The search engine that protects your privacy by not tracking your searches has been blocked in China. DuckDuckGo has garnered kudos among privacy advocates because it allows you to search for items on the Web anonymously.

Unlike Google and other search engines, the site doesn't collect personal information, so it cannot share any data about you with law enforcement or other authorities. In addition to its core website, the company also offers mobile apps for iOS and Android users. Search engines face unique challenges in trying to carve out business in China where the government demands that certain information be blocked from its citizens.

Apple announced that DuckDuckGo will be included as a built-in search option in future versions of Safari on iOS and OS X at WWDC conference. We are thrilled to be included in Safari and it's great that Apple is making it easy for people to access our anonymous search option.

This makes DuckDuckGo the first privacy-focused search engine to be added to one of the top four browsers and is a huge milestone for both us and privacy supporters. For Mac users, this goes alongside an all-new private browsing option that functions like incognito mode on Chrome. The web browser on iPhone, iPad and Mac now includes the private search engine DuckDuckGo that users can set as default.

DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, served over 1bn searches in 2013 after a huge surge in interest following the Snowden revelations. Until Edward Snowden's files detailing the extent of state surveillance, the search engine received around 1.5m queries per day. But in the weeks and months following the Guardian's publication of the NSA files, the number of users more than doubled.

By November, more than 4 million people were using the site every day, and on Tuesday 7 January the site had its biggest day so far, serving 4,452,957 queries in a 24-hour period. "Needless to say, it was a great year for us," DuckDuckGo said in a blogpost. "We're looking forward to similar greatness in 2014.