Hi Gingerlime,

Thanks for the suggestion. Part of the reason we don't do this is the returned search results on Google are Google's commercial property. To use them in such a capacity would require us to reach a commercial agreement with them. These agreements come with stipulations that we don't feel represent the privacy interests of our users, so we don't pursue such agreements.

The other reason, is because of the 'filter bubble' Google tailors results based on user tracking, which is what helps with result accuracy. So the results we as DuckDuckGo see on a query would be different than what you see. Plus, even if we could see your results, we wouldn't want to. We don't think it is good to be filter bubbled, we want to serve you the best results we can without censoring you. It should be your decision to a view a certain website, not ours!

I think the suggestion was more that you identify specific search urls which did not return a good result (hence the user went off to google). You could do this anonymously without tracking anyone or their usage of google or other search engines, or looking at the results on google.

As a DDG user I'd be really happy if you did this and think it would be the best way of identifying searches I'm unhappy with. I go to google now only if I'm not happy with the results from DDG.

You could still identify searches where there's room for improvement even without comparing with Google results.

I may be wrong but the reason is again privacy (and probably cost). If they tracked your queries and tied them back to you for future then they need to store your information or enough to tie to you and what you clicked on and the history to improve things. These all become things that they can be subpoenaed for which is anti-privacy.

Don't believe for a second that governments are not already banging at the door for access. The only ways to combat is either hosting in neutral offshore datacenter and incorporating there and living there is to not collect "useful" information in the first place on users. I think they went for the latter.

Why would they want to tie them back to you? The suggestion is: "these search terms returned unsatisfactory results".

So don't tie them back to the user. Seems like a simple solution.