DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckBot
Crawls websites for DuckDuckGo Search.
Web searchAI search
DuckAssistBot
Retrieves pages for DuckDuckGo’s AI-assisted answers.
Operated by DuckDuckGo
See your agent traffic PurposeAI search
HTTP identifierDuckAssistBot
IdentityVerify beyond the name
THE SIGNAL
What this visit tells you
A real-time retrieval can support an answer, but the request alone does not prove a citation.
Fetched pages
Failed retrievals
Repeat fetches
Your next move
Keep this traffic separate from DuckDuckBot and inspect failures on answer-worthy pages.
The technical details
MarkdownHow to identify it
Look for the DuckAssistBot identifier in a request’s User-Agent. This is a name match, not identity verification. Version strings may change.
How to check identity
Match the source IP with DuckDuckGo’s published duckassistbot.json list linked from its crawler help page.
Access and robots.txt
Disallow DuckAssistBot to stop this retrieval after up to 72 hours. This setting does not affect ordinary DuckDuckGo search results.
Optional full-site opt-out. Merge with existing rules only if intended. robots.txt does not secure private content.
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Disallow: /Seeing 403 or 404 responses?
403 means access was denied; 404 means the resource was not found. Compare the public path, request time, edge security event and origin response to find the cause.
Separate intended restrictions and secret-file probes from pages that should work. A User-Agent name alone does not justify allowing a request.
SourcesReviewed 2026-09-14
Identity and purpose are based on these sources. Analytics interpretation and suggested checks are Apostl guidance.
APOSTL PulseSee DuckAssistBot in context
See their requests. Find the pages that matter.
See your agent trafficKEEP EXPLORING
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