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Guides/check/is duckassistbot blocked

Is DuckAssistBot Blocked on Your Site? How to Check | SEO AEO Specialist SEO & AEO Specialist

In short

To tell, open your robots.txt and look for a rule naming DuckAssistBot with Disallow: /. If present, the crawler is blocked and cannot fetch your pages. Blocking removes your content from DuckAssist, DuckDuckGo's AI-generated answer feature.

DuckAssistBot is operated by DuckDuckGo. It fetches content that powers DuckAssist, the privacy-focused search engine's AI-assisted answers, so it acts as an answer-engine crawler that draws on live web sources rather than a bulk training scraper.

The consequence of blocking is that DuckAssist will not summarize or cite your pages when responding to user queries it could otherwise answer with your content. If you want visibility inside DuckDuckGo's AI answers, keeping DuckAssistBot allowed is what keeps your site eligible.

How to check and control it

To check, look in your robots.txt for a rule targeting this user-agent. To allow or block it:

User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Disallow: /        # blocks it — remove or set "Allow: /" to permit

For an instant check across your whole site, use SEO AEO Specialist's free AI crawler checker, and see the llms.txt & AI crawler guide.

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FAQ

What is DuckAssist?

DuckAssist is DuckDuckGo's AI-assisted answer feature, which generates short summaries in response to searches. DuckAssistBot is the crawler that gathers the web content those answers draw on, so allowing it keeps your pages eligible to be cited within DuckAssist responses.

Does blocking DuckAssistBot remove me from DuckDuckGo search?

Blocking DuckAssistBot targets DuckDuckGo's AI-assist answers specifically. DuckDuckGo's traditional search results largely rely on other sources and crawlers, so the main effect of this block is removing your content from DuckAssist's generated answers rather than standard search listings.

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