What this means for visibility
DuckDuckGo says DuckAssistBot data is not used to train AI models; opt-outs take effect within 72 hours.
Search engine + AI answers · DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist)
DuckAssistBot crawls pages in real time for Search Assist answers. Duck.ai is an anonymised proxy to third-party models.
- Operator
- DuckDuckGo
- Launched
- Sep 25, 2008
- Search index
- DuckAssistBot crawls pages in real time for Search Assist answers. Duck.ai is an anonymised proxy to third-party models.
- Crawlers
- DuckAssistBot — blocked by 8% of top sites
- Referrer in analytics
duckduckgo.comduck.ai- UTM tagging
- None added
- Ads
- Private search ads on result pages; none inside AI answers.
- Citations
- Search Assist cites its sources prominently.
- Official docs
- duckduckgo.com
Questions
What search engine does DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) use?
DuckAssistBot crawls pages in real time for Search Assist answers. Duck.ai is an anonymised proxy to third-party models.
Which crawlers does DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) use?
DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) relies on DuckAssistBot. DuckDuckGo says DuckAssistBot data is not used to train AI models; opt-outs take effect within 72 hours.
How do I track DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) traffic in analytics?
Clicks from DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) arrive with the referrer duckduckgo.com or duck.ai. Add it to an AI channel in GA4 using a source regex.
Does DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) show ads?
Private search ads on result pages; none inside AI answers.
Analysis using this data
Other AI engines
ChatGPT · ChatGPT Atlas · Google AI Overviews · Google AI Mode · Gemini · Perplexity · Comet · Claude · Microsoft Copilot · Meta AI · Grok · DeepSeek · Le Chat · You.com · Brave Search (Ask Brave) · Kagi Assistant · Amazon Rufus (retired)
How to cite this data
This dataset is free to use, including commercially, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. The one rule is attribution:
- Credit the source as “Kuldeep Paul, kuldeep.cc” wherever you use a figure, chart or table from it.
- Link to this page (https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/duckduckgo), not to the download file, so readers can check the source of every number.
- Include the date. These figures change; say “as of Oct 29, 2026” or link to the version you used.
- Mark changes. If you filter, recalculate or chart the data yourself, say so (“analysis based on data from…”).
- Cite the original source for single figures when you quote one reported number; it is linked in every row.
In running text: according to Kuldeep Paul's DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) — AI search engine reference (kuldeep.cc). More in the methodology.
Paul, K. (2026). DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) — AI search engine reference [Data set]. kuldeep.cc. https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/duckduckgo
Paul, Kuldeep. "DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) — AI search engine reference." kuldeep.cc, 29 October 2026, https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/duckduckgo.
Paul, Kuldeep. 2026. "DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) — AI search engine reference." Dataset. kuldeep.cc. Updated Oct 29, 2026. https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/duckduckgo.
@misc{paul2026duckduckgo, author = {Paul, Kuldeep}, title = {DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) — AI search engine reference}, year = {2026}, howpublished = {\url{https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/duckduckgo}}, note = {Dataset, CC BY 4.0, updated 2026-10-29} }
<a href="https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/duckduckgo">DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) — AI search engine reference</a> (data: Kuldeep Paul, kuldeep.cc)