What Is DuckDuckBot?
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.
Agent Type
Expected Behavior
Search engine crawlers systematically index websites to power search engines by discovering, analyzing, and cataloging web content. They visit sites on dynamic schedules determined by algorithmic priorities rather than fixed intervals. Crawl frequency depends on factors like site popularity, content freshness, update frequency, and domain authority. These crawlers typically respect robots.txt rules and throttle their requests to avoid overwhelming servers.
Detail
| Operated By | DuckDuckGo |
| Last Updated | 16 hours ago |
Top Website Robots.txts
Country of Origin
Top Website Blocking Trend Over Time
The percentage of the world's top 1000 websites who are blocking DuckDuckBot
Overall Search Engine Crawler Traffic
The percentage of all internet traffic coming from search engine crawlers
Top Visited Website Categories
User Agent String
| Example | DuckDuckBot/1.1; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot.html) |
Access other known user agent strings and recent IP addresses using the API.
Robots.txt
In this example, all pages are blocked. You can customize which pages are off-limits by swapping out / for a different disallowed path.
User-agent: DuckDuckBot # https://darkvisitors.com/agents/duckduckbot
Disallow: /Frequently Asked Questions About DuckDuckBot
Should I Block DuckDuckBot?
Definitely no. DuckDuckBot is essential for content discovery and website traffic. Blocking it will severely impact your search engine rankings and organic traffic. Only block DuckDuckBot if you have compelling security or resource concerns.
How Do I Block DuckDuckBot?
If you want to, you can block or limit DuckDuckBot's access by configuring user agent token rules in your robots.txt file. The best way to do this is using Automatic Robots.txt, which blocks all agents of this type and updates continuously as new agents are released. While the vast majority of agents operated by reputable companies honor these robots.txt directives, bad actors may choose to ignore them entirely. In that case, you'll need to implement alternative blocking methods such as firewall rules or server-level restrictions. You can verify whether DuckDuckBot is respecting your rules by setting up Agent Analytics to monitor its visits to your website.
Will Blocking DuckDuckBot Hurt My SEO?
Blocking search engine crawlers will severely damage your SEO rankings and organic traffic. These crawlers are essential for search engine indexing and visibility. Only block specific crawlers if you have critical security concerns, and expect significant negative impact on search performance.
Does DuckDuckBot Access Private Content?
Search engine crawlers are designed to index only publicly accessible content. They respect robots.txt rules and don't attempt to access password-protected pages, private user accounts, or authenticated areas. However, they may index content that's technically public but not intended for search visibility, such as unlisted pages or development environments.
How Can I Tell if DuckDuckBot Is Visiting My Website?
Setting up Agent Analytics will give you realtime visibility into DuckDuckBot visiting your website, along with hundreds of other AI agents, crawlers, and scrapers. This will also let you measure human traffic to your website coming from AI search and chat LLM platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
Why Is DuckDuckBot Visiting My Website?
DuckDuckBot discovered your site through web discovery methods like following links from other websites, processing your sitemap, finding mentions of your domain, or through direct submission to the search engine. Your site was included in their crawl queue as part of their effort to maintain a comprehensive web index.
How Can I Authenticate Visits From DuckDuckBot?
Agent Analytics authenticates agent visits from many agents, letting you know whether each one was actually from that agent, or spoofed by a bad actor. This helps you identify suspicious traffic patterns and make informed decisions about blocking or allowing specific user agents.