DuckDuckGo’s 1 billion monthly searches announcement carries more weight than just that of tech grandstanding; it brings about discussions of market share in a market where such conversations are often disregarded as heresy by tech pundits.

DuckDuckGo leverages transparency by making all of its data and metrics available to the public. The public data posted in DuckDuckGo’s announcement shows an aggressive growth model that most any tech company would welcome.

Moreover, being that DuckDuckGo competes with Google, the numbers might be more stunning than we think. And, well, they might be less stunning than others perceive them.

Let’s break down what we should take away from DuckDuckGo’s data release and help ourselves understand what it could mean to the future of search.

So What Is DuckDuckGo?

DuckDuckGo is a privacy browser.

It allows users to search the internet without fear of intrusive data collection schemes. DuckDuckGo aims to take market share from major search engines, such as Google, which leverage user data as the foundation of their advertising funnels.

DuckDuckGo’s slogan “The search engine that doesn’t track you.” plainly states its core mission. Next to the slogan sits a prominent call-to-action requesting that searchers “Help Spread DuckDuckGo!”.

DuckDuckGo’s 1 billion monthly searches announcement makes one thing exceptionally clear: their search page call-to-action that requests people to encourage others to switch search engines is working.

DuckDuckGo Creates Revenue Through Bing Ads, Private Donors

To date, private donations to DuckDuckGo sit at $1.3 million. The company, founded in 2008, now has 55 employees. Such numbers aren’t especially overwhelming in the world of big tech, but when we consider context, they become mind-numbingly spectacular.

Additionally, DuckDuckGo displays Bing Ads network ads in its search results, as well as actively participating in Amazon Affiliates. Both alliances serve as revenue streams for the company.

DuckDuckGo Is A Massive Growth Machine

DuckDuckGo’s growth chart will impress even the most conservative of the privacy search engine’s critics.

DuckDuckGo’s recent announcement focuses on data about January’s 1 billion searches, but January 2016 (think election, Cambridge analytics, etc.) serves as a pretty impressive starting point to what’s been a trendline heading to the moon.

The 2016 presidential election made internet privacy a household issue. Today, we expect that all of our neighbors harbor some concern over the use of their private data. DuckDuckGo’s aggressive trendline confirms such public sentiment. The recent DuckDuckGo announcement may lend even more credence to the idea that people are uneasy with big tech’s data collection methods.

Consider the timing of the company’s 1 billion monthly searches achievement. It follows narrowly behind their publishing a study accusing rival search giant Google of continuing to personalize search results for logged-out sessions. 

On October 10th, 2018, DuckDuckGo broke another record of its own: the search engine served over 30-million search requests on that single day. On October 10th, 2018, DuckDuckGo hit the 30-million daily search mark. For DuckDuckGo, the number broke a previous record.

This event occurred shortly after the media exposed Google for a security breach the company failed to disclose. 

You see where this is going, right?

DuckDuckGo vs. Google: Is The Stage Set For A Showdown?

You might be laughing right now.

It is certainly understandable.

Google remains one of the most iconic and domineering technology companies in history. Google’s dominance is rarely the subject of debate by any tech pundit worth their weight in salt.

But it is getting more and more difficult to ignore what’s happening over at DuckDuckGo headquarters. At what point does our disregard for any potential challenge to Google go from sound mind to cognitive dissonance?

Let’s explore.

Most search experts would tell you that if a Google competitor exists, the distinction goes to Microsoft’s Bing. Bing, created in 2009, amasses around 12 billion monthly search requests, according to some stats.

Other studies that measure search traffic show differing levels of Bing’s market penetration.

It could be as low as 3%.  

It could be as high as 24%. 

Our view, based on our own client data, is that Bing’s share of the US search market is between these two numbers. This means Bing, whose ascent began only a year prior to DuckDuckGo’s, might be ten times the size of DuckDuckGo, depending on the source you trust most.

Pinpointing the level of Google’s permeation is a quagmire too. They might be responsible for 63% of search market share. 

