Have you ever heard of DuckDuckGo.com? It’s a search engine service that was built around the idea of privacy first. They don’t log your IP, they don’t track cookies, and they definitely don’t pull Google’s over-your-shoulder search suggestion antics. This brand of privacy-first web search has become very popular over the past week, and as more about the NSA scandal emerges, we expect it to continue to trend upwards. Let’s take a look at how it will affect your cheap SEO service in the coming weeks.
People use Google first and foremost, then comes Bing, Yahoo and the rest. Of course these search engines have been using our personal data for years, but a lot of people didn’t consider the ramifications of that until the PRISM surveillance program came to light. Now, people are turning to alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo for their searches. The results on DuckDuck aren’t the same as Google or another engine, they are similar, but slightly different. The first thing you should do is search a few terms you know you rank for and see how you’re fairing on the private engine.
Unfortunately, the algorithm of DuckDuckGo is still pretty obfuscated. The only advice the search engine gives more moving up in the rankings it to get links from high quality sites like Wikipedia. Something you can do that is proactive to rank on private engines like DuckDuck is reevaluate your meta information. DuckDuck shows the title tag, meta desc, and even the favicon of every result they deliver. If you have all three looking good (especially the favicon, something many sites overlook) you’ll pop in the rankings.
Should you care about an engine like DuckDuck at all? It probably depends on your industry. More security-minded people use the engine, so if that’s your demographic, it’s definitely a place to target. If you just want to watch how high the number will get as more details about privacy violations are released, you can track there usage numbers here.