Can DuckDuckGo replace Google?
For very personal reasons I’m beginning to think Google has entirely too much power over our internet lives. As a business, being well indexed is integral to survival, and yet, it’s becoming more necessary to pay to get a high index placement. In the categories I’m in, companies like Etsy and Alibaba get the highest placement. A small, individual run company has a hard time competing with those companies.
Awhile back I posted about the error I made way back in 2013 by not replacing an image in a free template; this led to my being removed from the google search engine because of a DCMA complaint by the owner of the image (it was the face of a woman, stock image). Google Jail is for life. Rather a harsh sentence for such a small and innocent infraction; especially given the importance of being found in the google search engine. As you may have seen, if you follow my blog, I did find a workaround and some of my pages are now being indexed.
No Ads for you [said in the voice of the soup nazi]
So, I figured, hey, let me pay Google by running some ads and, hopefully, my site will start to get some traffic again. But no, no Nannette, you can’t do that. Apparently Google will still not allow me to buy an ad because of that original DCMA complaint. Even though my site has been ported to a different server, a different platform, and the offending image and template are long gone. Now I’m not saying I had no culpability in my own downfall, but my error was one of ignorance. I do feel there should be a solution to get out of jail before the end of time.
I am indexed in Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. I’ve been using DuckDuckGo more and more because of a growing concern about internet privacy. I’m pretty happy with it so far and my site is listed on the first page of the search for some of my key words; as it used to be in Google.
Like Facebook, Google needs to be replaced. Both have grown too large and serve those who pay to play more than fair and open access to information. Both use our information, and invade our privacy, in ways they should not; although we allow them to do so by playing. IMO, It’s high time the next new thing appeared on the horizon.