Are you aware of the different way to input your search they (ddg) use? They prioritize your search based on the order you input words. After realizing that, I can find almost everything from there. And if not you can use their !bang syntax to continue the same search in whatever other search engine you like. Google won't link me to a bing search. But ddg will. If I search "search engine best rated" and do not see results I am looking for I just ad "!g" or "!b" to it and it takes you right into the results of that search for google or bing. How is that not more effective?
They anonymize your search data and then send it off to Google search.
I tried DDG a few times, and as much as I want to like it, their search results weren't as good as Google's.