Or, according to a Statista mobile search graph, they might own the whole darn market.
Analytics companies each use independent, unique methods when tracking search traffic. The confusion is worsened when we consider that Google likely doesn’t want to be seen as overly dominant; hence, wearing an antitrust target on their back.

Likewise, Bing may be incentivized to appear larger in the search space; because, you know, those finicky shareholders.

No matter which search analytics you use, Google dominates the space, and that’s all that matters. These search numbers cause rival search companies to feel overwhelmed and disconcerted.

Google is a giant that isn’t going to be slain overnight, but some competitors are still willing to try. And they just might succeed if they chip away diligently and precisely over the long term.

Bing competes with Google leveraging their Microsoft ownership, experience, and attentiveness to search quality factors. DuckDuckGo competes with Google on privacy issues. DuckDuckGo’s playing field might be more conducive to search engine market penetration goals for a niche audience.

DuckDuckGo thrives on media discord and outrage that centers around privacy issues. And media conglomerates aren’t likely to lift their collective feet from the privacy outrage pedals soon. As shown above, DuckDuckGo cashes in each time a significant privacy breach is revealed by the media.

Last month, the company proved that it could be a useful provider of the information — and that’s a huge deal. If the DuckDuckGo marketing strategy transitions from opportunist to opportunity-creator, Google executives can hardly afford to continue to ignore DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo now sits at the helm as a privacy advocate and watchdog. The second part might complicate Google’s existence in the space. DuckDuckGo’s momentum is now impossible to ignore.

With trendlines pointing towards the moon and a marketing strategy that yields results, it is evident that the privacy search engine is going to siphon at least some of Google’s market share. In a few years, could DuckDuckGo become the second-largest search platform in the world?

These are questions that we now must seriously ask ourselves.

DuckDuckGo SEO (What Do I Do Now?)

Let’s slow down, right?

Are we honestly considering discussing DuckDuckGo and SEO in the same conversation?

DuckDuckGo’s momentum swing does not mean that every site on the web should be tackling some new SEO development. But it isn’t a bad idea to understand a few essentials, either.

The quiet, and now not so quiet, rise of DuckDuckGo means more sites are beginning to take notice and examine whether they can get in on the ground floor of a new search prospect.

The foundation of the Google algorithm is RankBrain, an artificial intelligence deep dive that serves to extract user search intent. It’s advanced and robust and, well, impressive as heck. DuckDuckGo’s search algorithm uses what’s known as the DuckDuckBot. DuckDuckBot pulls results from Yahoo!, Yandex, Bing, and several hundred other sources. As an obvious starting point, one could logically surmise that Bing-optimized sites perform well in DuckDuckGo. As mentioned above, DuckDuckGo earns revenue by displaying Bing ads, so it would stand to reason that the two might be cozy on the SEO side of things.

Just like Google, DuckDuckGo attempts to resolve search issues at the SERP level. Need to change your car battery but have no time for clicking on a search results link?

That was precise, convenient, and familiar.

DuckDuckGo’s privacy-focused experience means that it doesn’t tally a searcher’s location, nor other vital facts that might influence a result. That said, it does utilize IP address locations, which can help make the results of a location-based search more relevant.

This might mean a return to using location+search request- style optimization. In other words, if you are a bakery in the Denver suburb of Cherry Creek, you might deploy “Cherry Creek, Colorado” in your meta-description.

DuckDuckGo recommends that websites looking to increase search rankings in DuckDuckGo’s platform acquire “links from high-quality sites.” The search engine gives Wikipedia as an example of a high-quality site.

The Grand Takeaway?

DuckDuckGo should be considered a viable participant in the search space, but there is yet arise a compelling reason to optimize your website for it. If you employ search engine best practices, you are probably already set up for DuckDuckGo SEO success. Plus, if you purchase ads through the Bing Ads network, you are probably getting DuckDuckGo exposure already.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post DuckDuckGo Explodes With 1 Billion Monthly Searches (Um, Is This Really Happening?) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Now in beta, Google has rolled out the new report to everyone. They made some changes through the alpha stage, one of which includes re-naming the report to Search Analytics. A very appropriate name as the new features absolutely resemble Google Analytics. The new report will allow you to see how your search traffic changes, where it comes from, and what queries that are being searched that will most likely display your site.

