It has been reported that Google has introduced new options into the list of possible “default” search engines available to Chrome users. One of the most notable possible search engines includes DuckDuckGo.
It’s true that in the past, users could manually add alternatives to the existing choices, but the overwhelming majority of Chrome users don’t want to have to manually place them like that.
DuckDuckGo even has aChrome extension that they offer. It prompts users that don’t have the extension currently installed with its privacy pitch: “your data shouldn’t be for sale.”
According to TechCrunch, DuckDuckGo has been added in 60 markets, including:
- Argentina
- Australia
- Belgium
- Brazil
- Canada
- Germany
- Denmark
- Finland
- Greece
- India
- Mexico
- Philippines
- South Africa
- U.K.
- U.S.
- and others
With a 62 percent market share globally, Chrome is the world’s most popular browser. In the U.S., according to StatCounter, the market is more competitive:
- Chrome — 49.3 percent
- Safari — 31.6 percent
- Microsoft browsers — 9.8 percent
- Firefox — 4.5 percent
- Others — 4.8 percent
With DuckDuckGo being added to the list of default search options in Chrome, this could add even more of a PR boost for the privacy oriented search engine. With this possible addition, we’ll see if it drives a bigger adoption and search volume.
Users are loving the privacy friendly message and has greatly resonated with them, and is partially resulted in the search engine’s increasing query volumes. DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg testified yesterday before Congress on privacy and online advertising.
Currently, DuckDuckGo’s market share is outperforming Bing in terms of user engagement in a 2016 analysis by SimilarWeb, and could possibly exceed Yahoo’s market share.
Regarding SEOs, they will want to make sure they’re paying attention to whether more traffic starts coming from DuckDuckGo and think about optimizing for it.
Chrome may consider DuckDuckGo a search engine, but according to Google Analytics, it still doesn’t count it among the 50 odd default search engines it categorizes under organic. DuckDuckGo traffic instead registers as referral traffic unless you set up a filter to recategorize it as organic traffic.