DuckDuckBot — DuckDuckGo's crawler
DuckDuckBot is the crawler operated by DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo also draws on third-party indexes for some results, so DuckDuckBot is one part of how its results are built. DuckDuckGo documents the crawler and publishes IP addresses operators can use to verify it.
What this means
DuckDuckBot is DuckDuckGo's own web crawler. DuckDuckGo documents that its results are assembled from many sources, including third-party indexes, so DuckDuckBot crawling is one input among several.
That means the absence of heavy DuckDuckBot traffic does not necessarily mean your site is invisible on DuckDuckGo, because other indexes may also contribute.
How to verify DuckDuckBot
DuckDuckGo documents the DuckDuckBot user-agent token and publishes a list of IP addresses the crawler uses. Match suspect requests against that list rather than trusting the user-agent string, which is spoofable.
- robots.txt token: DuckDuckBot
- DuckDuckGo publishes crawler IP addresses for verification
- DuckDuckGo also uses third-party indexes for some results
How it appears in analytics and logs
A request carrying the DuckDuckBot token is DuckDuckGo's crawler fetching a URL — a bot event. Note that DuckDuckGo also relies on third-party indexes, so its results are not built from DuckDuckBot crawling alone.
Diagnostic use case
Confirm DuckDuckBot crawl activity and verify suspect requests against DuckDuckGo's published crawler IP addresses.
What WebmasterID can help detect
WebmasterID classifies DuckDuckBot server-side as a search crawler and surfaces its activity separately from human traffic, so its crawl footprint is visible without log parsing.
Common mistakes
- Assuming all DuckDuckGo visibility depends on DuckDuckBot alone.
- Trusting a DuckDuckBot user agent without checking the published IPs.
- Counting crawler hits as human visits.
Privacy and accuracy notes
Identification uses the user agent plus DuckDuckGo's published IPs for verification — no human identity. WebmasterID records DuckDuckBot as a bot event, separate from human analytics.
Related pages
- Bingbot — Microsoft Bing's web crawler
Bingbot is the crawler Microsoft Bing uses to discover and index web pages. It uses the bingbot robots.txt token and can be verified through Bing's reverse-DNS method and published IP ranges. Bing also powers results for other surfaces, so Bingbot coverage has reach beyond Bing.com.
- YandexBot — Yandex's web crawler
YandexBot is the main crawler for Yandex, a search engine with a strong presence in Russian-language search. It uses the YandexBot robots.txt token and can be verified through reverse DNS, where the IP should resolve into a Yandex domain, confirmed by a matching forward lookup.
- Bot intelligence
See search-engine crawlers separated from human traffic.
Sources and verification notes
- DuckDuckGo — DuckDuckBot documentationDocuments the token, third-party index use, and verification IPs.
Last reviewed 2026-06-24. Facts are checked against primary/official sources where available; uncertain specifics are marked “Data not yet verified” rather than guessed.