Duck Duck Go

[mahesh2k 0]

Duck duck go is getting popular these days due to it's relevant search results and privacy. Most of the search engines track personal data (like google) and then use it against users for ad display or release some public data disrepecting their privacy. Google released data related to adult keywords and put shame to few countries for searching some banned adult stuff on google. In case of duckduckgo they don't track your keywords and your personal information (like IP, region, search pattern or history). If you use their HTTPs option then all the searches are carried out in secure line and that too without any tracking.

Another thing is that duckduck go is purely on carbon and MSN ads which are run not based on geographical location or search pattern but only on keyword. So you sitting in philipines may get ad from USA. I know this is bad targeting for advertisers but it is privacy feature that helps both advertisers and searchers.

Duckduckgo has plenty of benefits and best feature of it is that it's made with FOSS software. You can read some of it's benefit on this page. They're also competiting directly against google in terms of privacy (which google never gives to searchers) by displaying big billboard ad of duckduckgo. So if you're planning to hide your activity (if you're in office or home for many reasons) then duckduckgo is best option. Duckduck go gets it's data from many sites like Yahoo, Bing and few other social networks. So monetizing for yahoo or bing gets you into duckduck go.

Feel free to comment if you're looking for privacy based search engine.

[manuleka 0]

looks awesome but can we trust their privacy claim?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Duck_Go

https://duckduckgo.com/lite/

Edited June 10, 2011 by manuleka (see edit history)

[mahesh2k 0]

Yes. This search engine is owned by single person and as his search engine is basically bot+filtered data. So it has less commercial intentions than google or other search engine. Google is more interested in personal information of searcher. As you can see or even ask in forum about validity of his privacy claims. There is not a single complaint or criticism regarding the privacy of duckduckgo. I think that explains everything about the search engine. Besides that it fetches data from Bing and Yahoo so it's also safe in terms of results. It is not removing torrent, warez and DMCA queries from the search. This makes it better choice for open web searching which google is not offering anymore. I mean warez and porn results are filtered in google which makes it more conservative and commercial search at it's worst. Because sites that pass for the search queires are basically adwords user and that is not good policy by google. What i like about that search engine is that it takes some data from wolfram alpha and that makes it much better than google. Google does have it's own math library to parse these qureies but in comparison to wolfram alpha it's nothing. One more thing is that privacy claims of DDG are verifiable as the owner of SE is open to such scrutiny. Asking him on their official forum will likely to give you better answer. I like to use scroogle for protected google search. Now that there is duckduck go i think i'll be surely using this search engine. My only objection as of now is usage of image search. They fetch data from bing directly, i wonder why they don't use their own gallery. That would be cool feature.

[zenia 0]

It is handy to put the link to the website in the start post.When something of the internet is described it helps to find it when a link is posted.manuleka put the link to the website in the post.This seems like an interesting initiative.It seems, that a search request on google doesn't search the web. The database of google is searched for the term, that correspond with the filled in word. It seems it took google a long time to gather information about a lot of websites on the web. It will be interesting to know the process behind duckduckgo.

[mahesh2k 0]

Sorry for that. I got carried away reviewing this service and forgot to add the link to the site. You can see it in the second post of manuelka by the way. Other than that you can also add it on your browser like firefox, opera or any other browser. It will integrate easily and you can also use HTTPS version if you wish to encrypt your searches. Duckduck go uses backlinks from known and popular website as sign of quality. For example link from wikipedia or other popular pages will be considered in duckduck go. You can also consider using bing's SEO features for knowing how it works. Basically duckduck go uses custom algorithm with their own bot. Additionally they use wolfram alpha, bing and yahoo in their search. So you can see their attribution at the bottom of the search. Wiolfram alpha API is also used for mathamatical queries and you can use all the math functions on search engine. In my opinion this is one good feature of this search that it grabs the best of all other search engines.

[manuleka 0]

It is handy to put the link to the website in the start post.When something of the internet is described it helps to find it when a link is posted.
manuleka put the link to the website in the post.

