go back to a more functional search engine.
Sure DDG looks shiny and !bangs are great but many wouldn't consider it as a viable alternative. Better results for search queries is more important than fancy looking CSS.
DDG searches through not only its own database but pulls search results from multiple other search engines, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc for a total of 30+ search engines as well.
WOT is a free, community-run website review system, to help protect against spam and malicious websites. Duckduckgo provides the option to display WOT icons next to website URLs, to indicate their ratings, without requiring additional addons to be installed.
Choose which search results to use (Google, Bing, Mojeek, etc.). Plus since you have access to all the .yaml files, you can easily modify it to your needs.
What's the point of using a SE that still gives you censored results from Google and other major search engines. Look up the word "alternative." It doesn't mean relying on a search engine yo9u are trying to get away from, i.e. Google.
Unlike Google, Startpage does not record user IP addresses and strips away any uniquely identifying user information before sending the search request to Google. For each search result, Startpage also provides users with the option of viewing them via Ixquick's proxy services known as Ixquick Proxy.
The optional proxy allows you to visit linked sites anonymously too. While in the protection of the StartPage proxy, the third-party sites and its advertisers cannot "see" you. Plus, the site cannot download malware onto your computer.
Your IP address, search query, what site you came from and what site you click on in the results, none of this is logged. That is, by the search engine operators themselves. Even Edward Snowden recommended StartPage for its no-logging privacy.
StartPage is based in The Netherlands, where privacy is protected by law, so it is not subject to the same mandates and laws which is one (BIG) less thing to worry about. They own and operate their own servers in colocated facilities both in the U.S. and internationally.
StartPage is owned by Surfboard Holding B.V., a privately held, independent Dutch company, run by Robert Beens, whose only activities are operating StartPage, Ixquick and StartMail. No 3rd party investors or venture capital behind it as far as I could find. StartPage (and Ixquick) generates income solely from advertising (Google Ads).
StartPage has been audited by a 3rd party; EuroPriSe. They look at the use of cookies (all kinds), logging, web hosting and content delivery networks, use of social plugins and much more. This certification is renewed every two years. Having a trusted and respected 3rd party verify your claims is a big plus.
See here.
A referrer is an HTTP header field that identifies the address of the webpage (i.e. the URI or IRI) that linked to the resource being requested. By checking the referrer, the new webpage can see where the request originated.” Basically it tells a website where you came from. Startpage does not give this out.
Brave Search collects some anonymous data (can be opted out) such as the number of searches made per day, and the browser version and OS version used during query. But Brave Search does NOT record or collect the search query itself, not even anonymously, making Brave Search more privacy-respecting than Duckduckgo. Find out more here.
When searching, nearly half of the results page is ads. There are 3 ads up at the top, an ad in the middle of the actual results, and 3 more ads at the bottom.
When you search using dogpile, it brings up content from many search engines to make sure you get what you're looking for. Some of the search engines it uses are Google, Ask, MSN, and Yahoo, and it aggregates content from all of them to display for you.
However DMOZ makes use of volunteers to oversee each category and if you have ever tried to submit something to DMOZ you will agree that the volunteers don't do much volunteer work. Therefore the system is very outdated and should be retired in my opinion.
Takes privacy seriously by blocking ads and trackers and not tracking people's searches. Things like HTTPS everywhere and no tracking are standard with Brave. In most other browsers, things like these are optional at best.
Blekko believes by adding a layer of human curation on top of search results, quality can be improved. It makes sense, no algorithm can be 100% perfect on the near infinite breadth of search queries, so allowing people to curate the results to remove bad results and promote the best is a great solution. Blekko pulls searches from a list of over 3 billion trusted webpages.
Slashtags allow limiting the search to a set of trusted websites. Blekko has hundreds of slashtags across various categories that are all human curated. The Slashtags also help with discovering content in a particular category.
Blekko by default categorizes answers in boxes such as tech, social, or news making it easier to understand what's the context of the answers in each of the categories.
Additionally, the curation of websites and slashtags allow Blekko to provide context to results that may have multiple interpretations or when you want to find a particular type of information on a given query:
climate change /politics
climate change /liberal
climate change /conservative
climate change /science
This does not sound like much but strangely some other search engines only allow to limit the search result to a few month maximum. So, until this is a common feature I see a limit of a year as a big pro.
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