Duck Duck Go is a search engine created by “serial entrepreneur” Gabriel Weinberg. It’s at http://duckduckgo.com or http://dukgo.com.

Its search results are drawn from a combination of sources, including its own crawler, Bing and crowdsourced sites like Wikipedia.

I started using it May 11. Here are a few notes on my initial impressions in no particular order.

Pros

• Duck Duck Go is fast. Very fast. As the Web editor of several news sites, much of my searching is done on a tight breaking-news deadline. I have no patience for slow-loading search results.

• Duck Duck Go has a fantastic privacy policy. This is a big deal. It’s one of the main reasons its creator encourages people to use it.

  Google, the current king of search engines, gets a lot of press for its data aggregation used to tailor ads to users’ interests. Essentially they are scanning your searches, Gmail, online documents, etc. to find out information about you and sell you things. Even though they claim some data is anonymized, such as data gathered through its Chrome browser, we know that when such data is collected at all it is rarely truly anonymous.

  Duck Duck Go’s privacy policy states it doesn’t collect any information about you and doesn’t use cookies unless you save certain settings about the site, like fonts. And you can use URL parameters for those instead.

  Duck Duck Go does log search queries and apparently there’s no time limit at the moment, but the site’s creator says he doesn’t know where they are coming from and they are not linked together by an ID number.

  Compare that to Google, which not only logs your IP address and other information about your computer but also uses cookies with unique numbers for each computer and ties your web search history to your Google account.

  Additionally, some services, such as Google Toolbar’s PageRank, send all the URLs you visit to Google. Google’s search suggestions (on Google.com and in the Chrome browser) send your searches as you type them to Google even before you hit Search.

  HTTP referrers — If I search for “how to bury a body” on Google, and click a result to YouTube (for example), the HTTP referrer tells YouTube that I got to it by searching for that term, along with my IP address. Duck Duck Go (and, to be fair, Google’s new SSL search) hides the referrer.

• In Duck Duck Go, the entire search result is clickable, not just the title. This is a small user-interface detail that makes a big difference.
• Duck Duck Go auto-loads the next page of results. For Google you need a Firefox add-on to do this.
• The Zero Click info boxes are very handy (click here and check out the box of information at the top). Sometimes you just need a little bit of info, a general question answered. These are great for that.
• Customizing fonts is cool. Unnecessary for me personally, because the defaults are just fine (and I like them being bigger than you usually see, by the way), but it’s nice to have the option.
• The favicons next to search results are a nice touch, but sometimes they look messed up (example). That could be the site’s fault, though, for all I know.
• Bang search keywords are interesting. I haven’t used them much but I see potential there.
• Disambiguation pages, a la Wikipedia, are very nice.
• Duck Duck Go supports calculations, phone numbers, ZIP codes, ISBNs, etc.

Cons

• I still have to trust someone. Weinberg says he doesn’t record my personal information, but how do I know for sure? He could be lying. I doubt it, of course, because he seems to have a solid online reputation. If he were an unknown faceless developer I would not trust the site.
• I’m not really sure what the “Information” sites encompass. If this was a little more clear, that would be helpful.
• Duck Duck Go requires Javascript. Google doesn’t. This probably doesn’t affect many people, but some people on strict corporate networks, or fans of NoScript, might have problems.
• There’s no News section like Google’s. Not a big deal, but when I search for something on Google, I often flip over to the news section for more results.

Questions:

• When it comes right down to it, are the search results as good as Google’s? They seem to be so far. But it’s possible I’ll hit a snag where Duck Duck Go can’t find something for me and Google will. It’s hard to say. I still find myself using Google out of habit when I’m moving quickly, but maybe over time that habit will change.

• What’s the business model? There are no sidebar ads, even when I search for something that screams “sell to me”. Weinberg says he’s not making money on DDG right now but might put a few ads up. A previous business of his sold for $10 million, so maybe he is not concerned about making money yet.

  You may say this is none of my business, but it’s relevant because many times when money enters the picture, privacy goes out the window. See also: Facebook. Weinberg will need to have the integrity to resist this.

Summary

Duck Duck Go is fast, it appears to have an ironclad privacy policy and it delivers fantastic search results. I’m going to keep using it and may post a follow-up in a few months once I’ve had enough experience to give a more well-informed opinion.

More info

Weinberg, under the username “yegg,” answers questions on Reddit.