This seems like an interesting initiative.
It seems, that a search request on google doesn't search the web. The database of google is searched for the term, that correspond with the filled in word. It seems it took google a long time to gather information about a lot of websites on the web. It will be interesting to know the process behind duckduckgo.

that's why i added the link on my post and the wikipedia link also seems pretty good though, i guess it has it's own crowd of fans... it seems much cleaner than google (no ads and spams)

[manuleka 0]

while in search engine topic.... would interest some to visit http://www.dogpile.com/ which is a meta search to search through other search engines refining it

i personally use it along side google

[mahesh2k 0]

Problem with dogpile is that they're meta search and in no way comparable to top search engine. They gather results from other search engines. I found that very ugly method of serach because such engines care only for first few pages of data. In case of DDG i found that they add their own bots data to the results. Also the results that are gathered from duckduckgo is much better in comparison to the search engine from which it was featched. e.g. Take case of lorem ipsum search string. You'll get the result in first page which is not possible in google and other search engine.Sometimes you want quick answers and duckduck go gives you one. As they're integrated with wolfram alpha so it's possible that they get better and quick results from duckduck go. This is not the case with dogpile because it is only fetching results from the google. So most of the results are the same in both google and dogpile. This makes no different to those who search for the data for their research. I do like dogpiles ways of funding their 10% earning to charity. I found that even duckduck go spends that much amount but not to charity but to FOSS from where they used technology to make this search engine.

[8ennett 0]

As with many different search engines I believe the appeal of such engines will soon die off again once the novelty has worn out, such as websites like AskJeeves (ridiculous, I used it once and never found what I was searching for) and Bing (yes Microsoft, I am blasting your cruddy search engine, you have attempted to create a new google as it stands today from the off, however google is what it is today from experience and practice). I think I will be sticking with google for the time being, they may use personal data to display certain advertisements and such, however all my adverts do not appear on the top of my search results anymore and because of the personal data they have collected they are able to provide me with more accurate search results based on my previous searches. I strongly agree with google doing this and only a fool would disagree.

[mahesh2k 0]

I strongly agree with google doing this and only a fool would disagree.

That's rude. Not that i didn't expected any different from you. I think only wanna-be intellectuals who have no respect for privacy think others are fools and what google doing is right. For example, google released recently the data related to middle east searchers. They released the adult and the buying keywords to public. That's why services like scroogle and other privacy search exist for those who want to protect their interest and search keywords. Again wanna-be intellectuals will think services like scroogle and other privacy based search engines are fools to open such services and Bing restricting users on adult keywords is foolish, isn't it ? Nobody cares if likes of you enjoy google ads on their search results, it's about privacy. Spare this thread and low-lifers like us from the wrath of your high intelligence please. We're discussing privacy based search engine here and not some google fanboi topic.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

There is a hot debate going on. That is the quality of Xisto community.I would also like to share my views. In my opinion, money is the major driving force behind everything. Moral values seem good in books and abstract things but when it comes to real life, money drives almost everything. I don't think people can deny it. Every big giant (as well as small businesses) try to increase their revenues. If moral values come into their path, they don't care about it. (at least this is the case in most cases). You might have heard about Bill Gates being sued by the Government of US. He was getting advantage of his windows monopoly to control the internet, which was the future's biggest revenue generator at that time. Bill Gates is a good man. You can say it by looking at the fact that he has donated almost all his wealth for public service but even such a good person can take actions like that. What was the driving force behind that? Obviously it was money, which would come by controlling the internet. He killed the competition, Netscape to be exact, by using the power of Windows operating system. He made deals only with those who agreed that they won't sell Netscape to their users. In this way, the chances of users using internet explorer for internet increased. And for Bill Gates and Microsoft, this meant money, huge money.It is a characteristic common to almost all of us. We would do anything to increase our chances of earning money. Google is no exception to this. They know that search market is a huge money generator. To give you an idea, Google's generates revenues each year nearly double the amount of revenues generated by the entire state of Israel. From this you can get an idea of the power of Google. They are using their resources to increase their power. I don't blame them for this because it is common to all of us. If Yahoo were the biggest search engine today, I believe that it would have done the same. They have the power and the capacity to do this and that is why they are doing this. They don't care about the moral values of it because it generates a huge sum of revenues for them.Yes I agree that Google shouldn't save user data and use it for their own good without showing any concerns about the persons good or bad. But for most, results are more important. They don't even know about Google's behavior of saving and using their data. They need results and they would go wherever they get the results from. Today if google is providing the results, they would rush towards google but tomorrow if someone else exceeds google, everyone would rush towards it.This problem is even more prominent at Facebook. At google you only disclose your mind by typing the keywords but at facebook, everything that is personal and must be kept secret is online. And believe me, more people are concerned about facebook than google and there is more knowledge of how facebook uses their personal data but people still use facebook. Why? Because Facebook gives them what they need. As long as people get what they need, they won't complain about anything. Not even their privacy.In my opinion it has become a necessary evil for google. Just like nuclear weapons for a country. If you don't have nuclear power, big powers like USA will invade you (in the name of War on Terror or whatever) as they did in Afghanistan, Iraq etc. They will capture all your resources and destroy you completely. If google is to survive the increasing competition from social media, it has to make improvements in search results or it will be destroyed. And in the world of internet, it doesn't take too long.

