Data gathered by Chartbeat and shared by Axios reveals that, over the past year, Google Search traffic to publishers across the broader web have fallen drastically, and proportionally more so for smaller websites. Referral traffic from Google apparently fell by 60% for “small publishers,” while “medium publishers” (those with between 10,000-100,000 daily pageviews) saw a drop of 47%. “Large publishers,” meanwhile, saw a 22% drop. That last category would be any site getting over 100,000 daily pageviews.
It’s not just Google Search either. While Search traffic dropped by 34%, traffic from Google Discover has also fallen by 15% over the past year, the report found.
Why would I need any of that if I can bang the search bar of my browser instead, and it takes me straight to search on Wikipedia or any other site I want without waiting for DDG to add that site?
Relieved to find this response below the others. Why TF would you search for a site i) whose URL you know? ii) waste space on your browser by adding the website as a search bar on your browser’s menu bar? How much time do people anticipate they’ll save by avoiding typing Wikipedia.org into the address field?
Most (if not all) modern browsers support multiple search engines which are configurable and selectable from a dropdown in the omnibar. There’s no need to remember dozens of shortcuts or add a dedicated toolbar anymore.
That’s not what I mean. I have a keyword like ‘wik’ set to take me to Wikipedia’s search, and if I type ‘wik black pus’, i get the page for that term.
I also have an extension that shows a popup with buttons for different search engines whenever I select text on a page, and I have a similar thing on the phone for text shared from any app. Each of these methods has about twenty-seven sites configured in it. Considering that I look up things on these sites easily a dozen times a day, it’s ridiculous to say that this doesn’t save me time over opening each site.
(P.S.: And this workflow also allows using the keyboard for keyword-triggered search, while the search interface on some sites is getting less accommodating and assumes me mousing around.)
if that’s working, it means your browser search bar is configured to route thru DDG
That’s not how any of this works. The browser has its own list of search engines. Seriously, look in the settings sometimes.
Firefox even has two separate mechanisms for this, the second is via bookmarks with keywords.