DuckAssistBot: DuckDuckGo's AI search crawler
DuckDuckGo's crawler for DuckAssist, its AI-assisted answers.
- Free, no account.
- A few seconds.
- Nothing is stored.
DuckAssistBot at a glance
Everything DuckDuckGo documents about it, with links to the source.
- Operator
- DuckDuckGo
- Type
- AI search and answers
- Used for
- Sources for DuckAssist answers, not training
- Obeys robots.txt
- Yes. DuckDuckGo documents that DuckAssistBot follows robots.txt, so a rule for its token is honoured.
- robots.txt token
DuckAssistBot- User-agent string
DuckAssistBot/1.2; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.html)
- IP addresses
- duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.json
How to block DuckAssistBot
Fetches the pages AI answers cite and link to. Blocking it keeps your pages out of those answers: no citation, no link.
Block the whole site
Add this group to robots.txt at the root of your site.
User-agent: DuckAssistBot Disallow: /
Block only some paths
List the paths; everything else stays open to DuckAssistBot.
User-agent: DuckAssistBot Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /drafts/
How to verify DuckAssistBot
Anyone can send a crawler's user-agent string. Where the request comes from is what proves it.
- 1
Find requests whose user agent contains "DuckAssistBot" in your server or CDN logs.
- 2
Check each source IP against DuckDuckGo's published list (duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.json). A request from outside it is not DuckAssistBot, whatever it says.
- 3
Block what fails the check at the firewall. A robots.txt rule only reaches crawlers that choose to read it.
Other crawlers from DuckDuckGo
Each has its own token, and blocking one leaves the others untouched.
Frequently asked questions
DuckDuckGo's crawler for DuckAssist, its AI-assisted answers. DuckDuckGo says the data is not used to train AI models and that blocking it does not affect a site's place in DuckDuckGo's regular results.
Yes. DuckDuckGo documents that DuckAssistBot follows robots.txt, so a rule for its token is honoured.
Add a group for its token to robots.txt at the root of your site: "User-agent: DuckAssistBot" followed by "Disallow: /". To close only part of the site, list those paths instead of "/". To enforce the block rather than request it, deny the IP addresses DuckDuckGo publishes at your firewall.
DuckDuckGo's AI answers stop finding your pages through it, so they cannot cite or link to you. If you want to keep your content out of training but stay in answers, block DuckDuckGo's training token instead and leave DuckAssistBot allowed.
Checked against DuckDuckGo's documentation on 29 September 2026.
Next: see whether AI recommends you
Letting the right crawlers in is the first step. AskWatch shows what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI answer when buyers ask about your category, and who they name.
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