DuckDuckBot

What is DuckDuckBot?

About

DuckDuckBot is DuckDuckGo's web crawler that constantly improves search results by indexing web content, respecting robots.txt and providing users the best search experience. You can see how often DuckDuckBot visits your website by setting up Dark Visitors agent analytics.

Expected Behavior

Search engine crawlers do not adhere to a fixed visitation schedule for websites. The frequency of visits varies widely based on several factors, including popularity, the rate at which its content is updated, and the website's overall trustworthiness. Websites with fresh, high-quality content tend to be crawled more frequently, while less active or less reputable sites may be visited less often.

Type

Search Engine Crawler
Indexes web content for search engine results

Detail

Operated By DuckDuckGo
Last Updated 19 hours ago

Insights

Top Website Robots.txts

2%
2% of top websites are blocking DuckDuckBot
Learn How →

Country of Origin

United States
DuckDuckBot normally visits from the United States

Global Traffic

See All Global Bot & LLM Insights →

The percentage of all internet traffic coming from Search Engine Crawlers

Top Visited Website Categories

Online Communities
Health
People and Society
Travel and Transportation
Books and Literature
Get These Insights for Your Website
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Set Up Agent Analytics

Robots.txt

Should I Block DuckDuckBot?

Probably not. Search engine crawlers power search engines, which are a useful way for users to discover your website. In fact, blocking search engine crawlers could severely reduce your traffic.

How Do I Block DuckDuckBot?

⚠️ Manual Robots.txt Edits Are Not Scalable
New agents are created every day. Instead, serve a continuously updating robots.txt that blocks new agents automatically.
Set Up Automatic Robots.txt

You can block DuckDuckBot or limit its access by setting user agent token rules in your website's robots.txt. Set up Dark Visitors agent analytics to check whether it's actually following them.

User Agent String DuckDuckBot/1.1; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot.html) 
# robots.txt
# This should block DuckDuckBot

User-agent: DuckDuckBot
Disallow: /

References