DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine, will have its best year ever in 2021

The search engine managed to gain more than 23 billion queries vs. 2020, and is on pace to grow over 47% this year.

DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine, achieved another record year in 2021, with over 34,5 billion search queries. In 2020, the search engine received more than 23 billion requests, a significant increase over the 15 billion queries received in 2019.

Unlike other search engines, DuckDuckGo says they don’t track user searches or behavior on other sites. Instead of building user profiles used to display interest-based ads, DuckDuckGo search pages display contextual advertisements based on searched keywords.

Google is the most popular search engine on the planet, with Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, and Yandex trailing behind. DuckDuckGo is ranked number six on Statcounter, with a global market share of 0.66 percent. With 91.4 percent, Google is the clear leader, followed by Bing with 3.14 percent. Even Yahoo maintains a market share of 1.53 percent.

DuckDuckGo’s market share is steadily increasing, and it’s just a matter of time before it overtakes Yandex and Yahoo. Yandex and Baidu are only available in a few countries, while Yahoo has been neglected for a long period. If growth continues, DuckDuckGo may be able to reach third place in the market in the next years.

Here are the total search query numbers from year to year:

From 2015 to 2020, below is a year-by-year breakdown.

3.1 billion dollars in 2015.
4.0 billion in 2016
5.9 billion in 2017
9.2 billion dollars in 2018.
15.0 billion in 2019
23.6 billion in 2020
34.6 billion in 2021 (up to December, 2021)

DuckDuckGo’s search volume could surpass 35 billion in 2021, given that the entire 2021 search statistics will not be available for another seven days.

DuckDuckGo has already grown beyond its search capabilities. It released mobile apps, extensions aimed at protecting customers’ privacy, an email protection service, and, most recently, a tracker blocker in its Android app.

In the future, the business wants to release a web browser for Windows and Mac OS that will not be a fork but rather use APIs provided by the operating system. The browser will make use of the webpage rendering APIs provided by Windows and Mac OS. The launch date for the new desktop browser has yet to be announced by DuckDuckgo.