A Choice of Metrics

Having the ability to choose which metrics to measure is always a bonus! The Search Analytics report allows you to aggregate results by site or page. You can group, filter, and compare the following metrics:

• Clicks: how many times people click on a link to your site in search results
• Impressions: how many times your site appears in search results
• Click Through Rate (CTR): click count divided by impression
• Position: average page position of the results from your site

A Change for the Better

In the new report, Google is actually calculating the data differently resulting in much more accurate data. Some of the biggest changes include:

• Individual page impression counts merged
  All links to the same site are counted as a single impression

• Search properties & devices separated
  Get unique metrics for web, image, mobile, and video

• Coverage and partial counts differ
  Data coverage might not be the same and values can be different between the 2 reports

• Image click count reduced
  Only expanded images will count as a click

• Data consolidated by full domain
  The new report assigns all click, impression & search data host name

For a detailed guide on the changes and a step by step guide on how to get the most from this awesome new report, check out the GWT Help Section.

Google will give you the option to “Go back to the old Search Queries report” for 3 months before they remove it for good. While it can be difficult to teach an old dog new tricks, this is one where we highly suggest you get to know Google and use; it’s a great tool!

The post Get To Know Google: Search Analytics Report appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Anyways, notable apples-of-my-eye have included baby carrots, Scottish jackets, the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and that Lifehouse song from the Dodge commercials. When I love something, I can’t get enough of it. Most recently, however, my proverbial heart-bubbles have been floating towards the most traditional of targets: a cute girl. More specifically, a cute girl who goes on 13 miles runs for kicks.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “What does this have to do with search marketing… or even marketing in general?” Well, as Craig Ferguson would say, “Bare with me! I’ll get there after a few beers!” It’s not like you’d rather be tooting around with AdWords Editor anyways.

Earlier this week I grabbed a quick lunch with said girl; at which point I mentioned that I love running in the rain. I wasn’t lying… I do love running in the rain, only I like running in the rain during the summer (I despise the cold) and I haven’t actually gone for a run in the rain in years, let alone a run over three miles.

A day later, as fate would have it, I was walking through the Wellness Center parking lot (the local sports complex) during a torrential downpour. Who do I see standing at the doors, prepped and ready to run? None other than the Cute Runner Girl.

“I took your advice yesterday and ran in the rain and loved it! Do you want to come with me today?”

Of course, I meant to respond with something along the lines of, “Absolutely not! Are you crazy?! It’s cold and wet out here! I’m going to go shoot hoops.” Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, we’ll see how it plays out), only “Absolutely!” came out of my mouth.

Long-story-short, after about 3 painful miles at an absurd pace and what had-to-of-been several hundred gallons of water being dumped on my head, I stopped.

“I’m sorry. I have to turn back. I’m dead!”

“OK! Thanks for coming! I’m going to keep going! Bye!”

Now, I’ve done some pretty dumb things in the past in hopes of picking up some brownie points with a girl but – let me assure you – this particular episode takes the proverbial cake due to its high level of rediculocity.

As I walked/ran the lonely, puddle-filled miles back to my car, fighting off leg cramps and cussing at my water-logged iPod, I had plenty of time to think about how things went, how they could go from this point forward and how they could have gone differently if I had been completely forthright about a number of things.

This brings me to search marketing, search engine reputation management (SERM) and search engine optimization (SEO).

We’re in an age where it’s tough to escape our past actions and words due to an increase in the use and ease of digital mediums. For instance, thousands of college graduates nationwide are struggling to find jobs not because of a lack-of-qualifications, but because of documented douchebaggery on sites like Facebook or MySpace. Put yourself in the shoes of a recruiter…

“Hmmm… On paper, both candidates are equally qualified for this position but on the web, Candidate A has pictures posted of her graduation and family while Candidate B is clearly proud of the fact that he can do a 2-story beer bong. I think I’ll go with Candidate A.”

