How to get cited by DeepSeek

What are the key facts about DeepSeek and websites?

Where does DeepSeek get its answers?

From two places, the same as most assistants.

1. What the model already learned. DeepSeek's public summary of V4's training data says it "includes text from Common Crawl and Stack Exchange," alongside licensed and synthetic data, with some data collected "approximately no later than May 2025." DeepSeek Its privacy policy adds that it may use "publicly available Personal Data via online sources to train our models." DeepSeek

2. A live web search. DeepSeek announced on December 10, 2024: "Internet Search is now live on the web!" at chat.deepseek.com. DeepSeek API Docs The phone apps launched in January 2025 with "Web search & Deep-Think mode." DeepSeek API Docs

The first route changes slowly, when a new model is trained. The second can pick up a page you publish this week.

Which search engine does DeepSeek use?

DeepSeek doesn't say. Its privacy policy only states: "We integrate third-party APIs to provide search services, and we will share your input keywords to provide these services." DeepSeek

You'll find blog posts claiming it's Bing, Baidu or another provider. We couldn't find DeepSeek confirming any of them, so we don't repeat them as fact.

What this means for you: since DeepSeek rents its search from someone else, the way to be found is to be findable in search generally. A page that is indexed in Google and Bing, loads fast and states its facts plainly has the best chance, whichever partner DeepSeek calls.

Does DeepSeek have a crawler I can allow in robots.txt?

Not one it names. DeepSeek's training summary says it runs a crawler that "is designed to respect robots.txt instructions and other standard web protocols, where applicable, and is not designed to circumvent captchas, paywalls, or password-protected content." DeepSeek But it doesn't give the crawler's user agent.

Some bot directories list a "DeepSeekBot" with a help URL on deepseek.com. When we checked on September 30, 2026, that URL returned a 404 error, and DeepSeek documents no such bot. A robots.txt rule naming it does no harm, but don't count on it doing anything.

The lever you can verify is Common Crawl, which DeepSeek names as a training source. Common Crawl's crawler is called CCBot.

• Allow CCBot if you want your public pages in the datasets many AI models learn from, DeepSeek's included.
• Block CCBot if you'd rather keep your content out of training. That choice reaches far beyond DeepSeek, so make it on purpose.

Our guide to which AI crawlers to allow explains how training crawlers differ from the ones that fetch pages for live answers.

How do I write pages DeepSeek will cite?

When DeepSeek searches, it has to pick a few pages out of many results. These habits help with DeepSeek and every other assistant:

1. Answer first. Put the direct answer in the first sentence under each heading.
2. Make facts stand alone. "We offer same-day water heater installs in Houston, Katy and Sugar Land" still makes sense when quoted without the rest of the page.
3. Keep text in the HTML. Content that only appears after JavaScript runs is harder for any crawler to read.
4. Date what changes. Prices, hours and offers should say when they were last checked. Training data can be more than a year old, so a dated page helps an assistant tell your current offer from an old one.
5. Publish where training data comes from. Clear answers on your own site, and on public Q&A sites where they fit, are the kind of text that ends up in datasets like Common Crawl.
6. Keep one set of facts. Your site, listings and profiles should agree on your name, address, services and prices, so old and new sources tell the same story.

Should my business care about DeepSeek?

It depends on your customers. DeepSeek is widely used, and because its models are released under the MIT License, other companies can run them inside their own products. Hugging Face That means your facts can reach people through DeepSeek models even outside DeepSeek's own app.

It is also restricted in some places. Several governments barred it from official devices in 2025, New York State among them. NBC News South Korea paused new downloads for about two months that year. Korea Herald If you sell to government agencies, DeepSeek matters less. If you sell to consumers or developers, it's worth checking.

Either way, the work overlaps almost completely with what gets you cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude. You aren't doing extra work just for DeepSeek.

What should be on my DeepSeek checklist?

How do I check whether DeepSeek cites me?

Ask DeepSeek your customers' questions at chat.deepseek.com twice: once with web search on and once with it off. With search off, you see what the model learned in training. With search on, you see which pages it finds today. Note whether it names your business, a directory, or a competitor, and whether the facts are right.

To check many questions at once, our Prompt Simulator runs one question across 12 engines and highlights where you're cited. If DeepSeek gets your facts wrong, AI is wrong about your business covers how to fix the record.

Sources

1. Public Summary of Training Content for DeepSeek-V4 — DeepSeek. Read Sep 30, 2026.
2. DeepSeek Privacy Policy — DeepSeek. Read Sep 30, 2026.
3. DeepSeek V2.5: The Grand Finale — DeepSeek API Docs. Read Sep 30, 2026.
4. Introducing DeepSeek App — DeepSeek API Docs. Read Sep 30, 2026.
5. DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash: Smarter, Faster, More Efficient — DeepSeek API Docs. Read Sep 30, 2026.
6. New York state bans DeepSeek from government devices — NBC News. Read Sep 30, 2026.
7. DeepSeek resumes service in S. Korea after disclosing revised info processing policy — The Korea Herald. Read Sep 30, 2026.
8. DeepSeek-V4-Pro model card — Hugging Face. Read Sep 30, 2026.