Why Should I Use DuckDuckGo Instead of Google?

Included at DuckDuckGo Q&A

#1— Google tracks you. We don’t.

You share your most intimate secrets with your search engine without even thinking: medical, financial and personal issues, along with all the day to day things that make you, well, you. All of that personal information should be private, but on Google it’s not. On Google, your searches are tracked, mined, and packaged up into a data profile for advertisers to follow you around the Internet through those intrusive and annoying ever-present banner ads, using Google’s massive ad networks, embedded across millions of sites and apps.

In fact, it’s a myth that you need to track people to make money in web search. When you search ‘car’ we can show you a car ad without knowing anything about you. That’s how we make money and it doesn't involve tracking because it is based on the keyword and not the person. Google could do this too; they just chose not to— all that tracking is to power their ad networks so that ads can follow you around the Internet using your search history and other information they have on you.

The so-called incognito mode won’t protect you either. That’s another myth. “Incognito” mode isn’t really incognito at all. It’s an extremely misleading name and in my opinion, should be changed. All it does is delete your local browsing history after your session on your device but does nothing from stopping any website you visit, including Google, from tracking you via your IP address and other tracking mechanisms like browser fingerprinting. Here’s the fine print:

To keep your searches private and out of data profiles, the government, and other legal requests, you need to use DuckDuckGo. We don’t track you at all, regardless of what browsing mode you are in.

Each time you search on DuckDuckGo, it’s as if you’ve never been there before. We simply don’t store anything that can tie your searches to you personally, or even tie them together into a search history that could later be tied back to you. For more details, check out our privacy policy.

#2 — Block Google trackers lurking everywhere.

Google tracks you on more than just their search engine. You may realize they also track you on YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, Android, Gmaps, and all the other services they run. For those, we recommend using private alternatives like DuckDuckGo for search. Yes, you can live Google-free. I’ve been doing it for many years.

What you may not realize, though, is Google trackers are actually lurking behind the scenes on 75% of the top million websites. To give you a sense of how large that is, Facebook is the next closest with 25%. It’s a good bet that any random site you land on the Internet will have a Google tracker hiding on it. Between the two of them, they are truly dominating online advertising, by some measures literally making up 74%+ of all its growth. A key component of how they have managed to do that is through all these hidden trackers.

Google Analytics is installed on most sites, tracking you behind the scenes, letting website owners know who is visiting their sites, but also feeding that information back to Google. Same for the ads themselves, with Google running three of the largest non-search ad networks installed on millions of sites and apps: Adsense, Admob, and DoubleClick.

Do you know those ads that creepily follow you around everywhere? Most of those are actually run through these Google ad networks, where they let advertisers target you against your search history, browsing history, location history and other personal information they collect. Even less well known is they also enable advertisers like airlines to charge you different prices based upon your personal information.

These ads are not only annoying — they are literally designed to manipulate you through targeting to make you buy more things, and just showing them to you is an act of Google profiting off of your personal information.

At DuckDuckGo, we’ve expanded beyond our roots in search, to protect you no matter where you go on the Internet. Our DuckDuckGo browser extension and mobile app is available for all major browsers and devices, and blocks these Google trackers, along with the ones from Facebook and countless other data brokers. It does, even more, to protect you as well as providing smarter encryption.

#3 — Get unbiased results, outside the Filter Bubble.

When you search, you expect unbiased results, but that’s not what you get on Google. On Google, you get results tailored to what they think you’re likely to click on, based on the data profile they’ve built on you over time from all that tracking I described above.

That may appear at first blush to be a good thing, but when most people say they want personalization in a search context they actually want localization. They want local weather and restaurants, which can actually be provided without tracking, like we do at DuckDuckGo. That’s because approximate location info is automatically embedded by your computer in the search request, which we can use to serve you local results and immediately throw away without tracking you.

Beyond localization, personalized results are dangerous because to show you results they think you’ll click on, they must filter results they think you’ll skip. That’s why it’s called the Filter Bubble.

So if you have political leanings one way or another, you’re more likely to get results you already agree with and less likely to ever see opposing viewpoints. In the aggregate, this leads to increased echo chambers that are significantly contributing to our increasingly polarized society.

This Filter Bubble is especially pernicious in a search context because you have the expectation that you’re seeing what others are seeing, that you’re seeing the “results.” We’ve done studies over the years where we have people search for the same topics on Google at the same time and in “Incognito” mode, and found they are significantly tailored.

On DuckDuckGo, we are committed to not putting you in the Filter Bubble. We don’t even force people into a local country index unless they were explicitly opt-in.

#4 — We listen.

Google is notoriously hard to get a hold of. Locked out of your Gmail account? Sorry, we can’t help you. The Knowledge Graph says you’re dead? That’s unfortunate. Unless you’re a journalist or influencer of some kind, good luck getting anyone at Google to listen.

