This SE is winning market share pretty quickly and they are especially taking away Google users. SEO professionals are saying that DDG is the only serious threat to Google at this moment.
I was thinking, maybe we can help the folks at DDG a bit and recommend this SE to our surfers. A blog post or a link in the sidebar of our blogs or maybe even a link in the footer might help them grow their market share.
Reasons why surfers want to use DDG:
hardly no advertising
the privacy policy is much better (no tracking, does not store IP numbers)
no personlized results
Reasons for us to introduce DDG to surfers:
become less dependet on Google
the love for (the biggest and illegal) tubes is not that big at DDG
there are more results on the frontpage (partly infinite scrolling)
Have you tried DDG yet and if so what do you think about the SERPs?
Do you think it’s wise to “introduce” our surfers to DDG?
I had not heard of this search engine before, but after looking around and doing some searches with it, I really like it. It’s simple, doesn’t give you all the social media results or try to push it’s own down your throat, and best of all I’m not finding many tube and pirate sites from the searches. I’ve already got their search bar added to www.gaypornpolice.com and will see where I can get it added to more sites.
I agree, the results are very clean and the layout is simple. It’s like how Google looked at the time they became so popular.
Adding their search bar is a good idea!
An even more important post people could do on their blogs is to teach surfers to use their browser’s address bar instead of typing URL’s in Google. If every surfer who did this stopped right now, Google’s traffic would plummet through the floor.
lol… you are so right Michael, but I have to admit that I am guilt of same shit… it is much easier… BUT… this is also issue with browsers
in Firefox if you type just let’s say gmail into browser’s address bar you will get Google results page
in Safari if you type the same word you will be directed to gmail.com bypassing any search engine
I am not sure what happens in IE as I don’t use it…
I have seen referrals from duckduckgo increasing in GA reports.
Important factor I found that not every surfer will notice or know about:
By default, DuckDuckGo has Safe Search “On” which omits objectionable (mostly adult) material. If users do not click into the settings area and change that setting, many of our sites will not appear in the results on the first page.
Good example:
I did a search for a term that I know rawTOP and I pretty much dominate the Top 5 slots on Google. We were nowhere on the first page. I changed the setting turning Safe Search “Off”. Did another search for the same term, and there we were. I then tried 2 alternative searches with the longer search phrase (more descriptive/specific) and I was #1 and #2 with rawTOP in #6 (which for this particular search phrase is par for course on Google.
Question?
Are you guys using the default setting or turning off Safe Search? Are you showing up on the first page with Safe Search On?
I don’t know about you guys but recently I am getting the worst search results on stuff I am looking for ever on Google lately. And I am not just talking about porn.
Bjorn: if you search for “bareback” for example - next to the results they list suggestions to refine your searches.
In the case of bareback, the suggestions are as follows:
videos
movies
horse pads
dictionary
amateur
saddle
OldSchool: the first thing I searched for was “gay porn” and then I got a message about the safe search filter that was enables by default. I am not sure if you would get the message for less obvious adult terms.
Gumdrop: I agree, the google results are way off lately - even for non-adult related search terms.
pocoloco, I just did a search for “gay porn” on DDG and as I scroll down the list it appears that EVERY frickin’ link is a tube site, same as Google, and Bing for that matter. If someone knows of a search engine that still lists content rich blogs near the top when you look for “gay porn” please let me know and I’ll promote the heck out of them.
I’ve experimented with DDG for a while now, and I generally like it.
However, there is a problem with affiliate webmasters: If their searches are truly anonymous then how can we track which keywords our users use to get to our sites? Kinda like the problem with the logged-in Google users who appear as “(not provided)” keyword in GA now.
I don’t think you should try to focus on the phrase “gay porn”. All the big tubes are fighting over those big key words. There’s too much competition and tubes will always win because of the good rankings for “time on site”, “bounce rates” and “returning visitors”.
If you look at more specific searches, you will see that DDG lists less (illegal) tubes.
For example, check out the top 10 results for “big uncut cocks”
DDG: the 10th result is the first tube
Google: the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th,10th results are tubes
Bing: the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 8th results are tubes
I also did some tests with porn star names. Google lists tubes, twitter pages and facebook profiles, while DDG lists blogs and paysites.
[QUOTE=Ben;115892]I’ve experimented with DDG for a while now, and I generally like it.
However, there is a problem with affiliate webmasters: If their searches are truly anonymous then how can we track which keywords our users use to get to our sites? Kinda like the problem with the logged-in Google users who appear as “(not provided)” keyword in GA now.[/QUOTE]
True, you won’t see the keywords in GA (it is truly anonymous). You should check the DDG SERPs to see how you rank for the keywords you focus on. The results are the same for everyone.
You do see the country, DDG users are coming from and for me more than 70% is from the USA and 20% comes from UK / Canada / Ireland. I am not seeing people from China, India, the Middle East, South American or African countries. 99% of the traffic comes from North America and Europe.
