While exploring the moderator page /admin/analytics for the first time I see Google is the only search engine listed, and among the three referrers is duckduckgo.com at 15% of our traffic. Shouldn't it be listed as a search engine instead?
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3I just got the Site Analytics privilege and am surprised to see this has not been addressed for nearly 3 years.– einpoklumApr 28, 2018 at 18:24
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The real reason? Google and DuckDuckGo are rivals.– AnonymousNov 20, 2019 at 21:35
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Note: It shows up properly now, since Google Analytics now includes DuckDuckGo in their default-search-engine list.– V2Blast StaffModMay 4, 2022 at 15:40
3 Answers
Good question. We request this data from Google Analytics and just serve up what we're given by them. I don't know the exact reason why duckduckgo.com ends up being classified as a referring site, since it does seem to fit the definition of a search engine:
[referral] - Visitors referred by links on other websites. (Links that have been tagged with campaign variables won't show up as [referral] unless they happen to have been tagged with utm_medium=referral. )
[organic] - Visitors referred by an unpaid search engine listing, e.g. a Google.com search.
But it is what it is.
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13
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37@Shadow Giving Google even more data about me is just something I don't want to do.– bjb568Jun 9, 2015 at 22:15
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14
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8@bjb568 That doesn't really answer the question. Why do you think it is bad that Google has more data on you? What is the problem with that? Sep 9, 2015 at 8:29
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1@bjb568 It's not just giving data to Google, you're also helping website owners improve their services for you, their user. Oct 11, 2016 at 15:37
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3This though doesn't answer the question why don't you add it to the search engines list...? Oct 17, 2016 at 19:27
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Hiding data from Google is like hiding feedback on the new car you purchased. How can you expect them to progress and be more relevant if their users feel don't provide any feedback (either voluntarily or involuntarily)? If you have something to hide, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it online :)– Rob WJan 16, 2017 at 17:29
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16@HalfCrazed Hiding data from Google is like hiding feedback on the new underwear you purchased. If they are as skilled as they claim, they don't need my input on whether the underwear is cozy or not, and they most definitely do not need to know in which circumstances I choose to wear said underwear. I have my privates to hide, so I don't want people peeking through my windows.– MrkvičkaJan 17, 2017 at 12:23
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4@HalfCrazed I hope I’m just missing your irony here. “I have nothing to hide” is not the same as “Please, feel free to collect my data”.– PhilippAug 15, 2017 at 9:04
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"But it is what it is." No, it's not. You can change this on your end. Dec 29, 2017 at 13:38
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3Can we not alter the data they "serve up"? Or - do they also serve up the pie charts etc? Apr 28, 2018 at 18:25
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FWIW... DuckDuckGo now appears on Google's list of search engines, so I think we can probably close this. Might want to remove the mention in the 25k privilege too– JDBJun 14, 2021 at 18:43
Google Analytics only tracks 40 search engines as search engines by default. DuckDuckGo is not one of them, but it can be added as detailed on that page. This is a copy of the list of those 40:
Engine Example Domain Names Parameter
Daum http://www.daum.net/ q
Eniro http://www.eniro.se/ search_word
Naver http://www.naver.com/ query
Google All Google Search domains (e.g. www.google.com, www.google.co.uk, etc) q
Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com/ p
MSN http://www.msn.com/ q
Bing http://www.bing.com/ q
AOL http://www.aol.com/ query
AOL http://www.aol.com/ encquery
Lycos http://www.lycos.com/ query
Ask http://www.ask.com/ q
Altavista http://www.altavista.com/ q
Netscape http://search.netscape.com/ query
CNN http://www.cnn.com/SEARCH/ query
About http://www.about.com/ terms
Mamma http://www.mamma.com/ query
Alltheweb http://www.alltheweb.com/ q
Voila http://www.voila.fr/ rdata
Virgilio http://search.virgilio.it/ qs
Live http://www.bing.com/ q
Baidu http://www.baidu.com/ wd
Alice http://www.alice.com/ qs
Yandex http://www.yandex.com/ text
Najdi http://www.najdi.org.mk/ q
AOL http://www.aol.com/ q
Mama http://www.mamma.com/ query
Seznam http://www.seznam.cz/ q
Search http://www.search.com/ q
Wirtulana Polska http://www.wp.pl/ szukaj
O*NET http://online.onetcenter.org/ qt
Szukacz http://www.szukacz.pl/ q
Yam http://www.yam.com/ k
PCHome http://www.pchome.com/ q
Kvasir http://www.kvasir.no/ q
Sesam http://sesam.no/ q
Ozu http://www.ozu.es/ q
Terra http://www.terra.com/ query
Mynet http://www.mynet.com/ q
Ekolay http://www.ekolay.net/ q
Rambler http://www.rambler.ru/ words
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3Posted a separate request for this at meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/307699/…– tripleeeOct 8, 2015 at 19:58
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56 years later... DuckDuckGo is now on the list. I have no idea when it was added.– JDBJun 14, 2021 at 18:40
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I love how AOL and whatever Daum, Yam, etc are... they're on that list, but DDG wasn't. Jun 26, 2021 at 18:01
Isn't it just because it's "The search engine that doesn't track you" and so doesn't provide "forward" information. You only get referential information tracked by the "referred" site provided by the browser.
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5Not sure what you mean, but duckduckgo has nothing that will disable
Referer
headers set by browsers automatically when navigating from DDG to SE. As is evident from the fact that, well, they show up. Jul 24, 2015 at 4:54 -
8@NathanTuggy Google uses
onmousedown
to change the URL you go to when you click on a search result - you go through some Google URL, then are redirected to the result you clicked on, for tracking purposes. DuckDuckGo does not do this; it's a direct referral link no different than from a blog post or a forum. Mark Hurd is exactly correct in his assessment.– IzkataSep 7, 2015 at 18:54 -
(You can see the URL change if you right-click on a Google search result; that triggers the
onmousedown
, but doesn't actually click through)– IzkataSep 7, 2015 at 18:56 -
@Izkata: I find it hard to imagine that Google Analytics is so amateurish that it can't understand a search engine's entry from matching domain names in
Referer
. Really? That's only been industry-standard for, oh, more than a decade, and is basically trivial to implement out to search engines with as little as 0.1% market share if you want. It's not rocket science. Sep 7, 2015 at 19:02 -
6@NathanTuggy It's not one of the 40 standard search engines. StackExchange can fix this by adding it to the list.– IzkataSep 7, 2015 at 19:08
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@Izkata: Thanks for the link; I've noted that on Anna's answer so SE can reconsider the status tag on here. Sep 7, 2015 at 19:13