DuckDuckGo has passed Yahoo! in the number of searches it processes. Has it reached enough size for physicians to now focus on SEO for DuckDuckGo?
What Is DuckDuckGo?
DuckDuckGo is the second most popular search engine in the U.S. Currently. It is averaging around 100 million search queries per day.
Why is DuckDuckGo growing in popularity? They’re attracting new users because they don’t collect and track private user data. In other words, people who use DuckDuckGo for search have privacy.
This is becoming an attractive offering for users given the data collection practices of Google, Facebook, etc.
DuckDuckGo Gets a Boost From Apple
One of the boosts in exposure DuckDuckGo has benefited from came from Apple including it as a default search engine option in iOS 14. While I had known about DuckDuckGo for a long time and used it some, this is when I made the switch on all my personal devices.
For my fellow Apple users, if you want to change this on your device, go to Settings > Safari > Search Engine > DuckDuckGo.
Current DuckDuckGo Marketshare
Despite recently passing Yahoo! to become the second largest search engine, DuckDuckGo is still relatively small in terms of U.S. market share:
- 2.41% on desktop searches
- 2.42% on mobile searches
Google is still clearly dominant, with a 94.36% market share in the U.S.
Source: Statcounter
Conclusion
DuckDuckGo has experienced a nice growth curve, especially over the past few years. I also believe that as more people become aware of the many privacy violations from some of the big tech companies, DuckDuckGo will continue to grow.
From an online physician marketing perspective, they have not yet achieved enough market share for me to advise physicians to focus on SEO for DuckDuckGo. However, DuckDuckgo is worth keeping a close eye on, as this could change in the years to come.