DuckDuckGo Search Skill Overview This skill provides web search capabilities using the DuckDuckGo search engine via the duckduckgo-search Python package. It enables text, image, video, and news searches with various filtering options. Installation pip install -U duckduckgo_search Core Functionality Text Search from duckduckgo_search import DDGS

Basic text search

results

DDGS ( ) . text ( "python programming" , max_results = 10 )

Advanced text search with filters

results

DDGS ( ) . text ( keywords = "python programming" , region = "us-en" ,

Region: us-en, uk-en, cn-zh, etc.

safesearch

"moderate" ,

on, moderate, off

timelimit

"m" ,

d (day), w (week), m (month), y (year)

backend

"auto" ,

auto, html, lite, bing

max_results

10 ) Image Search from duckduckgo_search import DDGS results = DDGS ( ) . images ( keywords = "butterfly" , region = "wt-wt" , safesearch = "off" , size = None ,

Small, Medium, Large, Wallpaper

color

"Monochrome" ,

Color filters

type_image

None ,

photo, clipart, gif, transparent, line

layout

None ,

Square, Tall, Wide

license_image

None ,

any, Public, Share, ShareCommercially, Modify, ModifyCommercially

max_results

100 ) Video Search from duckduckgo_search import DDGS results = DDGS ( ) . videos ( keywords = "cars" , region = "wt-wt" , safesearch = "off" , timelimit = "w" , resolution = "high" ,

high, standard

duration

"medium" ,

short, medium, long

license_videos

None ,

creativeCommon, youtube

max_results

50 ) News Search from duckduckgo_search import DDGS results = DDGS ( ) . news ( keywords = "technology" , region = "us-en" , safesearch = "moderate" , timelimit = "d" ,

d, w, m

max_results

20 ) Available Regions Region Code Description wt-wt Worldwide (No region) us-en United States uk-en United Kingdom cn-zh China jp-jp Japan kr-kr Korea de-de Germany fr-fr France in-en India au-en Australia ca-en Canada br-pt Brazil ru-ru Russia Search Operators Use DuckDuckGo search operators for advanced queries: Operator Example Description Exact match "cats and dogs" Search for exact phrase Exclude cats -dogs Exclude term Require cats +dogs Require term File type cats filetype:pdf Search PDFs, docs, etc. Site dogs site:example.com Search specific site Exclude site cats -site:example.com Exclude site In title intitle:dogs Title must contain In URL inurl:cats URL must contain Proxy Support

Using Tor Browser

ddgs

DDGS ( proxy = "tb" , timeout = 20 )

Using custom proxy

ddgs

DDGS ( proxy = "socks5://user:password@host:port" , timeout = 20 )

Via environment variable

import os os . environ [ "DDGS_PROXY" ] = "socks5://user:password@host:port" Error Handling from duckduckgo_search import DDGS from duckduckgo_search . exceptions import ( DuckDuckGoSearchException , RatelimitException , TimeoutException , ConversationLimitException , ) try : results = DDGS ( ) . text ( "query" , max_results = 10 ) except RatelimitException : print ( "Rate limit exceeded. Try using a proxy or waiting." ) except TimeoutException : print ( "Request timed out." ) except DuckDuckGoSearchException as e : print ( f"Search error: { e } " ) CLI Usage

Text search

ddgs text -k "python tutorial"

Search with region

ddgs text -k "news" -r cn-zh

Search and save to CSV

ddgs text -k "research filetype:pdf" -m 50 -o results.csv

Image search

ddgs images -k "landscape" -m 100 -d

News search

ddgs news -k "technology" -m 50 -t d -o json Result Format Text Search Results { "title" : "Page Title" , "href" : "https://example.com" , "body" : "Page description..." } Image Search Results { "title" : "Image Title" , "image" : "https://original-image-url.jpg" , "thumbnail" : "https://thumbnail-url.jpg" , "url" : "https://source-page.com" , "height" : 3860 , "width" : 4044 , "source" : "Bing" } Video Search Results { "content" : "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..." , "title" : "Video Title" , "description" : "Video description..." , "duration" : "8:22" , "provider" : "YouTube" , "published" : "2024-07-03" } News Search Results { "date" : "2024-07-03T16:25:22+00:00" , "title" : "News Headline" , "body" : "News article description..." , "url" : "https://news-site.com/article" , "image" : "https://image-url.jpg" , "source" : "News Source Name" } Best Practices Use context manager for proper resource cleanup: with DDGS ( ) as ddgs : results = ddgs . text ( "query" ) Set reasonable max_results to avoid long wait times Use region parameter for localized results Implement retry logic for rate limiting: import time for attempt in range ( 3 ) : try : results = DDGS ( ) . text ( "query" , max_results = 10 ) break except RatelimitException : time . sleep ( 2 ** attempt ) Use proxies for high-volume searches to avoid IP blocks Notes This library is for educational purposes only Not intended for commercial use Respect DuckDuckGo's Terms of Service Package has been renamed to ddgs (use pip install ddgs for newer version)