DuckDuckGo's AI-free search page, noai.duckduckgo.com, also saw sustained traffic increases, averaging 22.7% week-over-week growth and peaking at 27.7% on May 24. The page disables AI-assisted answers and AI-generated images by default, appealing to users who want traditional search results without algorithmic mediation.
Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo's chief communications and policy officer, said users are reacting to feeling "force-fed" Google's AI Search rather than being given a choice. The sentiment has translated into one of the more significant short-term traffic shifts DuckDuckGo has seen in years, even as the company accounts for only around 2% of the U.S. search market.
Despite positioning its AI-free page as a selling point, DuckDuckGo is not anti-AI. The company offers its own AI product, Duck.ai, which provides free, account-free access to models including Anthropic's Claude 4.5 Haiku, Meta's Llama 4 Scout, Mistral Small 3 24B, and OpenAI's GPT-5 mini. All conversations are private by design — DuckDuckGo strips users' IP addresses before requests reach model providers and deletes chats within 30 days without using them for training.
The install surge reflects a tension that has been building since Google began rolling out AI Mode as its default search experience. While Google frames the shift as a major improvement in utility, a segment of users (particularly those who rely on search for research, navigation of specific web pages, or privacy-sensitive queries) are finding the AI-first format less useful or trustworthy than traditional results.
Whether the spike translates into sustained user retention for DuckDuckGo remains to be seen. Similar surges following past Google controversies have historically faded. But the scale and consistency of this week's growth — six consecutive days of elevated installs — suggests this shift may run deeper than previous ones.
This analysis is based on reporting from TechCrunch.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
