a dinky little elisp function for searching duckduckgo with (optionally) the region contents (optionally enclosed in quotes) with no active region, it just sends the minibuffer contents. with an active region, it concats the minibuffer contents with the region contents. with a prefix argument, the region contents are enclosed in quotes.

gistfile1.el

(defun ddg-search (prefix str)
  (interactive "P\nMSearch term: ")
  (let ((arg
         (if (region-active-p)
             (concat str (if prefix " \"" " ")
                     (buffer-substring (region-beginning) (region-end))
                     (if prefix "\""))
           str)))
  (browse-url (concat "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=" (url-hexify-string arg)))))