What you need to know about DuckDuckGo SEO vs Google SEO
We’ve all heard of Google, and we know that we should be optimizing for Google search engines, but what about other search engines? Bing? Baidu? What about DuckDuckGo SEO? DuckDuckGo, a private search engine, saw over 80,000,000 searches happen per day (on average) in August of 2021. Unlike Google search, DuckDuckGo blocks tracking and doesn’t store personal information. It’s great for users but worrisome for marketers—“How are we going to share our business information?”
Here at Data Driven Marketers, we like DuckDuckGo for both personal and professional reasons. Sometimes we don’t want to be targeted with ads that can be a little too personal. We want our private searches to remain private. Professionally, we use DuckDuckGo to get a clear view of what content is performing well.
Have you tried DuckDuckGo yet? No, not yet? You should! Conduct two different searches (one on Google and one on DuckDuckGo) and see what ads follow you.
First, do businesses really need to think about DuckDuckGo?
Tldr; yes.
Privacy is the future. Many large organizations, such as Google and Apple, are changing the way people are tracked. Studies have shown that 24% of U.S. adults are concerned about their data and privacy. These statistics make DuckDuckGo an appealing alternative to Google Search, and that’s something that your business needs to recognize—despite your personal feelings about privacy. Because they don’t track their users, it’s impossible to know exactly how many people search using DuckDuckGo, but their best guess is that 80 million people use their products, and approximately 3 billion people use their search engine each month. Comparatively, Google has 100 billion searches per month and holds 91.3% of the search engine market share worldwide. DuckDuckGo holds 0.6% of the market.
Is SEO different for DuckDuckGo?
Now you might be wondering, “Isn’t Google Incognito the same as DuckDuckGo?” While Google Incognito doesn’t keep your search or browsing history on your computer, it’s still collecting your search data. This data and activity is then used by millions of websites and apps that use Google Ads to send you personalized advertisements across the web. Ads aren’t necessarily unavoidable, though. DuckDuckGo will also show you ads, but they’re more generalized because they don’t collect the same data.
Another difference between Google and DuckDuckGo is their maps feature. Google uses Google Maps to show you location information, whereas DuckDuckGo uses Apple Maps. Here’s what DuckDuckGo’s website says about how they treat your information:
“We [DuckDuckGo] do not send any personally identifiable information such as IP address to Apple or other third parties, and you are still anonymous when you perform map and address-related searches on DuckDuckGo.”
Business owners, don’t fear. SEO is different for DuckDuckGo, but Apple Maps has features similar to Google My Business. You can edit information about your business, such as hours of operation, location, website, address, phone number, social media profiles, and more. The primary difference is how users are targeted after viewing Google Maps results vs Apple Maps results.
Lastly, unlike Google, DuckDuckGo avoids the filter bubble. In an effort to give you personalized content, Google filters out what it thinks you’ll want to see, creating a bias, or a filter bubble. With all of this in mind, it’s important for businesses to consider optimizing for DuckDuckGo.
What “rules” do you need to follow for Google vs DuckDuckGo SEO?
Both Google and DuckDuckGo SEO look at a multitude of factors when determining where your site will rank. Here are just some of the best practices you can follow to help you rank on any search engine:
- Using targeted keywords on the page
- Having unique content
- Getting other websites to link back to your site (i.e., getting backlinks)
- Having title tags and meta descriptions
- Including your targeted keywords in headings
- Optimizing images with alt text
- Having a good user experience
- Avoiding black hat SEO tactics
There are a couple of ways to specifically target DuckDuckGo: using repurposed content and structured data and optimizing for location. DuckDuckGo SEO likes when you share (or repurpose) content on your site with social sites, such as Goodreads, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Quora, to name a few. Structured data (also known as schema markup) is code that helps search engines crawl, display, and organize your content. It helps the search engines understand what your site is displaying. Because DuckDuckGo doesn’t track a user’s location, it’s imperative that you optimize for location-based searches. Make sure you claim and update your Apple Maps listing and target keywords specific to your location if you want to improve your rank.
Why and how does Data Driven Marketers optimize for both search engines?
At Data Driven Marketers, we optimize for both Google and DuckDuckGo SEO. Why? There are billions of people searching each day and each month! The odds of someone finding you increases when you optimize for all search engines. We target both search engines by following general good practices, hiring subject matter experts to optimize content, and using white hat SEO tactics for DuckDuckGo. We’ve got this down to a science. The proof is in the pudding.