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Agent directory · AI assistant

DuckAssistBot

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

Run by
DuckDuckGo
Type
AI assistant
Robots.txt name
DuckAssistBot
Verifiable
No

What DuckAssistBot does

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

As an AI assistant, it fetches pages for a person, in real time, while they use an AI assistant. The kinds of AI agent that visit websites.

Should you allow it?

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. A decision guide for blocking or allowing AI crawlers.

How to allow or block DuckAssistBot

DuckAssistBot reads the DuckAssistBot group in your robots.txt. To block it everywhere:

User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Disallow: /

To allow it everywhere, even if another rule blocks other bots:

User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Allow: /

Robots.txt is a request, not a lock: well-behaved crawlers follow it, impostors don't. Robots.txt for AI agents.

How it identifies itself

A typical user agent:

DuckAssistBot/1.2; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.html)

How to tell if it's really DuckAssistBot

DuckDuckGo doesn't publish IP ranges or a reverse DNS domain for DuckAssistBot, so a request can't be proven to come from it. Anyone can send its user agent, so treat the name alone as a claim, not proof. Ghost Agent Lab reports these requests as unverified rather than guessing.

Every DuckDuckGo agent, and a robots.txt for all of them →

Does DuckAssistBot visit your site? Ghost Agent Lab reads your CDN or server logs and shows every request from DuckAssistBot and 1,566+ other known agents: what they read, what your site sent back, and whether each request was genuine. See agent traffic, or check whether AI agents can use your site for free.