Website readiness profile · Snapshot 23 October 2026
duckduckgo.com
duckduckgo.com's public homepage, certificate and DNS checked against 31 practices and compared with 59 Search Engines sites.
- Readiness index
- 78/100
- Ahead of
- 78%
- Practices observed
- 21/28
- Popularity band
- Top 1K
Search Engines median 65
of measured Search Engines sites
3 of 31 could not be measured
Chrome UX Report top-sites list
Readiness by lane
Green: duckduckgo.com. Thin bar: Search Engines peer median.
Enable
85/100
Peers 74
Harden
69/100
Peers 57
Accelerate
87/100
Peers 68
Recover
100/100
Peers 8
Priority fixes for duckduckgo.com
Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.
Priority 1 · Harden
HTTP requests move to HTTPS
Observed: A request to http://duckduckgo.com/ was not redirected to HTTPS.
Why it matters: Visitors who type the address or follow an old link start on unencrypted HTTP. A redirect moves them to the encrypted site before any cookies or form data are sent.
What to do: Add a permanent (301 or 308) redirect from every http:// URL to the same https:// URL at your CDN, load balancer or web server.
87% of Search Engines peers do this. Limit: Measured for the homepage only, from one location, at the time of the check.
Priority 2 · Accelerate
HTTP/3 advertised
Observed: The homepage did not advertise HTTP/3 through an Alt-Svc header.
What to do: Turn on HTTP/3 at your CDN. Browsers fall back to HTTP/2 automatically, so the risk is low.
37% of Search Engines peers do this.
Priority 3 · Harden
Certificate lifetime of 100 days or less
Observed: The certificate from DigiCert Inc had a 198-day validity period, longer than the 100-day maximum that applies from March 2027.
What to do: Move to automated issuance and renewal now, while you still have time to test it.
58% of Search Engines peers do this.
Priority 4 · Enable
Structured data present
Observed: The homepage had no JSON-LD structured data.
What to do: Add JSON-LD for your organization and main content types, then test it with Google's Rich Results Test.
37% of Search Engines peers do this.
What duckduckgo.com already does well
Practices fewer than half of Search Engines peers use.
- Nameservers spread across providersNameservers spread across more than one operator.8.5% of peers
- Content Security Policy presentContent-Security-Policy present.28% of peers
- Referrer-Policy setReferrer-Policy present.28% of peers
What we saw
- Homepage checked
- https://duckduckgo.com/
- Homepage response
- HTTP 200
- TLS
- TLSv1.3, HTTP/2
- Certificate
- DigiCert, 198-day validity, expiring 2026-11-19
- Platform or framework
- Next.js
- DNS operators
- NS1, plus 1 self-run or other nameserver domain
- HSTS
- max-age 365 days
- DMARC policy
- p=reject
- Homepage HTML
- 232 KB, br
- Images on homepage
- 0
Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.
Stack and providers
Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.
All 31 checks
Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works
Not observed 7
Observed 21
- HSTS kept for at least a year
- TLS 1.3 negotiated
- Certificate has more than 14 days left
- CAA records limit who can issue certificates
- DMARC policy enforces quarantine or reject
- X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
- Framing restricted
- Content Security Policy present
- Referrer-Policy set
- HTTP/2 negotiated
- HTML compressed
- Static files cached for 30 days or more
- No render-blocking scripts in <head>
- XML sitemap discoverable
- Canonical URL declared
- Meta description written
- Mobile viewport configured
- Social preview image set
- Page language declared
- At most one redirect to the homepage
- Nameservers spread across providers
Not measured 3
- Modern image formats in use
- Offscreen images lazy-loaded
- robots.txt published
Own duckduckgo.com?
Re-run the checks after a change, keep a private action plan in a free workspace, or report a mistake.
Live status for this site: Status Is Down: duckduckgo.com. This profile covers configuration only.