I do all my searching using the firefox search bar - CTRL+K FTW! I've used DuckDuckGo as my primary search provider for a couple of years now.

The "bang" searches are where it really, really shines. It takes a while to get used to but there are so many and some of them are extremely useful.

For those that don't know starting you query with a bang - term does a site specific search.

e.g. !g <SEARCHTERM> - searches google. That's right they let you search google instead of their own search engine.

The number of bang searches is overwhelming so my advice is just to learn a few you find most useful. hey soon became an integral part of searching for me.

These are my most used:

!g - google

!i - google images

!gt / !gten - google translate (English)

!yt - youtube

!a - amazon

!w - wikipedia

I don't think there is any question that google's search engine is the best, but I hate the tracking and lack of privacy with google.

At first I found myself relying on !g quite a lot, but over time it's become just a safety net when DDG doesn't get me what I need and that's really quite rare nowadays.