In short. DuckDuckGo Search Assist generates optional web-based answers with source links, reader frequency settings and a publisher opt-out through DuckAssistBot.

Definition: DuckDuckGo Search Assist is an optional AI answer feature within DuckDuckGo search results. As of 17 October 2026, DuckDuckGo documents brief answers based on web content, with direct links to one or two sources.

Key facts

DuckDuckGo's Search Assist help page describes web scanning followed by answer generation from relevant content.
DuckDuckGo's approach to AI describes Search Assist as free and anonymized, with no account required.
DuckDuckGo's DuckAssistBot documentation identifies its crawler for retrieving pages in real time for AI-assisted answers.

How do answers and sources appear?

DuckDuckGo's Search Assist documentation describes automatically generated answers with direct source links. Selecting “More” expands an answer to show additional information. The source links let readers open the underlying pages for detail.

DuckDuckGo's AI approach page places these answers alongside traditional search results. It describes Duck.ai as a chat service offering access to chatbots. The Search Assist help page provides a route to follow-up questions in Duck.ai.

Which controls are available to readers?

The Search Assist help page lists the frequency options: often, sometimes, on-demand and never. Sometimes is the default. Search Settings and the settings icon at the upper right of an answer provide access to this choice. In the DuckDuckGo browser, the path is Settings > AI Features > Search Assist Settings.

DuckDuckGo's noai.duckduckgo.com documentation describes another entry point: searches started on that domain have AI features turned off and AI-generated images filtered out by default. The page specifically lists Search Assist and Duck.ai among the blocked features. It also documents No-AI search extensions for Chrome and Firefox that set the browser's default search to this experience.

What can a website publisher control?

DuckAssistBot is DuckDuckGo's web crawler for AI-assisted answers. Its publisher documentation says publishers can opt out as potential answer sources through robots.txt, the file used to communicate crawler rules. A rule matching its documented instruction to disallow the DuckAssistBot user agent is:

User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Disallow: /

DuckDuckGo states that the change takes effect after 72 hours, after which the crawler stops crawling the site. The same documentation says this opt-out leaves organic search rankings and inclusion in search results unaffected. It also states that the data collected by DuckAssistBot is not used to train AI models. For opt-out problems, it provides crawling@duckduckgo.com as a contact address.

FAQ

Can I turn off Search Assist?

Yes. You can select “never” using the controls described in DuckDuckGo's Search Assist help page.

Do I need an account?

DuckDuckGo's AI approach page says you can use Search Assist free of charge, with no account required.

Does blocking DuckAssistBot remove my site from search results?

DuckDuckGo's crawler documentation says opting out leaves your site's inclusion in search results and organic search rankings unaffected.

Sources

Check how a page reads to answer engines. Open the GEO score analyzer