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DuckDuckGo's AI agents and crawlers

DuckDuckGo runs 2 agents that visit websites: 1 AI assistant, 1 AI and search crawler. Here's what each one does, and how to let them in or keep them out.

AI assistants

Fetches pages for a person, in real time, while they use an AI assistant. Almost always allow it. Blocking it means the assistant can't read your pages when a customer asks about you, so it answers from somewhere else.

  • DuckAssistBot: Fetches pages in real time so DuckDuckGo's DuckAssist can answer questions and cite sources.

Indexes pages so a search engine or AI search tool can find, cite and link to them. Allow it, unless you deliberately want to stay out of that search engine. Blocking it removes you from its results and answers.

  • DuckDuckBot: DuckDuckGo's crawler for its search engine.

Robots.txt for every DuckDuckGo agent

To block every DuckDuckGo agent that reads robots.txt. This also keeps out the ones acting for your customers and the ones that send you visitors, so think twice:

User-agent: DuckAssistBot
User-agent: DuckDuckBot
Disallow: /

Robots.txt is a request, not a lock, and some agents that act for a person in real time may not read it. A decision guide for blocking or allowing AI crawlers.

How to tell if it's really DuckDuckGo

Our registry doesn't verify DuckDuckGo's agents against published IP ranges, so treat a request that uses one of their names as a claim, not proof. Ghost Agent Lab reports these requests as unverified rather than guessing.

Which DuckDuckGo agents visit your site? Ghost Agent Lab reads your CDN or server logs and shows every request from them: what they read, what your site sent back, and whether each one was genuine. See agent traffic, or check whether AI agents can use your site for free.