How to Scrape DuckDuckGo Search Results (No API Key, No Blocks)

#webdev #seo #api #javascript

DuckDuckGo is the easiest search engine to scrape. No blocks, no CAPTCHAs.

DuckDuckGo Instant Answer API (Free)

async function ddgSearch(query) {
  const url = `https://api.duckduckgo.com/?q=${encodeURIComponent(query)}&format=json&no_html=1`;
  const res = await fetch(url);
  const data = await res.json();
  return {
    abstract: data.Abstract,
    abstractSource: data.AbstractSource,
    abstractURL: data.AbstractURL,
    relatedTopics: (data.RelatedTopics || []).map(t => ({
      text: t.Text,
      url: t.FirstURL
    })),
    answer: data.Answer
  };
}

HTML Scraping (Full Results)

DDG HTML version is scrapable without anti-bot:

async function ddgFullSearch(query) {
  const url = `https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q=${encodeURIComponent(query)}`;
  const res = await fetch(url);
  const $ = cheerio.load(await res.text());
  return $(".result__title").map((i, el) => ({
    title: $(el).text().trim(),
    url: $(el).find("a").attr("href")
  })).get();
}