What Is a Bang?
A bang, or !bang, as it is commonly known, is a term you can include with your DuckDuckGo search to limit your results to a particular website or service
example, if you are searching the web with DuckDuckGo and you want to limit your results to How-To Geek website, you can include “!howtogeek” with your search term
Searching for “windows 10 !howtogeek” will perform a search for “windows 10” using How-To Geek’s own search engine
more here:
fun fact
The name comes from an old UNIX term for an exclamation point, which is used to invoke the feature in searches.
The best way to search for a bang is to start typing an exclamation mark. DuckDuckGo will open a list of suggested bangs, with suggestions becoming more relevant as you type
So if you’re wondering whether a particular website has a bang, start typing an exclamation point followed by its name
One of the more useful uses for bangs is as a quick exit point to a major search engine like Google (!g) or Bing (!b) when DuckDuckGo’s results aren’t as good as you’d hoped. You can also use them to search for products on Amazon (!a) or eBay (!ebay)
disclaimer:
If you already use Amazon or eBay for your shopping, the use of the !a or !ebay bangs won’t massively impact your privacy. However, if you rely on DuckDuckGo’s strong privacy policy to protect your search activity, bangs could pose much more of a privacy problem.
enjoy yer BANG'IN 😜