The same types of documented perils apply to businesses and organizations as well, particularly in the area of customer service and/or public perception. If a company either misrepresents itself or provides poor customer service on a consistent basis, you can be sure that someone somewhere will be angry enough to make disparaging remarks about the company, most likely on a consumer advocacy board of some merit. Oh yeah, you can also be sure that the search engine spiders will find, document and spread that disparaging remark to your target market.

That’s where SERM comes in handy.

SERM makes it possible for the GOOD bits about your company to rise to the top of the search engines so that negative information stays buried. By spending time on blogging, press optimization, search engine optimization, and paid search marketing, you are able to control the information which is presented to the world so that people see the positives rather than the angry tirades of one unhappy camper (who really can do a lot of damage if left unchecked).

Now, remember… I’m NOT advocating the use of SERM as a cloak for shoddy business practices like intentional customer neglect or punching babies for some odd reason. If you engage in poor business practices long enough, they will eventually catch up to you, much like a compulsive liar will eventually get his comeuppance in real life.

That being said, you really should strive to make your company as accessible and reliable as it can in the eyes of your target market because if you don’t, complaints WILL wind up on the internet and potential customers WILL be negatively influenced.

While I am enjoying the benefit of slightly misrepresenting myself in conversation (which is somewhat more forgettable, or at least explainable), your company has to deal with documented blunders on the internet… and the internet never forgets… which makes me wonder if I should even post this…

Oh well, I’ll bank on her not stumbling across this old SEO blog… but just in case she does…

Hey cutie. Want to rent a movie later? Maybe Prefontaine?

The post Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

During my post, I made a side comment about a site that touched off a bit of a firestorm.Really more of a warmstorm or whatever is less than a firestorm, but more comments than we typically get on a post at least since we converted to WordPress.This post is all about those comments, so to understand it, you should start by reading them first.

A few points in number format for no other reason than because I like outlines.

1. I would like to make a public apology to Geoff Young of KnuckleCurve. I accused him of employing some black hat – or unethical – search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.I saw something that looked spammy and jumped the gun.I should have looked at it a little more closely.All in all a fine site (the whole reason I linked in the first place was because I liked one of his articles) and you should check it out if you have a sickness like I do and really love baseball.

2. Paul and I typically write posts on this blog for the general business public – not online marketers, bloggers, and Web developers. So we try to use our posts to include a little more information about internet marketing in an effort to educate. I thought that I would introduce the term black hat seo when I saw something that I thought – again, incorrectly – looked spammy. I’ve updated the post accordingly. And just for the record, we are big fans of SEO; if we thought any kind of link building or copy writing for SEO purposes was bad, we’d have a lot of explaining to do to several clients paying us for those services.

3. The reason I originally thought that the post about some of Roger Clemens’ more enjoyable exploits wasn’t above board was that it contains 28 comments, all of which are the exact same line: “Five Unforgettable Roger Clemens Moments by Geoff Young.”These comments aren’t actually comments, but pingbacks.They’re not labeled as such (and they don’t need to be – there’s no standard formatting for these), but I could have found that out fairly quickly by just spending a couple minutes clicking on them.

Boiling it down very succinctly for discussion purposes, SEO basically boils down to two items:

A. Authority as judged by the content on sites that people can read, and
B. Credibility as judged by the sites that link to yours.

So, I thought the site was spamming its own comments by adding the same keyword phrase to its comments (showing up as “Authority”) over and over again. Having actually gone through and looked at the Top 5 Group Writing Contest, I now have a question about the overall contest (not the individual writers) from the “Credibility” or linking side. And that’s all it is: a question. Is the Top 5 Contest a brilliant link building idea, a modified version of paid linking that the search engines may not like today or in the future, or somewhere in between? Here are the contest rules. Let me know what you think.

Also, one commenter said he wasn’t receiving email notification of the posts; I think there was a bug that’s been fixed, but if you ever experience any problems with that, feel free to give us a call at 800.979.3177 or email us.

The post Of Apologies, Black Hatting, & More – Follow up to the Mitchell Report Post appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.