Of course the big Duck Duck Go announcement doesn’t really change your current SEO strategy, but it does bring up the discussion of optimizing for a search engine that is on the rise. It’s important than your overall SEO strategy has different branches for different search engines so that you’re covering all of your bases. In the past it was Bing, Yahoo, and Google you had to worry about (unless of course you’re trying to reach an audience in Asia where search engines like Buscopio become important). Now, however, it seems that Duck Duck Go may be something to consider for small businesses. This will ultimately affect your overall SEO strategy, so it’s something to really understand and research now while it’s still small enough to conquer.

A Quick Review: How DuckDuckGo Works and What Makes It So Great

DuckDuckGo is a completely secure and private search engine, which means no tracking and no IP address following. Everyone sees the same results for every search query because they don’t have any information about you to filter results, so this means that it’s truly a fair playing field for small businesses as well. If you want your content to be seen, it won’t have anything to do with what people were searching for before, what social circles they belong to, whether they have interacted with your website in the past, etc. Some may see this as less targeted, but this method gets results, which is a big reason why the engine has grown so fast.

According to a Search Engine Journal article, there are several statistics that are giving DuckDuckGo something to really celebrate:

  • For the first time ever, they have exceeded more than 10 million searches per day.
  • Their popularity has grown 600% since the news broke about NSA surveillance programs 2 years ago.
  • According to the most recent numbers, 40% of Americans believe a search engine shouldn’t track the activity of its users.

The search engine also has many features that are similar to Google and other search engines such as instant answers to questions, a place for images, maps and local search options, and more. You also have customization options if you want to pick your theme or boost results for your region. DuckDuckGo also gets results from places like Yahoo, Bing, and Yelp, so you’re getting the same result options, just with more privacy.

DuckDuckGo Optimization for the Future

Before you put all of your SEO resources into DuckDuckGo optimization and research, it’s important to think about whether or not your audience is likely to use the search engine. Millennials are known to put a huge value on Internet privacy, so as this age group gets older DuckDuckGo could see a larger increase, but of course no one knows for sure.

Unfortunately, we still don’t know much about the algorithm or how you can rank on this search engine. Because they pull information from places like Bing and Yahoo it’s safe to assume that they are gaining information about different webpages through these search engines, so optimizing for these search engines should help you see better rankings in DuckDuckGo. The best thing you can do is keep following the story and as more information becomes available start making moves to rank well. SEO takes a long time to see results for any search engine; so the more ahead of the game you can be the better.

You can learn more about the search engine on their official page here.

Do you think a private search engine is something you would use as a consumer? Do you think it’s beneficial for small businesses? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.