Meanwhile, at DuckDuckGo we read every piece of feedback we get. We respond on social media. In short, we listen. My DMs are open and I read all the email sent to me personally. Feel free to reach out.

#5 — We don’t try to trap you in our “ecosystem.”

It used to be that you search on Google and then you click off to the top result. Over time, Google bought more and more companies and launched more and more of their own competing services, favouring them over others in their search results. Google Places instead of Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc. Google Products instead of Amazon, Target, etc. They’re in travel, health, and soon jobs. Anywhere there is money to be made, you can expect them to get into it eventually.

Even when you do click off, Google AMP tries to still trap you in Google. And these tactics are not just on the search engine.

On Android on many implementations, there is immovable Google search widget and you can’t even change its search engine if you want to. By just installing it by default, this behaviour is a direct analogue to Microsoft putting IE on Windows in the 1990s, but worse since it takes up more of the smaller screen. The same is true for other Google services on Android as well, forcing carriers to bundle and promote them. We personally have similar issues with Chrome search engine integration.

At DuckDuckGo, we aren’t trying to take over the world. We don’t have an “ecosystem” to trap you in. We just want to help you get to where you want to go as fast as possible and protect you as much as we can in that process.

#6 — We have !bangs.

To further this point, we have a built-in feature called bangs that enables you to search other sites directly, completely skipping DuckDuckGo if you like. Here’s how it works. Let’s say you know you want to go to the Wikipedia article for ducks. You can just search for “!w duck” and we will take you right there.

The ! tells DuckDuckGo you want to use a bang shortcut, and the w is an abbreviation for Wikipedia. You can use the full name, though we have a lot of shortcuts such as !q for Quora, !a for Amazon, !r for Reddit, etc. There are literally thousands of sites that this feature works with, and so most sites you think of will probably work. It also works with our autocomplete so you can see what’s there easily.

If you routinely search a particular site, like Stack Overflow for coding answers or Baseball-Reference for stats or All Recipes for something to make, you can just go right there.

If DuckDuckGo is your default search engine, you can just type this right into your browser's address bar, and skip loading our search engine altogether. We will just route you to the right place, without tracking you of course!

#7 — We strive for a world where you have control over your personal information.

Our vision is to raise the standard of trust online. If you share this vision, supporting DuckDuckGo helps us make progress towards it. For the past seven years, we’ve been donating a substantial portion of our profits to organizations that also work towards the Internet we want — an open Internet where you can take control of your personal information.

We believe that privacy policies shouldn’t be the default “collect it all," but instead offer a clear and compelling case as to what benefits you get by giving up your personal information. If you share this view for the future of data privacy, you can vote with your feet.

#8 — Our search results aren’t loaded up with ads.

For many Google searches, most of the entire first page is ads. On mobile, it can be even worse.

Not so on DuckDuckGo. We keep ads to a minimum, and naturally, they're non-tracking ads, based only on search keywords and not on a personal profile or search history. In fact, as stated above, it’s a myth that you need to track people to make money in web search. When you search ‘car’ we can show you a car ad without knowing anything about you, based on the keywords you type in.

#9 — Search without fear.

When people know they are being watched, they change their behaviour. It's a well-documented behaviour called the chilling effect, and it happens on Google. For example, an MIT study showed that people started doing fewer health searches on Google after the Snowden revelations, fearing that their personal ailments might get out.

“Suppressing health information searches potentially harms the health of search engine users and… In general, our results suggest that there is a chilling effect on search behaviour from government surveillance on the Internet.”

Your searches are your business, and you should feel free to search whatever you want, whenever you want. You can easily escape this chilling effect on DuckDuckGo where you are anonymous.

#10 — Google is simply too big, and too powerful.

Google is GIANT, the epitome of Silicon Valley big tech, with a market cap of around 750 Billion dollars (at the time of writing), 75,000 employees, dominating search, browsing, online advertising, and more, with tentacles in everything tech, online and offline. Last year they outspent every other company on lobbying Washington.

By comparison, DuckDuckGo is tiny. We’re currently a team of about 45 people, scattered across the globe; I’m in Pennsylvania. We have a very narrow focus: helping you take control of your personal information online.

The world could use more competition, less focus on ad tracking, fewer eggs in one basket.

Join the Duck Side!

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Google Search Console Techniques for Bloggers

As a blogger, if you are not using Google Search Console (GSC), you are missing out on an important tool that can help you improve the performance of your articles and blog posts. Previously called Google Webmaster Tools, this free tool gives website owners insight into how Google's search bots index their sites and provides a lot of information that can help you improve search engine optimization (SEO) and search performance. Also, you can also keep tabs on any malware or spam that might affect your site. And SEMrush integration with GSC helps you get an advantage of the On Page SEO Checker — a set of search optimization ideas based on the performance of your pages.

