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Computers

Get your privacy ducks in a row with DuckDuckGo

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Google, Bing, and Yahoo are bitter rivals in their quest for your search engine affection, but they have at least one thing in common: They track your search history and tailor the results of your queries to your interests. Yes, they’re attempting to improve your search experience, but that sort of surveillance is anathema to privacy enthusiasts and anyone who doesn’t want to be stuck in an echo chamber of their own interests. DuckDuckGo is a different kind of search engine, designed to capitalize on the big shots’ poor privacy practices by offering an alternative that’s simple and anonymous.

Private searching made simple

At the DuckDuckGo site, just type your query and click the green magnifying-glass search button. DuckDuckGo employs HTTPS encryption and will not include your search query when it builds links to websites, so the sites you visit won’t know what terms you used to find them. DuckDuckGo also refrains from logging your queries and doesn’t tailor results based on your browsing history, so you’re guaranteed to get unfiltered access to the Web.

Rest assured that DuckDuckGo keeps your searches private, so nobody will know about your eclectic taste in electronic music.

If your search results don’t pop up quite as quickly as they do on Google, that’s because DuckDuckGo isn’t just checking your query against its own database (carefully collected by the DuckDuckBot Web crawler)—it’s simultaneously running your search across Google, Bing, Yahoo, and more than 30 other search engines. DuckDuckGo will also check against Wikipedia, Wolfram ­Alpha, and other knowledge engines to try to create short summaries, called “0-click boxes,” that answer your query so that you don’t have to click through.

If you don’t want to wait, you can switch off 0-click boxes in the Results section of the DuckDuckGo Settings menu. While you’re there, consider turning on the integrated Web of Trust ratings for your search results, which will cause DuckDuckGo to display color coding to help you gauge whether the link is safe to click: green is all clear, yellow suggests caution, and red signals danger. Web of Trust ratings are crowdsourced from millions of volunteers who rate sites’ trustworthiness in handling user data. Although Web of Trust is available via free add-ons for almost every browser, DuckDuckGo is the first search engine to display WoT reputation data alongside each search result.

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From: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2035703/get-your-privacy-ducks-in-a-row-with-duckduckgo.html#tk.rss_all

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

2013: The Year of Evolved Mobile Search Ads

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By Chris Neiger, The Motley Fool

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Just last month, Google launched its “enhanced campaigns” to meld desktop search ads with mobile search ads, removing the option for advertisers to opt out of using mobile ads in their campaign. It was a bold move by the company and showed that Google is moving its advertisers quickly into the mobile world, where competition is heating up.

Mobile search, the traditional way
Right now, Google enjoys about 95% of global mobile searches. In the U.S. alone, the market for mobile search advertising is expected to hit $3.36 billion this year, and eMarketer expects Google to snag 92.4% share of that. Google’s new, enhanced campaign strategy will help the company to acquire that market share by moving advertisers away from desktop-only campaigns and essentially forcing them to create ads around content rather than a specific platform .

Source: Google.

Google’s move comes at a strategic time in the mobile advertising space. Desktop search is on the decline while mobile search is skyrocketing. The latter now accounts for 25% of all Internet searches, and search marketing agency Covario estimates that mobile search will reach one in every three searches by the end of this year .

Google’s most vocal contender is Microsoft and its Bing search engine. Bing is the default search engine on the Windows Phone OS, but the operating system currently takes less than 3% of smartphone market share, and in 2011 Bing only took 2% of the mobile search market. Even if Windows Phone sales took off and Bing’s mobile search doubled or tripled its current percentage — both a difficult feat — Google would still own the market.

Searching without searching
It may not be Microsoft that Google needs to watch out for, though. Mobile search through apps is on the rise. Many apps utilize smartphone location-based features to integrate search results within apps, which bypass Google or Bing.

On Android devices, the Google Search app is currently the second most frequently used app, behind Google Play. But in Apple‘s iPhone, the Google Search app didn’t even make it in the top 10 for most-used app. It’s not that iPhone users don’t use Google search in their browser, but they don’t use the actual Google Search app like Android users do.


Source: Apple.

Apple’s place in the search market is an odd one. Back in 2010, Steve Jobs said, “On the desktop search is where it’s at; that’s where the money is. But on a mobile device search hasn’t happened. Search is not where it’s at, people are not searching on a mobile device like they do on the desktop.” Fast-forward three years and Apple’s Siri performs many search functions for mobile users. Siri consults Google for some results, but also taps Bing, Yahoo, Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia, and other sites for queries. Although Siri doesn’t bring in any mobile search revenue for the Cupertino company, Siri could take up more mobile searches over …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance