DuckDuckBot
DuckDuckGo's search engine.
- Operator
- DuckDuckGo
- Type
- Search engine
- In the user agent
DuckDuckBot- robots.txt token
DuckDuckBot- Follows robots.txt
- says it follows robots.txt
- Official documentation
- duckduckgo.com
- Checked on
- 2026-11-11
What is DuckDuckBot?
DuckDuckBot is DuckDuckGo's search engine. It indexes pages for a search engine, whose results also feed AI answers.
The operator's description: DuckDuckGo's search crawler.
(duckduckgo.com)
How do I block or allow DuckDuckBot?
With robots.txt, using the token DuckDuckBot. DuckDuckGo says it follows robots.txt. To block the whole site:
User-agent: DuckDuckBot
Disallow: /To allow it, use Allow instead of Disallow. Before blocking, weigh what it brings: without it, the assistant cannot find your pages to cite or recommend them.
How do I see whether DuckDuckBot visits my site?
In your server or CDN access logs, look for DuckDuckBot in the user agent. Google Analytics does not show these visits: agents do not run its JavaScript.
Anyone can copy the name in a user agent, so counting log lines is not enough. Knocklog reads your site's traffic on any host, confirms who is who, and shows how often DuckDuckBot came, which pages it read and what that brought you.
How do I know it is really DuckDuckBot?
DuckDuckGo publishes DuckDuckBot's IP addresses at https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot.json. A visit that claims to be DuckDuckBot from outside those ranges is spoofed.
Knocklog runs this check on every visit and separates the genuine agent from impostors.
Does DuckDuckBot visit your site?
See in seconds how your site treats AI agents. Then connect your traffic to learn who really came.
Other DuckDuckGo agents
- DuckAssistBot Assistant acting for a person