Getting Started with Google Search Console

Ok, let’s quickly get the basics. You will need to add and validate your site on GSC to get started, then link your Google Analytics account (to get richer search data). Finally, add a sitemap and submit it to Google from within GSC to complete the process.

The main sections of the GSC interface are:

·         Search Appearance, which shows you how your site looks in search results.

·         Search Traffic, which shows how your site performs in search results.

·         Google Index, which gives you information on individual URLs within your site.

·         Crawl, which shows you exactly what search bots find when they crawl your site.

There is also a section on security issues (such as malware) and a message section which gives alerts of any issues Google finds as its bots crawl your site. For an in-depth look at the interface, see the Crazy Egg Guide to Google Search Console.

But now let's look at how this tool can help bloggers with content optimization. Not only can GSC help bloggers improve their clickthrough rate (CTR) but it can also help boost search ranking for individual pages.

Find and Improve Underperforming Pages

First of all, you need to identify what pages to optimize. Though you might have an idea of what content deserves special attention first, it makes sense to promote those pages that have the most potential of getting to the top.

GSC can help you find the pages that need a helping hand. Go to Search Traffic - Search Analytics and click on Pages and Positions. You will get a list of pages with their average search position. Research shows that the top six positions in search results get the most clicks, so anything with a position between 7 and 15 is a good target for quick improvements.

Go through your content optimization checklist (try this one from Brian Dean or this one from SEMrush for a starting point). Check that content is relevant to what people are searching for. If necessary, update it by fine-tuning the content and adding images, media, and resources.

You can also check the specific URL by clicking on it. Click Queries, and you will get data on keyword rankings, CTR, and position - with this information it is easy to detect what keywords you should focus on in order to improve positions and impressions.

When you are done, share the content again via social media, your email newsletter, and any other key marketing channels. Also, go to GSC again to ask Google to recrawl the URL.

Improve Your CTR with Google Search Console

One factor that affects how your pages rank in search results is the clickthrough rate, and GSC can help with this. People click on your link when it is relevant to what they are searching for. So the more people that click on your site when they find it in search, the more relevant Google thinks it is. Since relevancy is an important Google ranking factor; a good CTR is good for your page rank.

In addition to CTR, engagement is important. You want to avoid pogo-sticking (people bouncing back off your page immediately after visiting it) as this will signal that the page is less relevant to searchers than it originally seemed. The more engaging your content is, the better its search position will be.

Google Search Console helps by allowing you to easily see the CTR for any page. In fact, you can compare the CTR for multiple pages in a handy table. To access this data, navigate to Search Traffic - Search Analytics, then select Pages and CTR from the available checkboxes. This will give you the average CTR for your whole site as well as the CTR of individual pages. It's a good way to see which pages are performing the best and which have a low CTR.

Once you have identified under-performing pages with GSC, there are several areas you can tweak to improve CTR.

1. Optimize Titles

I will start with the example. I recently achieved a 31% increase in click-through rate in two weeks by changing the page title from this:

SEMrush Study: 11 Most Common On-site SEO Issues

to this:

11 Most Common On-site SEO Issues - SEMrush Study

Conclusions? The change puts the information most people are searching for at the beginning of the page title, rather than in the middle to end. This gives them the most relevant information immediately and makes it more likely they will click. Plus, on mobile devices, where titles may be truncated, people will still know what information the link will give them, which I am sure is a factor in the improved CTR.

Some ways to improve headlines and titles include:

·         Using numbers to stop eyes from wandering away from your content.

·         Making sure that the headline is simple and descriptive so that readers know exactly what they are getting.

·         Including "how", "why" or "what" in the title as these words make people click.

·         Using the right trigger words and creating urgency.

Check out our guide to writing perfect headlines for more help with this tip.

2. Optimize Descriptions

As well as optimizing page titles, it is important to look at other metadata. Go to Search Analytics and scroll down to the list of queries. Click on the external link symbol at the end of each query to see how the results appear in search.

Pay attention to the page descriptions that appear under the titles in search results. As well as the titles, the descriptions give searchers context so they can decide what to click on. Our previous research found that 30% of sites have duplicate meta descriptions and 25% have no description at all, which is a problem not just for SEO but for CTR. Creating the right meta description will improve CTR, as Brian Dean of Backlinko found: one site increased organic traffic by 48.7% simply by improving titles and descriptions.

3. Optimize URLs

While you are looking at the descriptions, take a look at the URLs that appear under the titles. Is it easy to tell what the content is about from the URL? If not, there is some work to do. As Moz points out when people can read and understand your URLs, they are more likely to click. So, replace incomprehensible strings of numbers with relevant keywords instead. (And if you change URLs, remember to avoid the redirect issues in tip #13 here.)

