What it does
DuckAssistBot is DuckDuckGo's ai search crawler. An AI search index that can cite and link your pages in answers (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude search, Alexa, Siri). Blocking removes you from those answer surfaces — for most sites these are wanted crawlers.
Sources DuckDuckGo AI-assisted answers. Vendor documents DuckAssistBot/1.2; robots.txt changes take effect after ~72 hours. Opting out does not affect organic DuckDuckGo rankings.
Full UA: not captured in our July 2026 roster review — match log hits on the token DuckAssistBot (case-insensitive substring) and verify by IP before acting.
How to verify a hit is really DuckAssistBot
Verification method (July 2026): Published IP list: https://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.json (fetched live 2026-08-22)
Strongest available check: the vendor publishes the crawler's egress IPs. Fetch the list, then confirm the hit's source IP falls inside it — a UA match from any other IP is a spoofer.
User-agent strings are freely spoofed, so a UA match alone proves nothing. Full step-by-step method: verify by IP.
Allow or block in robots.txt
Match the exact token DuckAssistBot in robots.txt:
# Block DuckAssistBot site-wide
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Disallow: /# Explicitly allow DuckAssistBot
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Allow: /For the allow-search-block-training combined pattern (and the Allow-directive gotcha that silently kills carve-outs), see the robots.txt guide. robots.txt governs whether DuckAssistBot may fetch; llms.txt is the separate, curated map AI assistants read once allowed in.
Vendor documentation: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/duckassistbot/
The DuckDuckGo family
DuckAssistBot is the only DuckDuckGo token in our 34-bot roster — one robots.txt line covers everything DuckDuckGo operates here.
Frequently asked questions
What is DuckAssistBot?
DuckAssistBot is DuckDuckGo's ai search crawler. An AI search index that can cite and link your pages in answers (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude search, Alexa, Siri). Blocking removes you from those answer surfaces — for most sites these are wanted crawlers.
Does DuckAssistBot respect robots.txt?
Yes — DuckDuckGo documents robots.txt compliance for DuckAssistBot (vendor docs reviewed July 2026).
How do I block DuckAssistBot?
Add 'User-agent: DuckAssistBot' followed by 'Disallow: /' to your robots.txt. Use the exact token — substring variants of other tokens will not match.
How do I verify DuckAssistBot traffic by IP?
Fetch DuckDuckGo's published IP list for DuckAssistBot and confirm the hit's source IP falls inside it — a DuckAssistBot user-agent from any other IP is a spoofer.
Related bots
Same vendor, then other ai search crawlers — the full directory profiles all 34.