I was browsing earlier for the topics I have lined up for my upcoming posts here and on my other blogs, and I was amazed by how much resources are there available to us, right at our fingertips. I mean, it’s like every little thing you want to find more about, you can easily find through search engines. But, because i wanted less user-specific search results, I am thankful I found DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine much like Google. The difference when using this search engine is they get their information from crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia and Yahoo! Search BOSS, making the results more relative to what you were looking for. The search engine has been in existence since 2006.

DuckDuckGo promotes that their priority is the privacy of their users. WIth all the changes that’s been happening on Google, like how they now use your online behavior to give you the results they think you would prefer, DuckDuckGo is a breath of fresh air. I do enjoy Google’s user-specific results most of the time, but there are just days I’d rather see a less personal search result.

From my months of using DuckDuckGo, I can say that it’s pretty useful when I want sites like eHow, Squidoo and others like them to be filtered out of the results. Though articles on their sites may be useful most of the time, there are just times I’d rather get information from sites that were not forced-written by people, if you know what I mean. I’ve had work as a ghost writer and virtual assistant too, so I know a thing or two about how those sites work.

PRIVACY

DuckDuckGo also doesn’t store personal information such as IP address or user agents, which makes us users safer when browsing the web. Also, it doesn’t suggest results based on your search history, saved data, or things you liked from different social networking sites. You also get less spam – in short, better search engine results, according to those who have personally used it, including me.

OPEN SOURCED

The best thing about DuckDuckGo, aside from privacy, is it’s open-sourced, just like Mozilla Firefox. That means users can actually help develop or improve this search engine.

OTHER FEATURES

Last, but definitely not least, is my favorite DuckDuckGo feature: the ability to setup !bang commands and search websites directly from DuckDuckGo’s interface.

What are !bangs? Well, they’re not the hair in front of your face, but they are DuckDuckGo shortcuts users have made to make our lives easier. I sometimes search using keywords like, “certifiedfoodies.com buffalo recipe” to find a certain article from that website I mentioned. This time, you can use !bang commands or even submit your own to make it faster to search for something, may it be a pool heat pump from a pool store, or a very old article from a certain site. Makes searching more efficient, really. Click here for the complete list of !bang commands you can use.

Other features of DuckDuckGo’s search engine is you can customize it to your liking. Change the colors or fonts so it’ll be more readable to you. There are numerous other features you can find on their about page.

By the way, DuckDuckGo were already featured on numerous important tech websites. They were picked as one of the Top 50 Best Websites of 2011 by TIME Magazine. All this information, you can also find on their about page.

Though I still have been using Google as my primary search engine, I see myself clicking on my DuckDuckGo bookmark more frequently now because of my work. When it comes to my search results, I prefer it short and less personal. I want to go in and out in a jiffy. 😀

Have you tried using DuckDuckGo, the pro-privacy search engine as others call it, before? If yes, how’s your experience?