In a nutshell, WSJ.com has some articles where you can only read the first few paragraphs for free before being prompted to subscribe.

However, you can read these same articles for free by coming to them via Google or Google News. I’ve made a Web browser bookmarklet that speeds up the process a bit.

The normal process without the bookmarklet involves a few steps:

• Go to the article and see that it’s restricted to subscribers
• Copy the headline
• Go to Google.com
• Enter the headline (and a site:wsj.com for good measure)
• Search
• Click the resulting link

Firefox users can simplify it somewhat:

• Go to the article
• Highlight the headline
• Right-click the headline and choose “Search Google for…”
• Click the resulting link

However, when you do this, WSJ.com isn’t always the first result (I keep getting Yahoo! News results), hence the benefit of a WSJ.com-specific search.

In the spirit of being really lazy efficiency, I have made a Javascript bookmarklet that shaves a few steps off.

It’s not perfect though. Ideally, you could go to the WSJ article, click the bookmarklet and go straight to the full version.

This bookmarklet is a step removed:

• Go to the article
• Click the bookmarklet, which pulls up a WSJ.com-specific Google search for the headline
• Click the resulting link

It works by using Javascript to extract the article’s headline from its h1 tag and perform a WSJ.com-specific Google search for that headline.

This should ensure that the first search result is the article in question, although it might not be perfect.

(In fact, if the article is not yet indexed in Google, it won’t work at all. So there’s that.)

If anyone knows how to make it go that final step of essentially clicking through to the Google search result using Javascript, please let me know. I am not sure it’s possible, however; I think WSJ.com might check the HTTP referrer to see if you are coming from Google, and I don’t think you can spoof that with Javascript (though you can get Firefox add-ons that do it).

So what’s the point of all this? It was mainly a Javascript bookmarklet exercise for me, and if it does save someone a little bit of hassle by removing a few steps from the process of reading WSJ, that’s very good. It’s not stealing from the WSJ; after all, the paper’s Web site allows readers coming from Google to read for free. This just expedites the process.

Anyway, here is the bookmarklet.

Firefox users, drag the button below to your browser’s Bookmarks toolbar. Internet Explorer users, right-click it and choose “Add to Favorites.”

Then go to a Wall Street Journal article and click the button.

[WSJ->Google]

Questions? Comments? Leave me a comment!

If you click an article headline while browsing WSJ.com, you may get the first few paragraphs and a note asking you to subscribe (this is what Murdoch calls a paywall “not right to the ceiling”).

But if you come to an article via Google, you can read the whole thing for free.

So if you find an article you like, just search for the headline in Google and, for good measure, add “site:wsj.com” to restrict it to the Wall Street Journal site.

Click the headline in the search result and — hey! no paywall.

You can make the process even easier by bookmarking this link – It’s a Google News page filtered to show stories from the Wall Street Journal.

Oh, and this isn’t new. It’s been an open secret since at least March 2008.

Quite frankly, if you are spending hours each morning checking a bunch of bookmarks one by one, you are wasting valuable time.

I prefer Google Reader for managing RSS feeds but any RSS reader will do.

Once you’ve got a handle on the basics, here are seven quick and easy steps to take Google Reader to the next level.

1. Follow all local news sites in your coverage area, plus as many national news sites as you can handle

This is the most basic thing a journalist can do with Google Reader, but it’s one of the most important.

Get RSS feeds from every local newspaper and TV Web site that covers your area.

You’re probably already reading them anyway; why not save yourself the hassle of visiting all their sites individually?

2. Follow all local bloggers in your area

Bloggers report news too, no matter what some professional journalists like to think.

You need to stay on top of everything your local bloggers are saying.

Even the biggest crackpot might reveal a valuable news tip at some point.

3. Follow Google News searches for locations related to your beat

This is easy. Follow these steps:

• Go to Google News
• Search using a location you cover, in the dateline format that it would likely appear in a news story (like “Lynchburg, Va.”)
• When the results appear, click “Sort by Date” to ensure you’re getting the latest results (you can decide for yourself how relevant they are)
• At the bottom of the page, click “RSS feed” and load it into Google Reader

Now anytime a new result would appear in a Google News search for that term, you’ll see it in Reader.

You’ll find publications you never heard of writing stories about your city or quoting people from your city.

4. Follow Google News searches for keywords related to your beat

This is similar to No. 3, but you’re searching for keywords related to your beat instead of locations.

