DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode

These days, a typical Google Search feels like an obstacle course. Type out 'upcoming PC games 2026' and your gaze has to swerve around a chunky AI overview which recycles the work of human writers in a bid to kneecap efforts to click away from Google. It's a bleak state of affairs for what was once the premier discovery tool for the internet, and as such many users are looking for alternative search engines.

DuckDuckGo has been one major winner of this Google Search abandonment. Just for a start, visits to its AI-free search page noai.duckduckgo.com between May 20 to May 25 are said to have increased by 22.7% on average week-on-week, with the figures peaking May 24 at 27.7%.

The DuckDuckGo mobile app saw installs spike in the US by 18.1% on average compared to the previous week. TechCrunch reported this growth was sustained over six days, peaking at 30.5% on May 25. An even greater number of iOS users hit download on the app though, with installs seeing an average week-on-week growth of 33% and a peak of 69.9%.

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This all follows Google CEO Sundar Pichai claiming last week that, "People love [Search's AI Mode]." DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg criticised Google's all-in-on-AI approach to Search, telling Paul Thurrott, "Google is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out. As a result, their results are getting worse, not better. We want to be the place that puts users in charge and allows them to decide how much or how little AI they want."

To be clear, Google isn't about to lose its Search crown; DuckDuckGo represents about 2% of the search engine market in the US—Google still enjoyed about 85% as of last month.

(Image credit:  David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images (left) / Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images (right))

DuckDuckGo also offers AI products such as duck.ai, which allows users to chat privately with a number of major LLMs such as GPT-5 mini and Claude Haiku 4.5. Given that Google reported its revenue from search grew by 19% during Q1 2026—apparently thanks to its "AI experiences like AI Mode and AI Overviews"—it wouldn't make much business sense for any company to completely exile itself from the AI industry at this moment in time.

However, DuckDuckGo has endeavoured to prioritise user choice and privacy. Weinberg said earlier this week, "Everything you do in DuckDuckGo is private, we don’t collect search histories or chats, and nothing is used for AI training."

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According to chief communications officer Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo's own AI overviews remain popular—though so does the option to filter out AI-generated images from search results. He said, "People just want a choice." Amen to that.

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