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Comment by llimos | Hacker News Reader

DuckDuckGo claim to make significantly less money per search than Google does, which seems to disprove that search queries are enough of a discriminator on their own.

Source: https://spreadprivacy.com/search-preference-menu-duckduckgo-...

Despite DuckDuckGo being robustly profitable since 2014, we have been priced out of this auction because we choose to not maximize our profits by exploiting our users. In practical terms, this means our commitment to privacy and a cleaner search experience translates into less money per search. This means we must bid less relative to other, profit-maximizing companies.

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Could be that DuckDuckGo users just aren't good ad targets. The big thing separating them is "hates big corporations", I could easily see advertisement for big corporations not being a big hit for this crowd.

Maybe, but one big difference I notice between the two is that a search for <brand> on Google often has the top result as an ad for that brand, whereas on DDG it will be the same result but not an ad. It seems that brands don't have to “defend their turf” on DDG by buying ads on their own name as they do for Google.

I'm a DDG user. I do not "hate big corporations". I may dislike some big corporations. I've enthusiastically worked for others.

I hate poverty, injustice, and bigotry. I cannot stir up strong feelings about an advertising company.

On the other hand I am a terrible advertising target, not wholly impervious to advertising but actively resistant, in part having seen under the bonnet of the sector and found little but a morass of grubby lies and folks with broken moral compasses. I intentionally interpret advertising as noise, not signal.

(corollary: attempts to disguise advertising are an irritant and a cognitive burden, so I allocate advertorials, content marketing, and drip-email compaigns to the Brand Damage circle of hell)

I wonder if DuckDuckGo would be more successful if it was easier to find out how to advertise with them. Like, a link on the page that says "Advertise on Duck Duck Go." I've tried to advertise with them in the past a few times and gave up. I posted here before also, as I think Gabriel used to read the pages.

I use them for search as my default, and I would have used them for ads. I still might if they put a link there.

From what I've heard, DuckDuckGo sources its ads from Bing. I searched for "camera" on DuckDuckGo and the ad links have URLs that redirect to Bing, e.g. "https://duckduckgo.com/y.js?ad_provider=bingv7aa&u3=https://......".

Agreed, it took me far too long to find an answer to this.

Apparently you have to sign up for some Microsoft ad platform, and then select DDG as one of the places to show your ads.

Wow. So you're really advertising through Microsoft.

Hopefully someday DDG will have its own index.

There's a reason MS and Google have an index and DDG doesn't. It's expensive.

Actually I don't believe you can place on DDG. You can only select "Bing, AOL, and Yahoo search syndication search partners"

I would like to see data on Google's revenue distribution per user, guessing it would be very lopsided. Some users are clicking ads for 50%+ of their searches. DuckDuckGo users are different because they most likely at minimum know the difference between a search result and an ad.

There's no way that "some users" (implying a significant proportion) are clicking ads 50% of the time after they do a search. that would be a very rare duck indeed.

We've heard of this pattern:

1. Search Facebook login

2. Click first link

This user probably clicks a lot of ads.

I should certainly hope that DDG makes less per search than Google, since they are just repackaging a lot of google searches.

Bing.

Well yes they're getting "their" search data from Bing, but I meant how a lot of people seem to just use DDG to `!g [search]`.

`!g search` isn’t a repackaging - it just redirects you to google.com/search?q=search

Search queries are generally enough for ads, but DuckDuckGo only makes money on selling those ads, while Google also sells your person information connected to the search.

This isn't true.

the Need Some Anonymity begs to differ

> the Need Some Anonymity begs to differ

I don't know what this means.

But Google doesn't sell data. They let you buy ads against people that match your data or requirements, and that's a pretty fundamental difference.

Still creepy. They still track user behaviour across sites to collate the data, so that they can put you into a neatly packaged silo for advertisers.

Yeah, I was trying to figure out how to say that Google further monetizes your search info without saying they sell your data, but gave up. It's still why Google makes more per search.

Need Some Anonymity == NSA == National Security Agency

But not sure what OP meant by that

factually incorrect

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