What Is PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot is the crawler operated by Perplexity, the AI answer engine. Its documented purpose is to index web pages so that Perplexity can reference and cite them when it answers questions. For site owners who want to show up as a cited source, understanding PerplexityBot is essential.
Why PerplexityBot matters for visibility
Perplexity is built around cited answers: instead of returning a list of links, it synthesizes a response and footnotes the sources it drew from. Those sources come from Perplexity's index, and PerplexityBot is what builds that index. If PerplexityBot cannot reach your content, your pages are far less likely to appear as a cited source. This makes PerplexityBot closer in spirit to a search crawler than to a pure training crawler — its job is discovery and retrieval for real-time answers.
As of mid-2026, Perplexity publishes documentation for PerplexityBot and states that it respects robots.txt. Because the ecosystem is still evolving, verify the current user-agent tokens and any published IP ranges against Perplexity's official crawler documentation before writing or auditing rules.
PerplexityBot vs. PerplexityUser
Perplexity references two related agents that serve different roles:
PerplexityBot
The indexing crawler. It systematically reads pages to build the index that Perplexity draws citations from. Controlling this token affects whether your content is eligible to be cited.
PerplexityUser
A user-triggered fetcher. When a person's specific question requires visiting a page live, this agent may retrieve it. It is distinct from routine indexing and is governed by its own token.
Because these are separate tokens, blocking one does not automatically block the other. Decide each based on whether you want to be indexed for citation, fetched on demand, or neither.
Allowing or blocking PerplexityBot
Use robots.txt at your site root. To disallow PerplexityBot:
User-agent: PerplexityBot Disallow: /
To allow it — which is usually what businesses seeking citations want — while protecting a private path:
User-agent: PerplexityBot Allow: / Disallow: /checkout/
robots.txt is advisory: it depends on the crawler choosing to comply and cannot be technically enforced. For hard restrictions, block at the server level. An llms.txt file does not block PerplexityBot — it is advisory content curation, not access control.
Getting cited, not just crawled
Allowing PerplexityBot is necessary but not sufficient for citations. Being cited also depends on having clear, well-structured, factual content that directly answers the kinds of questions users ask. Concise summaries, descriptive headings, and unambiguous facts tend to be easier for an answer engine to extract and attribute. There is no guarantee any AI system will cite a given page, but making your content easy to parse improves your odds.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is PerplexityBot used for?
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's crawler that indexes web pages so its answer engine can reference and cite them in responses. Being crawlable is a prerequisite for appearing as a cited source.
How is PerplexityBot different from PerplexityUser?
PerplexityBot performs indexing crawls. PerplexityUser is referenced as a user-triggered fetcher — it retrieves a page because a user's live question requires it, rather than as part of routine indexing. They are separate tokens.
If I block PerplexityBot, can Perplexity still cite me?
Blocking PerplexityBot generally reduces the chance your pages are indexed for citation. Because a user-triggered fetch can still occur in some cases, behavior may vary, but blocking the indexing crawler works against being cited.
Does PerplexityBot respect robots.txt?
Perplexity documents that PerplexityBot respects robots.txt. As always, robots.txt is advisory and cannot be technically enforced, so it is a respected signal rather than a hard guarantee.
Should I allow PerplexityBot?
For most businesses seeking AI-search visibility, allowing PerplexityBot makes sense because citation is how you appear in Perplexity answers. Publishers protecting premium content may choose to restrict it instead.
Improve your chances of being cited
Generate an llms.txt file to help answer engines like Perplexity find and cite your best content.