DuckDuckGo, my search engine of choice, has updated. Same great privacy, same great instant answers, same great keyboard navigation, but all new presentation and smarter features.
The update brings a new look on all devices, powerful search suggestions that don’t source from your own search history, multiple results for ambiguous search terms… it’s quite a list. You should really just go try it. The instant weather forecasts are great, too, and sourced from Forecast.io.
DuckDuckGo’s search continues to improve, and I would say I get my required answer on the first page 95% of the time. I can always resort to “!g search term,” which launches a private, encrypted Google search for my terms, but that just becomes an extension of DuckDuckGo to me. I also do instant GitHub searches (!gh) and MacUpdate searches (!mu). These are “bang” searches, and there are tons of them.
Below are highlights of a few of my favorite improvements, and reasons why I continue to choose DuckDuckGo over Google search.
Search Suggestions
The search suggestion feature is outstanding. If you use Google, you’re already familiar with the concept. If you’re a DuckDuckGo user, you might not have realized how much you missed it!
More Instant Answers
The instant answers have always meant that you get what is often the spot-on correct answer for your query not just as the first link, but as a box with all of most important details, be it a definition, a code sample, movie synopsis or more. The presentation is improved and even more question types get instant answers now.
Image and Video results
My favorite part of the redesign is that image and video search results are available on the main search page. All of the !bang searches still work (I used to do most image searches with !img, which takes you to a Google Image search without passing any referrer or personal info), but haven’t found the need to with the new design.
If you’re not a DuckDuckGo user yet, go give it a whirl. What you won’t see is all of the data collection and privacy concerns you get every time you use Google. You might just find yourself making it your default search engine. The Help Section offers plenty of ways to do that!
