DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused web search engine. It does not track searchers, does not store search history and does not personalise results. Gabriel Weinberg founded it in 2008 in the United States. Its results come mainly from the Bing search engine and its own crawler, DuckDuckBot. The company earns money from ads matched to the typed query rather than to a user profile.
How does DuckDuckGo work and where do its results come from?
DuckDuckGo combines results from over 400 sources. Traditional links come mainly from third-party partners, above all Bing.
| Source | What it provides |
|---|---|
| Bing (Microsoft) | most of the traditional search results |
| DuckDuckBot | results from DuckDuckGo's own crawler |
| Wikipedia and other community sites | quick answers above the results |
| Specialised providers | Instant Answers, e.g. weather, exchange rates, recipes |
The search engine does not build a user profile. That is why anyone who types the same query in the same location sees similar results. It chooses ads based on the words in the query, not on previous searches.
For site owners this means that visibility in DuckDuckGo largely depends on visibility in Bing. It is therefore worth adding the site to Bing Webmaster Tools.
What products does DuckDuckGo offer?
DuckDuckGo started as a search engine and today also offers a browser, email protection, an AI chat and a paid subscription. The company is headquartered in Paoli, Pennsylvania.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2008 | Gabriel Weinberg launches the DuckDuckGo search engine |
| 2018 | the company releases privacy-protecting browser extensions |
| 2021 | Email Protection launches: @duck.com addresses that remove trackers from emails |
| 2022 | an average of over 100 million searches a day |
| 2024 | the paid Privacy Pro subscription launches |
| 2025 | the subscription gives access to newer AI models in Duck.ai |
The DuckDuckGo browser blocks trackers and has a button for quickly clearing data. Duck.ai is a free chat with models from various companies, e.g. OpenAI and Anthropic.
In the US the subscription costs $9.99 a month. It includes a VPN, removal of personal data from data broker sites and identity theft restoration. Since September 2025 it has also given access to newer models in Duck.ai.
How does DuckDuckGo differ from Google?
The main difference concerns user data. Google personalises results and ads based on activity, while DuckDuckGo does not.
| Feature | DuckDuckGo | |
|---|---|---|
| User tracking | no | yes, within the account and settings |
| Personalised results | no | yes |
| Main source of results | Bing and its own crawler | its own index |
| Ads | contextual, based on the query | based on the query and the profile |
| Global market share (October 2026) | 0.64% | 91.05% |
According to StatCounter, DuckDuckGo ranks fifth worldwide. It is behind Google, Bing (4.8%), Yahoo! (1.18%) and Yandex (1.14%).
For SEO, DuckDuckGo matters little because of its small market share. Optimising for Bing, however, also improves visibility in DuckDuckGo.
Frequently asked questions
Q.What is DuckDuckGo?
DuckDuckGo is a web search engine that does not track users and does not personalise results. Gabriel Weinberg founded it in 2008 in the United States. The company also offers a browser, email protection, the Duck.ai chat and a paid subscription with a VPN. It earns money mainly from ads matched to the query.
Q.Does DuckDuckGo use Google results?
No. DuckDuckGo's traditional results come mainly from Microsoft's Bing search engine. It also uses its own crawler, DuckDuckBot, and Wikipedia. Quick answers come from several hundred specialised providers. In total DuckDuckGo lists over 400 sources of results.
Q.Is DuckDuckGo safe?
DuckDuckGo does not store search history and does not build user profiles. It does not protect against everything, though. Visited websites can still collect data if the browser does not block it. The internet provider can also see the addresses of visited sites. Only a VPN protects against that, available in the paid DuckDuckGo subscription.
Q.How many people use DuckDuckGo?
According to StatCounter, in October 2026 DuckDuckGo had a 0.64% share of the global search engine market. That is fifth place, behind Google, Bing, Yahoo! and Yandex. In 2022 the search engine handled an average of over 100 million queries a day. The company does not report a number of users because it does not track them.
Q.What sources is this description based on?
The sources of results are described on DuckDuckGo's “Sources” help pages. The company's history, headquarters and number of searches come from the DuckDuckGo article on Wikipedia, version from March 2026. The subscription's price and scope are described by TechCrunch on 4 September 2025. Market shares come from StatCounter Global Stats for October 2026.
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