How Does DuckDuckGo Make Money … and How Much?
DuckDuckGo is a search engine with a drastically unique worth proposition.While its competitors collect your data and search history for targeted ads, DuckDuckGo uses a different organization model designed around privacy.So how does DuckDuckGo make money? DuckDuckGo generates income through keyword-based marketing, affiliate marketing, and their Tracker Radar tool.We’ll dig deeper into each of these earnings streams in this short article. What is DuckDuckGo? DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused online search engine, internet browser extension, and browser app
. As its search bar proudly mentions, it lets you browse the web without being tracked. DuckDuckGo was built to be a solution to much of the inconveniences Google search brings
to users: The fact that Google search can be manipulated with search engine optimization
Concerns about how Google tracks your search history and gathers individual data The onslaught of personalized advertisements that follow you across the internet When thought of as primarily a tech business, Google is now extensively recognized as an advertising company. It’s still the dominant search engine, making billions offering access to the highest bidder
platform each and every single day, and this number is increasing progressively. A record number of everyday searches was set in early 2022, making DuckGoDuck now the 10th most popular search engine in the world. These numbers amount to 2.6%of the United States search engine market and 0.67%of the international search engine market. However these numbers likewise represent a 46%growth in 2021. Throughout this rise, DuckDuckGo has managed to stay company with its personal privacy policy. It specifies that whenever they tape-record something such as the number of searches occur, the information stays entirely anonymous. Which isn’t something that will likely ever alter. Who funds and owns DuckDuckGo? DuckDuckGo was bootstrapped out of the basement of American entrepreneur and MIT grad Gabriel Weinberg in 2008. In 2011, DuckDuckGo got funding from Union Square Ventures and some angel financiers. To date, they have actually caused 18 financiers with a total financing amount of$113 million. Source: Money Inc. It remains a private business with Weinberg still the CEO and likely the business’s bulk investor. The business falls under its parent business DuckDuckGo, Inc., based in Paoli, Pennsylvania. How does DuckDuckGo earn money? DuckDuckGo has a few different approaches to generate profits. Keyword-Based Advertising Like other search engines, DuckDuckGo’s main service design focuses on advertising. The distinction from the others is that DuckDuckGo doesn’t bludgeon you over the head with ads for products you searched for recently. It serves advertisements related to whatever your search query is about. These are the kinds of advertisements you will see if you search for outdoor camping gear.< img loading ="lazy"class=" alignnone" src= "https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/9cEEy6WoQvqqEiYimYfl" alt="Keyword based marketing on DuckDuckGo."width="727"height="399"
> And because it doesn’t save user information, not even your IP address, you don’t receive a tailored searchresult. Each search is like they’re meeting and serving you for the first time. Now that’s privacy. If you exit the tab or alter your search to
airline tickets, you’ll get these
kinds of ads . Click on any of the ads and DuckDuckGo will make some money. That’s how keyword-based search ads work in a nutshell. It actually is a basic design that other business like Google profit from too.
It’s simply that DuckDuckGo stops there and does n’t also then collect your information or personal info to offer to advertisers for additional earnings. Another distinction is that DuckDuckGo doesn’t have its ownad-buying platform like Google Ads. They instead run as a partner
they can get an affiliate commission.< div class="box-highlight box-highlight–
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They make a point to state this is a non-tracking affiliate collaboration, and any information exchanged stays confidential. They also say this doesn’t influence their search results, appearing
only organically like any other link. DuckDuckGo’s search utilizes its own web crawler along with the assistance of 400 other sources like Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and Wikipedia to bring you results.
DuckDuckGo’s CEO hasn’t talked about just how much this creates.
Thinking about how rapidly their daily search number is growing, this might be a substantial income stream for the business. Tracker Radar Do you ever search for something on Google and get bombarded by related advertisements on every site you visit? I wager you do and, while it’s awesome for the website owners benefiting from advertisements, it can get a little
tiring as a searcher. This happens because significant platforms like Google and Facebook have hidden trackers on much of the most popular
sites. These trackers enable them to gather your info and, naturally, follow you with targeted
advertisements. As a result, DuckDuckGo launched an information set that tracks and monitors these hidden trackers. Tracker Radar constantly crawls the web for third-party homes on sites. It tracks how they use the internet browser API, how typically they set cookies, and more. It then cross-references this information with its other findings to determine tracker habits. This allowsusers to construct comprehensive and current tracker blocklists. The open-source code for this information set is readily available totally free to the general public at Github . DuckDuckGo earns money from the tool through licensing charges when business source it for commercial usage. Is DuckDuckGo rewarding? According to a post on DuckDuckGo’s official blog site, Spread Privacy, it has been a rewarding business because 2014.
DuckDuckGo managed to go versus the grain of other online search engine and construct a great service.And they’ve done
an outstanding job at marketing. I would wager cold tough money that they studied the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout because they appear to inspect all the boxes. They’ve niched down on a growing target market that appreciates user personal privacy. They’ve positioned themselves as the go-to personal search engine. F rom the time they rented their very first signboard in 2011 to today, they’ve been really clear with
their messaging . This list goes on and on.< img loading="lazy"class="alignnone"src="https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/WGUBkjy2QXinOZc0sKhY“alt=”DuckDuckGo’s very first signboard.”width=”660 “height=”441”> DuckDuckGo remains a personal company so they’re pretty secretive about their actual numbers– n ot simply with how much money they make but also relating to
how much they spend. But in an interview with PhillyMag, CEO Weinberg did share that the company produced over$100 million in earnings in 2020. Given that the time of that quote, their search traffic has actually continued to increase. How much is DuckDuckGo worth? It would be safe to presume that DuckDuckGo has reached
unicorn status. Setting an assessment on a personal business is challenging. You could argue it is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. it is handy to compare the numbers with a public business like Google to come up with an educated guess. For context, during that very same time the DuckDuckGo declared to make$ 100 million, Google made around$181 billion
. And Google’s moms and dad company Alphabet is valued at around $1.7 trillion. That’s around a 10x several. With this standard, it’s safeto assume that DuckDuckGo deserves a minimum of $1 billion. A Quick Recap of DuckDuckGo We’ve covered quite a bit. We’vediscussed
a few of the ways that DuckDuckGo earns money and a few of its privacy features. In between ads, affiliate partnerships, and the tools it can offer, it
appears the personal privacy online search engine is a flourishing service. If the patterns continue, more and more people will seek out a search engine that safeguards personal information. T his is where DuckDuckGo, the self-proclaimed ‘internet personal privacy business’, will continue to stand out and enjoy the rewards.
