DuckAssistBot
DuckDuckGo · AI answers · User agent + IP range
About this crawler
Crawls pages in real time for DuckDuckGo's AI-assisted answers, which cite their sources. Not used for training.
Usually means: Someone asked an AI assistant a question and it read this page to answer, often with a link back.
User agent
DuckAssistBot
MetricRaven matches this token anywhere in the request's user agent, ignoring case. Operators add version numbers and browser text around it, for example "DuckAssistBot/1.0".
IP verification
Verified when the user agent and the IP range both match
1User agent
The request's user agent contains
DuckAssistBot.2Request IP
Your server-side tracker sends the IP that made the request.
3Range check
The IP is compared with the ranges DuckDuckGo publishes, refreshed twice a day.
Range sources
DuckAssistBot IP addresses
Control it in robots.txt
User-agent: DuckAssistBot Disallow: /private/
Fetchers that act for a person may not follow robots.txt; block them at your server or firewall if you need to.
Questions
- What is DuckAssistBot?
- Crawls pages in real time for DuckDuckGo's AI-assisted answers, which cite their sources. Not used for training. MetricRaven groups it under AI answers: assistants opening a page because a person asked about it.
- How do I verify that a request really comes from DuckAssistBot?
- Check both the user agent and the IP. Requests from DuckAssistBot contain "DuckAssistBot" in the user agent and come from the IP ranges DuckDuckGo publishes (https://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.json). A request with the name but another IP is likely spoofed.
- How do I block or allow DuckAssistBot?
- Add a robots.txt group for "DuckAssistBot" with the paths to allow or disallow. Fetchers that act for a user may ignore robots.txt; block those at your server or firewall instead.
- How can I see when DuckAssistBot visits my website?
- Most crawlers never run JavaScript, so browser analytics miss them. MetricRaven's @metricraven/ai-crawl package reports crawler requests from your server, verifies their IPs against published ranges, and shows which pages each crawler reads.
See when AI assistants and crawlers read your site
Add one line to your server and MetricRaven shows which assistants, search engines and training crawlers request your pages, which ones are IP-verified, and the URLs they expected to find, including 404s.