In the wake of the United States government PRISM revelations, it seems the search market has reacted to the threats to privacy in some small way, with an incremental increase in searches via 'private' search engine Duck Duck Go.

Readers will almost certainly have heard of Duck Duck Go. The PRISM scandal regarding data protection set the perfect stage for a Google/Bing/Yahoo! alternative that could market itself as loyal and protective of its users - and with attention from multiple media outlets and major websites, Duck Duck Go hit it big. Ish.



DDG's angle of "taking on Google" has won many admirers and crucially affected their traffic - taking their chance to impact the market and gain some international attention.



Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand argues that the majority of users will not change their search habits, whether governments are requesting their data or not; evidencing his point that Google's 13.3 billion monthly searches dwarfs DDG's 60 million.

So will Duck Duck Go from strength-to-strength, increasing their market share under the fall-out of the PRISM scandal? Or, as Danny Sullivan suggests, are they just another search engine enjoying it's time in the sun - do users care about privacy enough to stop using Google?