Gabriel Weinberg Fights Google

Entrepreneur and DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg recently appeared on The James Altucher Show to discuss business and marketing strategies from his new book “Traction”. DuckDuckGo is a search engine that essentially prevents companies from tracking your Internet activity while claiming to improve search results. Using “traction”, Weinberg is taking on Goliath Google and other competitors. It began after he sold his personal business and took on the personal project of improving Google GOOGL. After various tasks like removing spam and altering features, he figured he would take the project to light and let it stand on its own two legs. It started slowly, maybe pulling in 10,000 searches a month. Now, it's getting 150 million per month from users, and it's all organic. It's also now a search option built into Apple's AAPL operating system. “Part of the premise of the book is: ‘You don't know which channel is going to be successful, so you need to kind of experiment.' But one way to look at that is that you've got to find where your costumers are hanging out,” said Weinberg. Related: Why Starbucks' New Mobile Payments Will Be 'Transformational' That means if they're on social media: use that; email: use that, and so on. According to Weinberg, getting users to gather around a product can successfully start with viral marketing. He considers methods such as content production, guest posts, and email marketing to all be underutilized, and all widely successful when used appropriately. “For viral to work for real, I mean, it really needs to be kind of mathematically tracked and built into the product. It's not just word-of-mouth [advertising] offline,” said Weinberg, noting that people need to invite others while coming back themselves, thus creating a viral loop. Weinberg did note that viral isn't for every company, and one key of its success is having a product that many or most potential costumers will be interested in. He also mentioned affiliate marketing as worthwhile for testing, which works on relationships where you offer sellers an opportunity so sell your goods and to get a cut of the sale. It works in a variety of ways, and can help with email capture while securing future leverage. Speaking engagements are another way to capture future sales, and another great form of gaining traction he said. Weinberg also highlighted community building, like offering a Q&A section on your site, as a quick path to gaining a loyal audience while spreading offline as well. Jason Papallo had no position with the mentioned entities while writing this article. Visit Jason on Twitter at @Benzinga.