DuckDuckGo celebrates achieving 100 billion total searches, but the search engine’s annual growth is slowing.
In an announcement on Twitter, DuckDuckGo highlights the fact that it has reached 100 billion private searches, noting:
- The search history was not a data point
- What you search for stays with you
- Users recognize their right to privacy and choose to use it
Thanks to you, we’ve reached 100 billion private searches all the time! https://t.co/qlSaz4j9ZH
That’s 100 billion times:
• The search history was not a data point
• What you searched for (such as pictures of cats) was your own business
• You have recognized and chosen your right to privacy! 🤗 pic.twitter.com/HyvMOBK26E– DuckDuckGo (DuckDuckGo) January 13, 2022
If you dig into the numbers, DuckDuckGo’s selling point is clearly losing its appeal.
DuckDuckGo’s average daily search volume has increased 17% From January 2021 to January 2022.
This is slower DuckDuckGo’s growth rate in the past five years, a sharp decline from the growth it experienced in 2020 to 2021.
From January 2020 to January 2021, the average daily search volume for DuckDuckGo grew 73%.
In the years before that it was exploding 50% growth.
Here is a breakdown of DuckDuckGo’s growth in daily searches:
- January 2021 to January 2022 – 17% increase
- January 2020 to January 2021 – 73% increase
- January 2019 to January 2020 – 52% increase
- January 2018 To January 2019 – 62% increase
- January 2017 To January 2018 – 61% increase
- January 2016 To January 2017 – 30% increase
At the very least, DuckDuckGo has maintained and increased the growth it achieved from 2020 to 2021 by a small margin.
This is positive compared to the decrease in daily search volume year on year.
More evidence of DuckDuckGo’s waning popularity
This past January, all signs were that DuckDuckGo was growing in popularity like never before.
Not only has search volume increased by more than 50% year-over-year, but it has reached #1 in the iOS App Store in the Utilities category.
DuckDuckGo even cracked the top 10 In the iOS App Store among all the apps.
right Now?
He’s sitting in #18 In the category of utilities, which is so low among all the applications that the data is not available.
But wait there’s more!
Last year at this time, DuckDuckGo was it #2 US mobile search engine.
This year it Lost Yahoo’s #2 place. Now, DuckDuckGo is Third The most popular mobile search engine among American searchers.
Screenshot from gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share, Jan 2022.By all accounts, DuckDuckGo is losing ground.
It is possible that the search engine is suffering from a lack of innovation.
There were no notable developments from DuckDuckGo last year, other than the company announcing plans to launch a desktop browser.
Another possibility is that privacy is not a major concern for people when they search the web.
or they an act They care about that, but decide it’s not worth the trade-off of switching from Google to DuckDuckGo.
The data suggests that there are a limited number of users who care enough about privacy to change their search behavior, and DuckDuckGo may have reached the majority of those people.
As much as DuckDuckGo promotes privacy as a good thing for searchers, it can also be a drag when it comes to the quality of search results.
This is especially true when it comes to local searches. Because DuckDuckGo doesn’t know your exact location, its search results struggle to provide the same value as Google’s local SERPs.
Let’s see if the 100 billion milestone encourages DuckDuckGo to continue building on what has already been established and offering researchers more.
Resources: DuckDuckGoAnd the Statistics counterAnd the similarweb
Featured image: Ralph Liebhold/Shutterstock