4. Add Schema Markup

Schema markup is another way to improve your site's performance in search. Schema markup uses microdata tags to generate rich snippets in search results. This helps Google to answer readers' queries better, rather than simply to provid links. Again, if your site has markup that makes it more relevant to a search query, it is more likely to be displayed.

Google Search Console can also help with this. To get started, go to Search Appearance - Structured Data and see what the data for your site looks like. If you get a message that there is no structured data, use the Data Highlighter tool to get the ball rolling.

Click on Start Highlighting, then input a URL that's typical of your site content (such as your latest blog post). Use the tool to:

·         Choose a content type, such as article, reviews, video or others

·         Highlight the publication date and author

·         Highlight the title

·         Indicate any images

Then GSC will try to tag the rest of your content the same way, using a sample batch of pages. Check all of them, and make sure the content is highlighted appropriate. Click done, and GSC will apply the same markup to the rest of your pages. Use Synup's Schema Scanner to see if everything looks right.

Utilizing Organic Traffic Insights

Lucky for any blogger you can utilize more than just Google Search Console data to see how what is happening with your blog post traffic. You can now sync your GSC with the Organic Traffic Insights to get a complete view of your keyword traffic, including those “not provided” keywords.

Not only can you analyze these not provided keywords but you can now find potential traffic growth points and correct your SEO accordingly.

Utilizing your Google Search Console with Organic Traffic Insights brings you all of your traffic data in one place. This will save you time as you will no longer need to switch back in forth between tabs in order to get a look at how a page is performing organically.

So how can a blogger use this information to leverage their visibility in search? Well, the first thing you can do is analyze which keywords are bringing traffic to your page. If your blog post is within the top 50 landing pages on your site, you can simply look for a blog post you want to analyze under the landing pages section and click on the corresponding keywords. This can be done for both SEMrush keywords, as well as those found in GSC.

After you spend some time analyzing these keywords, you will be able to get a better idea of which of these keywords are going to be best suited in increasing the presence of specific page. You could shift your focus to the keywords that are getting a large number of impressions but a lower number of clicks. This shows that these keywords are being seen by a large number of users but aren’t resulting in clicks to your page.

You can then filter out your SEMrush or GSC keywords by specific data sets such as traffic share to find the keywords that are driving the highest percentage of traffic to your blog. This can help show you what users are searching for directly before they find your posts.

Sync your Google Search Console

with SEMrush Organic Traffic Insights 

How to Automate the Process with On Page SEO Checker

Bloggers who use SEMrush have an additional advantage. SEMrush On Page SEO Checker provides a structured list of prospective improvements you need to improve your web pages rankings — for every URL-Keyword pair, it provides suggestions for content, backlinks, and technical SEO.

You will be able to export pages URL-Keyword pairs from GSC. All pairs can be sorted by keywords with the highest number of clicks, Impressions, CTR, and Positions. Also, you can use filters by country; include or exclude keywords, containing certain words.

So, whenever you import all these pairs into On Page SEO Checker, a big amount of URLs will be checked for different SEO elements within a couple of minutes. As a result, you will get a list of actionable tips from various areas of search optimization which you can use right away. After importing these URL and Keywords from GSC into On Page SEO Checker, you will get the following ideas:

1.      Strategy Ideas — this section provides you with insights on your overall SEO strategy and shows whether there are pages that require your attention before others. It also checks for the signs of keyword cannibalization; if there are pages that have higher rankings for the same keywords, you will see them on the list.

2.      Backlinks Ideas — by analyzing your top-10 Google rivals, this section shows where your competition gets their best-performing backlinks and suggests to obtain it on the same referring domains.

3.      Technical SEO Ideas — here you can find a list of all the tech SEO issues that make your page underperform: missing <title> and <meta> tags, duplicated content, missing internal links and page crawling issues.

4.      UX Ideas — provides insights on how the users interact with your website and notify if the bounce rate and time spent on site differ from the expected values. Here you can also see how long the page loads and whether it influences the user experience negatively.

5.      SERP Features Ideas — if some of your analyzed pages have a chance of getting into a featured snippet or should get a star rating, you will see a notification here.

6.      Semantic Ideas — here you will see ideas on how to enrich your content with semantically related words that are used by your competition who rank for the same keywords.

7.      Content Ideas — here you will see suggestions regarding the length and readability of your texts, keyword density insights, and correct usage of keywords in <h1>, <title>, <meta> and <body> tags.

Bring your content to the next level

with SEMrush On Page SEO Checker

Conclusion

“Don’t think that your content is ‘done’ whenever you hit publish button” - I am a longtime supporter of this statement. Publishing is just the beginning. Google Search Console is a great (and free!) source of important data bloggers can use to identify underperforming content and fix it. Please share your techniques for improving your content performance!

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