PerplexityBot
Definition: PerplexityBot is Perplexity's crawler for discovering and linking websites in Perplexity search results; Perplexity says it is not used to collect content for training AI foundation models.
Also called: Perplexity crawler, Perplexity-User
Updated
Two agents with different rules
Perplexity documents two user agents (Perplexity crawler documentation):
| User agent | Role | robots.txt |
|---|---|---|
| PerplexityBot | Crawls the web to surface and link sites in Perplexity search results; not used for training foundation models | Controls it |
| Perplexity-User | Fetches a page when a user’s question needs it | Generally ignored, according to Perplexity |
The split matters. Disallowing PerplexityBot keeps your pages out of the index Perplexity draws its citations from. It does not stop Perplexity-User from opening a page a user asks about, because Perplexity treats that as a request made by a person.
Making sure Perplexity can cite you
Perplexity answers almost every question with numbered source links, so being in its index is the whole game. Check three things:
- robots.txt allows PerplexityBot, either explicitly or through a permissive
*group with no rule that catches it. - Your CDN or firewall does not challenge or block its requests. Bot-management products often group it with scrapers.
- The content is present in the HTML without JavaScript. Research shows PerplexityBot did not run JavaScript in Vercel’s analysis of AI crawler traffic.
The free audit fetches your page as PerplexityBot and compares the result with a normal request, which catches firewall blocks that robots.txt does not show.
If you want to stay out
Blocking PerplexityBot in robots.txt removes you from its search index. To stop Perplexity-User as well, robots.txt is not enough; you would need a server or firewall rule, and you would lose the chance to be read when someone asks about you directly. The robots.txt tester shows which rule applies to each agent, and Perplexity SEO covers ranking in its answers.