SEO for duckduckgo

One question that we are sometimes asked is,

‘Do I need to optimise my website SEO for people who use DuckDuckGo?’

The number of people who are starting to use DuckDuckGo is growing over time because people are more sensitive about being tracked online. DuckDuckGo’s mantra is simple,

‘no tracking, no ad targeting, just searching’.

By looking at Google Analytics for quite a few of our clients, we’ve seen that the percentage of users who come through DuckDuckGo, if you check this year versus last year and the previous years, it’s an upward trajectory.

How is DuckDuckGo different to Google Search?

Well, there is one main difference. Since DuckDuckGo focuses on privacy, it does not know exactly where the search is located. However, it can approximate the location information through a geo IP lookup.

Basically, when you hit the search button, your computer sends your search request to the search engine.

In that request, your computer adds some information. For example, your location sharing. If you opted in, which gives an approximate location, it’s never exact, but even if you don’t opt-in sharing the location, the request includes the IP address, which has this approximate location via the closest point.

Therefore, if you are on DuckDuckGo and search ‘pizza near me’, even without enabling the location, you will see that suggestions are located quite close to you which is useful.

There are three main considerations for businesses that want to be found through DuckDuckGo.

  1. First of all, make sure that your business is listed on Apple Maps because this is where DuckDuckGo pulls all of its maps from.
  2. Secondly, DuckDuckGo receives signals and information from different sources like Bing so ensure your website is optimised on Bing. This includes making sure your sitemap is okay and does not have any errors, and you should submit it to Bing as well. You can also use your Bing webmaster tools to check the health of the site, monitor the crawl, and indexing, and see if there is any improvement that can be done with optimisation.
  3. Lastly, having quality links on your site helps it to be found on DuckDuckGo, but that’s not an exclusive requirement as that is something that all search engines like.

Would you like a free SEO audit and consultation to see how we can help you Be Found Online through SEO?