DuckAssistBot
DuckDuckGo's crawler that fetches pages in real time for its AI-assisted answers, which cite their sources. DuckDuckGo says the data is not used to train AI models.
| Operator | DuckDuckGo |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Search — DuckDuckGo AI-assisted answers |
| robots.txt token | DuckAssistBot |
| User-Agent | DuckAssistBot/1.2; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.html) |
| Obeys robots.txt | Yes, according to the publisher |
| Official IP ranges | https://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.json — 486 ranges, list dated 2026-09-01 |
| Reverse DNS | Not documented |
| Official documentation | https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/duckassistbot |
Live activity of DuckAssistBot
No visit from DuckAssistBot recorded on iabig.com over the last 30 days.
Last updated: 2026-10-25 12:07:01 UTC. See the Observatory
What DuckAssistBot does
DuckAssistBot is a DuckDuckGo Search crawler that fetches pages in real time to produce the search engine's AI-assisted answers, which prominently cite their sources.
What DuckDuckGo states:
- The data it collects is not used in any way to train AI models.
- Publishers can opt out of being a source for these answers by disallowing
DuckAssistBotin robots.txt. The change takes effect after 72 hours, after which the bot stops crawling the site. - Opting out does not affect organic rankings or whether the site appears in DuckDuckGo search results.
- Opt-out problems can be reported to crawling@duckduckgo.com.
The published user-agent string is DuckAssistBot/1.2; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.html). DuckDuckGo lists the source IP addresses on the page itself and in a JSON file, as individual addresses (/32 prefixes). With several hundred entries, the list should be fetched automatically rather than copied by hand.
The 72-hour delay is longer than the 24 hours quoted by OpenAI or Perplexity, so a recent block may not show up in your logs yet.
The trade-off is straightforward: blocking DuckAssistBot removes your site from the sources of AI-assisted answers without touching its presence in DuckDuckGo's regular results.
Block or allow DuckAssistBot
After 72 hours your pages stop being used as sources for DuckDuckGo's AI-assisted answers. DuckDuckGo says your ranking and presence in regular results are unchanged.
To block it, add this to your robots.txt:
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Disallow: /To allow it explicitly (copy any private rules you have):
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Allow: /A group naming DuckAssistBot replaces the User-agent: * group for it. Build a complete robots.txt with the generator and check it with the tester.
Verify a DuckAssistBot visit
Anyone can write “DuckAssistBot” in a User-Agent. Paste the IP address and User-Agent from your logs into the IP verifier to know whether the visit is genuine.