On December 3rd, I checked my analytics and noticed something strange.
Google: 3
Bing: 5
Yahoo: 5
And then—DuckDuckGo: 7.
Google and Bing had dropped sharply that day, yet DuckDuckGo suddenly increased.
At first, I honestly thought:
“Is this a bot? Is something wrong? Is someone scraping my site?”
But after watching this pattern for a while, here’s what I realized—based entirely on my real experience running ZIDOOKA!.
1. DuckDuckGo traffic behaves differently
Unlike Google or Bing, DuckDuckGo traffic appears unpredictably.
Example of what I see often:
- 0 yesterday
- 7 today
- 1 tomorrow
It spikes and drops in a very uneven way.
This is something I’ve observed repeatedly on my own blog.
DuckDuckGo simply has a different rhythm, and once you see it daily, you notice the pattern.
2. It’s almost certainly not a bot
In GA4, the traffic shows up as organic, not referral or “not set”.
And more importantly, from my real data:
- Some sessions stay for a normal amount of time
- Bounce rates look natural
- Occasionally, one visitor from DuckDuckGo reads multiple pages
This is extremely unlikely for bots.
Based on behavior, these are humans.
3. DuckDuckGo users tend to hit niche, technical articles
This was the biggest clue from my own analytics.
Nearly all DuckDuckGo sessions landed on:
- ChatGPT error articles
- Windows or smartphone error troubleshooting
- Very narrow, long-tail tech keywords
In other words:
Articles barely touched by Google Search can get traffic from DuckDuckGo.
From the 7 DuckDuckGo sessions on Dec 3rd,
5 were reading error-related posts.
This matched my long-term pattern.
DuckDuckGo seems to surface niche, precise keywords more easily than Google.
4. Many visits appear to come from outside Japan
When I check GA4’s location data, DuckDuckGo traffic more often comes from overseas compared to Google.
This matches what DuckDuckGo users are generally like:
- tech-savvy
- privacy-focused
- often international
- often English-search users
And since ZIDOOKA! articles have:
- English titles
- technical, error-solving focus
…it makes sense that they find my blog more easily.
Simply put:
DuckDuckGo is more likely to send overseas tech users to niche error-solution pages.
Conclusion (based on actual experience)
From all the patterns I’ve directly seen on my blog:
- It’s not dangerous
- It’s not a bot
- It’s almost certainly real humans
- DuckDuckGo prefers niche error keywords
- English titles attract even more DuckDuckGo users
- The traffic “jumps” irregularly, which is normal for this engine
So the sudden spike is not an anomaly.
It simply means:
ZIDOOKA!’s niche error articles match DuckDuckGo’s search style perfectly.
This is my real-world conclusion after watching the data over time.
