Google has updated its Google Crawler / User Agent help document with a new section for “Retired Google crawlers.” With that, Google announced the retirement of the short-lived DuplexWeb-Google User Agent.
Google added the DuplexWeb-Google user agent to its help document in 2021 and then in December 2022, Google retired that user agent. Google wrote, “the following Google crawlers are no longer in use and are only noted here for historical reference.” Google then listed DuplexWeb-Google.
Here is a screenshot:
It was added to the help documentation on December 1st, it is unclear when that user agent stopped crawling.
Duplex was used by Google Assistant to call restaurants and more.
Google retired Duplex on the Web completely as of December 2022, according to this help document. Google wrote, “Duplex on the Web is deprecated, and will no longer be supported as of December, 2022. Any automation features enabled by Duplex on the Web will no longer be supported after this date.”
Here is a screenshot for historical purposes:
Forum discussion at Twitter.
