Are you fed-up with Google? Do you hate it that for most search terms the first two pages of results are nothing but useless ads that have almost nothing to do with your original search term? Do you have enough of Google’s “Don’t be evil” bullshit? Do you think that Google already knows too much about you? Or do you simply find Eric Schmidt creepy?
If the answer to all (or some) of the above questions is “Yes!” than we have an alternative for you. Actually this alternative has been around for a while and it is called DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo has been an insiders’ tip for quite some time now, especially on the Mac, with Google being the standard search engine in Safari. The advantages of DuckDuckGo are better (e.g. less ad-ridden) results, a strict and user friendly privacy policy, and the ability to do more than a run-off-the-mill search.
For example: By typing “!dcc” into the search field before the actual search term, DuckDuckGo will redirect the search to dict.cc (a great curated English–German online dictionary). Typing “!imdb” before the search term will search directly on imdb.com.
A recent article on 512pixels pointed out a few possibilities to add DuckDuckGo as a Safari extension or by using tools like TextExpander to add a global shortcut for the search engine.
The tip we want to share with you today is this: Simply set a shortcut like “ddg” to be substituted with “https://duckduckgo.com/?q=”, using OS X’s built-in text substitution, which can be found in the language and text preferences. Now you can quickly make use of DuckDuckGo in any browser on your Mac, by typing “ddg+SPACE+search term” in the address bar.
Do you have any other tips regarding Internet searches and DuckDuckGo? Share with us in the comments and on Twitter.
