DuckAssistBot: robots token, verification and how to allow or disallow it
DuckAssistBot is an AI crawler operated by DuckDuckGo. Its robots.txt token is DuckAssistBot, and the vendor documentation we fetched on 2026-09-06 is the source for every statement on this page.
| Robots token | DuckAssistBot |
|---|---|
| Vendor | DuckDuckGo |
| Purpose | user-initiated fetch, answer generation |
| Documented verification | none published |
| Vendor documentation last verified | 2026-09-06 |
| Share of read domains disallowing it for / | 3.1% of 128 |
| Last verified |
Identity
| Robots token | DuckAssistBot |
|---|---|
| Matched as | duckassistbot |
| Vendor | DuckDuckGo |
| Purpose | user-initiated fetch, answer generation |
| Documentation | None |
| Documented verification | none published |
documentation_url is null because duckduckgo.com did not serve robots.txt to this droplet on 2026-09-06 (empty response, curl exit before any status), so we could not reach the vendor help pages politely. Recorded as unreachable from our checker rather than routed around.
Allow or disallow it
User-agent: DuckAssistBot Allow: /
User-agent: DuckAssistBot Disallow: /
A robots.txt rule is a request that a well behaved crawler honours. It is not an access control, and this page does not tell anyone what to choose.
Questions
How do I allow DuckAssistBot in robots.txt?
Add this group to the robots.txt at the root of the host: User-agent: DuckAssistBot Allow: /. The token is matched case insensitively as a substring of the user agent by RFC 9309, and the longest matching rule wins.
How do I disallow DuckAssistBot in robots.txt?
Add this group to the robots.txt at the root of the host: User-agent: DuckAssistBot Disallow: /. A robots.txt rule is a request that a well behaved crawler honours; it is not an access control.
How do I verify a request really came from DuckAssistBot?
We have not found a documented verification method for DuckAssistBot: the vendor publishes neither an IP range file nor a reverse DNS convention that we could fetch. Without one, a user agent string is not evidence of origin.
What we measure
Of the 128 seeded domains whose robots.txt we have read, 4 disallow DuckAssistBot for / and 124 allow it, which is 3.1% disallowed, week 2026-W37. Counts only: no domain is named.
The weekly AI crawler access index
Sources
| Source | Type | HTTP | Verified | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://darkvisitors.com/agents/duckassistbot | aggregator | 200 | 2026-09-06 | third party aggregator, only source reachable; volatile source: identical byte count but a different content hash on every fetch (verified twice on 2026-09-06), so the refresher compares byte counts for it, not hashes |
Free data
Check a domain against every token
AEO Watch is an independent, factual monitor. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or speaking for any crawler vendor. Every statement is an observation with the date it was made and the raw evidence behind it: a robots.txt line, an HTTP status code, a header. There are no scores, no grades and no verdicts here, and nothing on this page is advice. A site opts out at any time and the opt out is honoured automatically and permanently.