DuckDuckGo Growth Drops As It Celebrates Milestone
DuckDuckGo celebrates a milestone of 100 billion complete searches, however the search engine’s year-over-year progress is slowing down.
In an announcement on Twitter, DuckDuckGo highlights the actual fact it hit 100 billion non-public searches, noting:
- Your search historical past wasn’t an information level
- What you looked for stays with you
- Customers acknowledge their proper to privateness and selected to make use of it
Because of you, we have hit 100 billion all time non-public searches! https://t.co/qlSaz4j9ZH
That is 100B instances:
• Your search historical past wasn’t an information level
• What you searched (like cat memes) was your enterprise & solely yours
• You acknowledged your proper to privateness & selected it!🤗 pic.twitter.com/HyvMOBK26E
— DuckDuckGo (@DuckDuckGo) January 13, 2022
If you happen to dig into the numbers, nevertheless, it’s evident DuckDuckGo’s promoting level is dropping its enchantment.
DuckDuckGo’s common each day search quantity grew 17% from January 2021 to January 2022.
That’s the slowest price of progress for DuckDuckGo previously 5 years, and a steep drop from the expansion it skilled in 2020 to 2021.
From January 2020 to January 2021, DuckDuckGo’s common each day search quantity grew 73%.
Within the years earlier than that it was hitting over 50% progress.
Right here’s a breakdown of DuckDuckGo’s progress in each day searches:
- January 2021 to January 2022 – 17% improve
- January 2020 to January 2021 – 73% improve
- January 2019 to January 2020 – 52% improve
- January 2018 to January 2019 – 62% improve
- January 2017 to January 2018 – 61% improve
- January 2016 to January 2017 – 30% improve
On the very least, DuckDuckGo sustained the expansion it achieved from 2020 to 2021 and elevated it by a small margin.
That’s a optimistic factor in comparison with a year-over-year lower in each day search quantity.
Extra Proof Of DuckDuckGo’s Waning Reputation
Final January, all indicators had been pointing to DuckDuckGo’s recognition rising like by no means earlier than.
Not solely was search quantity up over 50% year-over-year, however it hit #1 within the iOS App Retailer within the Utilities class.
DuckDuckGo even cracked the highest 10 within the iOS App Retailer amongst all apps.
Now?
It’s sitting at #18 within the Utilities class, and is so low amongst all apps that the information isn’t obtainable.
Screenshot from similarweb.com/app/app-store, January 2022.
However Wait, There’s Extra!
Final yr at the moment, DuckDuckGo was the #2 cellular search engine within the US.
This yr it misplaced the #2 spot to Yahoo. Now, DuckDuckGo is the third hottest cellular search engine amongst US searchers.
Screenshot from gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share, January 2022.
By all measures, DuckDuckGo is dropping steam.
It’s doable that the search engine is affected by lack of innovation.
There have been no notable developments from DuckDuckGo final yr, aside from the corporate saying plans to launch a desktop browser.
One other chance is privateness isn’t an awesome concern to folks once they search the net.
Or they do care about it, however they’ve determined it’s not well worth the tradeoff of switching from Google to DuckDuckGo.
The info suggests there’s a restricted quantity of customers who care sufficient about privateness to vary their search habits, and maybe DuckDuckGo has reached a majority of these folks.
As a lot as DuckDuckGo touts privateness as a great factor for searchers, it will also be a hinderance relating to the standard of search outcomes.
That is very true relating to native searches. Since DuckDuckGo doesn’t know your precise location, its search outcomes battle to supply the identical worth as Google’s native SERPs.
Let’s see if the 100 billion milestone encourages DuckDuckGo to proceed constructing on what it has already created and provide extra to searchers.
Sources: DuckDuckGo, Statcounter, SimilarWeb
Featured Picture: Ralf Liebhold/Shutterstock
