Why Is DuckDuckGo Not Working? Here's What We Know About the Recent Outage

People are asking why DuckDuckGo is not working after the private search engine went down on July 16. The search engine announced the browser was down with a message on X at 6:09 a.m.

"We're currently experiencing an issue with DuckDuckGo Search that might prevent you from getting results," read the post. "Thanks for your patience while we get our ducks in a row."

Internet users reported having problems accessing DuckDuckGo approximately one hour before the announcement. One user wrote that they received the error message, "Sorry, we ran into an error displaying these results. Click here to try again."

So, why is DuckDuckGo not working? The private web browser did not give a reason for the outage, but DuckDuckGo users speculated about the issue on social media. One X user wondered if the browser was down because of a cyber attack.

"Meta cyber attack?"

Another X user blamed DuckDuckGo for using AI.

"Your browser is down as karma because you use AI. @DuckDuckGo."

"What's up with search????? Not good for the DUCK," added another. "It'll be OK, Ducky," added one X user.

Other users on X chimed in with jokes about DuckDuckGo's recent outage.

One X user wrote, "What the duck is going on?"

"Thought you'd say you're working to quack the problem," added another. One user wrote, "What the duckidy duck is duckening?"

"It's ducking my search," joked another.

DuckDuckGo notified users that the outage had been fixed several hours later, but some users claimed the site was still having issues.

"I’ve never seen an entire search engine go down," noted another. "How??? @DuckDuckGo."

At 8:03 a.m., DuckDuckGo announced on X, "We're coming back online. We appreciate your support and patience while we rearranged our feathers."

"Search autocomplete still not there," replied one X user. "But anyway, I am glad you notified about issues on X prominently."

Another X user asked, "Out of curiosity, what was the fix?" However, DuckDuckGo did not provide an answer.

DuckDuckGo also announced the outage on Down Detector, and people left comments explaining the issues they had trying to use the search engine.

"Won’t display images for literally any search term. Now, I’m having to use Google and I feel absolutely violated," joked one person.

Another person wrote, "Checked here about an hour ago, downdetector said there were no problems. (There were) Now, I'm getting a message from DuckDuckGo saying 'We're currently having a problem with DuckDuckGo search that may prevent you from getting results.' Guess I tried to use it when the problem first started?"

One X user claimed that DuckDuckGo search results are a scam.

"If you search for any decentralized exchange on @DuckDuckGo, the top result is a malicious scam site that will empty your wallet," they wrote. "Google suffers from scam ads, but DuckDuckGo’s exploit is more dangerous because these are not ads - scammers have completely gamed the search results."

While DuckDuckGo was down for several hours, it appears to be working again for users.