DuckDuckGo (DDG) is just as easy to use as Google, but does a number of things in quite different ways that make it worth considering as an alternative.
- Anonymity DDG does not track your searches (in the way some other search engines do) or store any personal information about you, so you won't find adverts following you around from site to site based on your previous searches.
- Avoid the filter bubble Many search engines give you search results based on your previous search history, FaceBook likes, etc. You'll see more of the things you have shown an interest in and less of things you haven't (see here for a fuller explanation). This level of personalisation can be useful, but can also get in the way of finding the information you need. DDG does not collect your preferences and therefore gives you results that are just based on your search terms.
- Customisable You can change a lot of the setting in DDG to suit you. From the font and colour, layout, through to the regions it searches, safe searching, and even opening your results in a new tab. These settings can be saved anonymously in the cloud.
- Search functionality DDG works as you would expect, you put in the search terms and it ranks them by relevance. You can also do phrase searching, use operators like AND or OR and sort your results by date, or limit to a country. DDG will also give you links to perform the same search on other sites.
- Advance searching DDG has a feature called !bang syntax. Just type in your search term, then a ! followed by the site you want to search (e.g. depression !nhs.uk) and it will only return results from that site. You can also use brackets to group your terms together for more sophisticated searches e.g. (policy OR guideline).
To find out more about DDG there is a short video on their site, or you could have a go at using it! It is a strong contender as an alternative to Google, Yahoo or Bing and well worth a look.
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