[yordan 10]

is a characteristic common to almost all of us. We would do anything to increase our chances of earning money.

I would not say "almost all of us". I would expect, in the SI field, a lot of people are honest workers. We give our work and receive a salary. A salary increase is negotiated once a year with our boss, but I would not say that we "would do any thing to increase our chances of earning money".I do a job, I have a salary for that, I cannot work twice more, so I will not ask for twice money.

[mahesh2k 0]

I don't think privacy issue is in anyway compromised and not even on the basis of money or something else. For example, take a look at google's data of porn searches from pakistan. Here is the news. Personally i don't like to defame any country or person based on such data no matter how true it is. I know religious conservative people are hypocrites and that's the reason they contradicted their nature that we see in this data. You can see the rest of the picture how it is going to affect if they managed to capture the pattern of people and their location. As this is possible because it's google and they have enough resources to do that. So if you're searching some keywords like that then chances are in future they know what you're doing on their search engine. With technology like +1 and web history they can even share this data openly to public as well. So you can guess the rest how close they're to publicly open more data attached to username/IP/Region to media and defame such users.

Only thing you can ensure here is that you use scroogle or other private search engines which are taking data from google or similar to google and are free from privacy. Sure by all means monetize or do the SEO for google. But if you care for privacy of your family, yourself and friends then think about switching to privacy based search engines. There is no harm in that. If you don't care about your personal data and love to get manipulated by ad networks and think that is cool like the wanna-be intellectual who replied here in this thread before, then it is totally your call. It's not my business at all and i'm not going to call you fool like the guy who did here before.

Few more misconceptions to clear- 1)Yahoo was search engine leader prior to google and the CEO of the yahoo is responsible for the internet growth and many things. Still they're not doing what google is doing with us.
2) Bing and yahoo turns on default search so kids or minors don't get adult searches by default. This is not feature by default in google and one needs to enable modeate search.
3) Firefox default has feature for announcing no-tracking setting from browser for users. Google chrome and their other products don't allow such feature. In fact they're all for open data for manipulation by their own ad networks.
4) Facebook doesn't share your name, pictures with advertisers and not even with apps. That issue is long gone. Google's orkut and other services even track and manipulate data no matter how much you hide it. Facebook's privacy is rated on much higher level than google because facebook doesn't track you based on IP/Region unless you specifically mention it.
5) People who care for privacy don't keep their data (pictures another stuff) open. They don't think they become any cool or wise by doing that. You don't have to reveal your personal data to get what you want on web. Period.
6) Google's revenue has nothing to do with this because they're earning more dollars from search marketing and manipulating both publishers and advertisers in every possible way. Their one department contradicts with another. e.g. search team vs adsense team, so advice and data from google blogs is often contradictory.

Enough said.

[yordan 10]

Few more misconceptions to clear- 1)Yahoo was search engine leader prior to google and the CEO of the yahoo is responsible for the internet growth and many things.

Altavista was there before Yahoo.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

I don't think privacy issue is in anyway compromised and not even on the basis of money or something else. For example, take a look at google's data of porn searches from pakistan. Here is the news. Personally i don't like to defame any country or person based on such data no matter how true it is. I know religious conservative people are hypocrites and that's the reason they contradicted their nature that we see in this data. You can see the rest of the picture how it is going to affect if they managed to capture the pattern of people and their location. As this is possible because it's google and they have enough resources to do that. So if you're searching some keywords like that then chances are in future they know what you're doing on their search engine. With technology like +1 and web history they can even share this data openly to public as well. So you can guess the rest how close they're to publicly open more data attached to username/IP/Region to media and defame such users.

