Despite the steady gains in usage, the search engine's latest record serves as a reminder of just how daunting a task it is to put a dent in Google's dominance. Even at its latest peak, DuckDuckGo handles a fraction of a percent of the 3.5 billion searches processed by Google every day. It's not just Google, either. According to NetMarketShare.com, DuckDuckGo still trails a number of other search engines in traffic, including Yahoo, Bing, and internet relic Ask.com—though it does have AOL beat. On a good day, DuckDuckGo claims about a fifth of a percent of the total search market. You can't cut a slice of the pie much thinner than that. Image: Ian Clark / Flickr
Search engine DuckDuckGo—which emphasises protecting a searcher's privacy—has carried out more than 30 million direct searches in a single day, achieving the milestone twice in one week. DuckDuckGo claimed 16 million searches per day in January, a figure set to double by the end of the year. Despite its robust growth, the company is dwarfed by several rivals, not least behemoth Google, which notches up 3.5 billion searches daily, as well as Yahoo and Bing.