Why I Switched to DuckDuckGo for Search — and What Marketers Should Know About Its AI Features

Every few years, I get this itch to change something about my tech setup. I’m not sure why, but for as long as I’ve worked in and around technology, my brain just reaches for something different every once in a while. This constant exploration, while sometimes quirky, often uncovers shifts and tools that have surprising relevance for how we, especially marketers, approach the digital world.

And it’s not always about chasing what’s new or even better.
(See: the time in 2014 I went all in on Windows Phone. RIP.)

Sometimes it’s my browser (currently Chrome for work and Safari at home, though Zen and Opera Neon both look pretty cool), but in more recent years it’s been my search engine. 

And it’s these shifts in foundational tools like search, particularly now that AI tools have fundamentally altered my own search behaviors, that hold important clues for marketers trying to understand evolving user behaviors and the AI landscape. 

In recent years, most of us have realized that Google isn’t what it used to be. But for better or worse, there haven’t been many good alternatives. Even if you’re not happy with the B- results you’re getting from Google, when the competition is offering C+ at best, you end up crawling back to the 10 blue links that feel like home.

But something’s shifted, not just for me, but for how many of us approach search in an AI-powered world.

The Changing Role of Search

Most of what I search for these days are quick, functional answers — things for work and things for family, such as:

• How do I conditionally create a database table in WordPress?
• What’s a good substitute for oregano?
• What’s the easiest way to parse URL parameters in JavaScript?
• How do you make overnight oats that a toddler will actually eat?

Are you seeing the pattern?

These aren’t deep research questions. They’re tactical, contextual and increasingly better handled by AI tools that search the web rather than relying on their own “knowledge” and models. 

This shift in habits has made it the perfect time for my randomly scheduled search engine pilgrimage. These days, I rarely “Google” anything. Ninety-five percent of my quick “how-do-I-do-X” queries go straight to ChatGPT or Github Copilot.

That shift opened the door for me to rethink the other five percent — and that’s how DuckDuckGo slipped in.

Which is why my most recent trip to DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine designed to compete with Google, seems to have stuck. It’s now my go-to search engine in both Safari and Chrome, at home and work — and it’s doing a better job of keeping up with how I actually search now. 

Earlier, I mentioned that most of what I search for at work relates to web development. And when I say “most,” I mean something like 95 percent — quick checks on how certain APIs work, the most semantic or accessible way to implement a feature and so on.

For those kinds of technical queries, I almost exclusively use ChatGPT with web search or GitHub Copilot. It’s just vastly more efficient to have a robot do the digging.

But at home, or for the other five percent of searches at work? I’ve been leaning heavily on the new AI features built into DuckDuckGo. Specifically, its AI Assist tool has been saving me a great deal of time, and frankly, it does a better job of showing off the potential of AI in everyday search than Google’s AI Overviews.

DuckDuckGo calls this feature AI Assist, and it does pretty much what it sounds like, but with a smart twist. Instead of just dropping in a chatbot-style answer, DuckDuckGo uses AI models (like OpenAI and Anthropic) to summarize the top search results relevant to your query.

So you’re not just getting a generic AI response; you’re getting a distilled version of what you would have clicked through to anyway. It’s fast, useful and grounded in the actual pages you’d normally have to sift through yourself.

But what really sets this tool apart is how optional and respectful it is. AI Assist doesn’t hijack the page, bury organic results or force itself into every search. You can toggle it on-demand, set it to show automatically or turn it off completely. It’s entirely up to you.

That level of control makes a real impact, something the “Big G” simply doesn’t offer a counterpart to. Sometimes I want a quick, synthesized view — like how to substitute ingredients in a recipe or a snapshot of browser usage statistics. Other times, I prefer to dive into the sources myself.

Where Google’s AI Overviews sometimes feel like it hijacks your query, DuckDuckGo’s Assist feels optional and helpful. It doesn’t try to replace the web. It distills it.

What It Means for Marketers

Not every useful AI tool comes from Google, OpenAI or Microsoft — and DuckDuckGo is a perfect example of that. It shows how AI is starting to quietly embed itself into the tools people already use every day. Not just as standalone chatbots, but as part of the way we search, learn and decide.

For marketers, this shift is worth paying attention to.

You don’t need to build a chatbot or launch an enterprise AI initiative to start understanding how these tools are changing behavior. Something as simple as seeing how DuckDuckGo summarizes search results shows just how much the discovery process is evolving.

People might be getting the information they need — and forming opinions about your product, destination or service — without ever clicking a link. That changes how we think about content, visibility and influence.

And here’s the twist — even if you never think about Bing, you need to care about how your site shows up there. Tools like DuckDuckGo’s AI Assist and ChatGPT’s web browsing features often pull from Bing’s index and ranking signals.

So while Google may still dominate your analytics dashboard, it’s Bing, quietly powering the infrastructure of AI-assisted search, that could be deciding how your brand shows up in these new experiences.

In other words, it’s never been more important to optimize for Bing, and ironically, Bing isn’t even the reason.

AI already ate my search habit, freeing me to choose an engine that plays nicely with those very same models.

If your strategy still revolves around ranking first and hoping for a click in Google, ask yourself: What happens when the answer is summarized before the click ever comes?

Search is changing fast. Let’s figure out how your brand can keep up.