Power is something that makes you do what you shouldn't. I agree with you completely but I have to ask one question. Can you say for sure that if instead of google somebody else were so powerful, it would have not done what Google is doing today. Google don't have any real competition in the search market at least for the time being. This means that they can do whatever they want to without any serious consequences. Continuing my example from my previous post, after the end of Cold War, what did US do. Didn't it invade numerous countries and kill hundreds of thousands of men. Why was it able to do so? It was because it had tremendous power and no competition. So even if it would receive some damage, there would have been no serious consequence. But even after that, you have to keep a good relation with them. You know they are bad for you and they will give you nothing but misery but still you have to carry on with them because of their power and there is no where else to go. Similar is the case with Google. You know they save your data. You know they might use it for bad things but because there is no one who can compete them in the quality of service they provide, you have no where to go. You have to keep using it to get accurate fast search results, even if you don't want to use it.

About a year ago, I tried to swith to ask.com as my primary search engine but it didn't provide me quality anyway near to google. So I had to switch back to it. And now when I have a website to keep alive, which receives about 65% of its entire traffic from google, I have to use it for my business. Yes I can try other safer search engines when I need more privacy about my search terms but in general I have to use it. I would like bing to rise up and give a tough competition to google. Because competition is a good thing. It makes you induce changes that are better for the end-user so that the end-user is attracted towards your product.

Only thing you can ensure here is that you use scroogle or other private search engines which are taking data from google or similar to google and are free from privacy. Sure by all means monetize or do the SEO for google. But if you care for privacy of your family, yourself and friends then think about switching to privacy based search engines. There is no harm in that. If you don't care about your personal data and love to get manipulated by ad networks and think that is cool like the wanna-be intellectual who replied here in this thread before, then it is totally your call. It's not my business at all and i'm not going to call you fool like the guy who did here before.

LOL. I think you are hurt by @Benett's post. Keep it cool dude. This is an open forum. You are a nice man and your words speak for you. Everyone who will ever read this topic will know you as a humble educated person. It doesn't matter if someone calls you something.

As I mentioned above, because of the dependance of my website on Google's traffic, I have to use it at least for my business. But I can always use safer search engines for words that I don't want to be public. But let me say one thing. Today's lifestyle has made people so lazy, that even opening a new tab and clicking the bookmark of the safer search engine is a hard thing to do. I don't remember when was the last time I went to "https://www.google.de/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=BwkjVKfAD8uH8QfckIGgCQ&gws_rd=ssl; and then put my search query. What i do is put my search query directly in the address bar of firefox and it displays results based on my default engine.

But this is a good sign for smaller search engines. The can capitalize on this privacy issue and who knows a new face appears who makes the web a better place.

Few more misconceptions to clear- 1)Yahoo was search engine leader prior to google and the CEO of the yahoo is responsible for the internet growth and many things. Still they're not doing what google is doing with us.

Yes, I know this. I had watched a documentary about yahoo and overture and how the yahoo's directory was formed. But what I wanted to say was that I believe if yahoo were in the place where google is today and it had the same power, it might also have done the same. This is human nature.

 

4) Facebook doesn't share your name, pictures with advertisers and not even with apps. That issue is long gone. Google's orkut and other services even track and manipulate data no matter how much you hide it. Facebook's privacy is rated on much higher level than google because facebook doesn't track you based on IP/Region unless you specifically mention it.

I hope facebook is a safer place but every now and then I get an article to read about facebook's privacy issues. Last time when I read an email about the same issue was about 3 days ago. I really hope facebook understands what its actions can do to the life of its users and stay on the right path.

6) Google's revenue has nothing to do with this because they're earning more dollars from search marketing and manipulating both publishers and advertisers in every possible way. Their one department contradicts with another. e.g. search team vs adsense team, so advice and data from google blogs is often contradictory.

In my opinion there is a direct relation between the two. Google's uses the data primarily to manipulate search results and also to show relevant ads to users. Both of these have direct effect on google's incomes. By manipulating search results, it can show better results to the user and happy users always tend to come back with their friends. This can potentially further increase their user base and searches done per user. Which means more advertisement can be served and thus more revenues can be generated. The other thing for which google uses user data is to serve relevant ads. By doing this, google increases the chances of visitors to click on ads and by this way it can increase its revenues.