These can be company names, people names, whatever.

Examples relevant to the Lynchburg, Virginia area could include:

• Babcock & Wilcox (a company)
• Jerry Falwell (a famous person)
• Virginia tourism (a general topic)

5. Follow people who will teach you something

Don’t just read the news – use Google Reader to learn new skills.

For example: want to learn multimedia reporting? Follow Mindy McAdams’ blog, Teaching Online Journalism, Mark Luckie’s 10,000 Words or Shawn Smith’s New Media Bytes.

There are plenty of people out there giving tons of terrific free advice. You just have to find the ones you’re interested in.

6. Read what other journalists read

Use Google’s Power Readers feature to take a peek at national journalists’ Google Reader lists.

You can also see what people are sharing on Google Reader (when they use the “Share” button underneath an item), no matter how famous they are.

Here are some items I’ve chosen to share.

7. Learn the keyboard shortcuts

Once you’ve got a few dozen (or a few hundred) feeds in your Google Reader, you’ll get tired of clicking.

Learn the keyboard shortcuts to help you scan through news items more quickly.

Intimidated by the long list on that page? Even learning just these few will give you a big boost of speed:

• j/k – go down/up an item (expanded view)
• n/p – scan down/up an item (list view)
• space/shift-space – go up/down a page
• v – view the original item

Got any other tips? Leave a comment!

You may already be familiar with Google News e-mail alerts (and RSS feeds). If not, here’s a primer.

For journalists, the best way to use them is by clicking “Sort By Date” after searching Google News but before signing up for the e-mail alert. That way you always get the newest information, and you can sort out what’s relevant to you.

The techniques available to refine regular Google search results are also available for Google News alerts. That means you can refine your news alert terms by excluding sources you already read or don’t trust.

If you work for a newspaper covering Ankeny, Iowa, and you have a Google alert for “Ankeny,” you’ll probably be bombarded with news alerts from your own paper. Since you’ll already be familiar with those stories, these alerts will be useless.

In Google searches, you can restrict a search to a specific site using the following:

searchterm site:domain.com

For example,

"City Council" site:newsadvance.com

to search for “City Council” only on www.newsadvance.com.

Similarly, you can exclude specific sites by adding a minus sign before the site parameter, like

"Lynchburg" -site:newsadvance.com

By using “-site:newsadvance.com,” I will exclude www.newsadvance.com from search results for “Lynchburg.” This is OK because I work for www.newsadvance.com and am already familiar with its stories.

After turning that search result into an e-mail alert, I won’t be hit with lots of e-mails about stories from my own paper.

Did you find this helpful? Do you have any questions about using Google News alerts? Please leave a comment!

I have changed the style slightly. Before, it narrowed the reading area to 45 em. This made text very pleasant to read as the eye didn’t have to move left to right as much.

However, it required readers to scroll horizontally when pictures were in a post, which made reading picture-heavy blog posts (and especially comic strips) annoying.

The 45 em attribute has been removed, and now the width fills the viewing area.

Here’s a redesign of Google Reader I made called “Google Reader – Clean, Minimalist and Readable.”

Google Reader - Clean Minimalist and Readable

Like the design of this blog, the goal was to make something that used a cleaner style with larger fonts, a narrower reading column and more whitespace.

Many of the icons and background colors have been removed and the font is “Georgia.” and the reading column is narrowed to 45 em, a width much easier on the eyes.

It was inspired by the Readability project.

To apply the redesign, you must use Mozilla Firefox with the Stylish add-on. The browser, add-on and style are all free downloads.

I would love to hear feedback, so please leave a comment below!

When you add a bookmark, you can give it a label, much like how you can label e-mails in Gmail.

Then, when you click the toolbar button to access your bookmarks, Google Toolbar shows the labels sorted by either alphabetical order or by date modified.

What if you use alphabetical sorting (the default), but you want some labels out of alphabetical order — say, to add a few categories near the top so you can find them more quickly?

Simple! Just add a minus sign or an asterisk in front of the label name.

If you want to send a label to the bottom of the list, try the little-used tilde (~) character in front of a label.

Each of the various keyboard characters has a different rank in the hierarchy; I don’t know all of them. There is probably a chart somewhere that lists the order of all the characters.

I know that a minus sign is above an asterisk, which is above the letter A, and a tilde puts anything under the normal A-Z order.

Beyond that, just try experimenting to see which ones you like best.