What is PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's crawler that indexes web pages so they can be surfaced and linked in Perplexity's search results. Perplexity documents two agents: PerplexityBot, which builds its search index, and Perplexity-User, which fetches a page when someone asks Perplexity a question. Perplexity says PerplexityBot is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.
What is PerplexityBot's user agent string?
PerplexityBot identifies itself with the product token PerplexityBot, and that token is what a robots.txt group must name.
To confirm a request is genuine, check its IP against the list Perplexity publishes at perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json. Perplexity updates those ranges regularly and says to treat the JSON endpoints as the source of truth.
This is the full string Perplexity's documentation gives (Perplexity's crawler docs, read Oct 15, 2026):
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)What does PerplexityBot read, and what is it used for?
PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in Perplexity's search results; it fetches pages to build the index Perplexity searches when it answers. Perplexity says it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models, and recommends allowing it in robots.txt, along with requests from its published IP ranges, so your site can appear in search results.
Perplexity's page does not say whether PerplexityBot runs JavaScript. The safe assumption for any crawler is that text added only by scripts may not be read, so keep the answer to each page's question in the HTML the server sends.
How is PerplexityBot different from Perplexity-User?
PerplexityBot crawls ahead of time to build the index; Perplexity-User fetches a single page at the moment a user's question needs it. Perplexity says neither is used to collect training data for AI foundation models.
| Agent | Job | robots.txt | Published IP list |
|---|---|---|---|
| PerplexityBot | Surfaces and links websites in Perplexity search results | Controlled by it; Perplexity recommends allowing it | perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json |
| Perplexity-User | Visits a page to help answer a user's question and may link it in the answer | Generally ignored, because a user asked for the fetch | perplexity.com/perplexity-user.json |
How do you allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt?
Name PerplexityBot in its own group with Allow: /, and make sure no catch-all rule or firewall setting blocks it. Perplexity says each robots.txt setting works independently and changes can take up to 24 hours.
If a web application firewall sits in front of your site, Perplexity's advice is a rule that matches both the user-agent (PerplexityBot or Perplexity-User) and the published IP ranges, with the action set to Allow and, on AWS WAF, a higher priority than your blocking rules. Pull the IP lists regularly, because they change, and watch your logs after a change. Then confirm the live robots.txt with the free AI crawler checker.
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /What does this mean for being cited by Perplexity?
Perplexity lists its sources with every answer, so being in its index puts a site in the running for many citation slots. In the public Tesla example (Oct 4, 2026), Perplexity gave 375 citations across 25 buyer questions, the most of the four engines, and named Tesla in 10 of 25 answers. Its most cited site was autoedgeview.com, 21 times; tesla.com was cited 3 times.
A page PerplexityBot cannot reach cannot be in that index. Whether Perplexity then names you is measured by asking it the questions. See how Perplexity chooses the brands it names.
Common questions about PerplexityBot
Does PerplexityBot train AI models?
Perplexity says PerplexityBot is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models. Its job is to surface and link websites in Perplexity's search results.
Does Perplexity-User follow robots.txt?
Perplexity says that because a user requested the fetch, Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt rules. PerplexityBot is the agent your robots.txt rule controls.
How long does a robots.txt change take for Perplexity?
Perplexity says changes can take up to 24 hours to take effect. Firewall rule changes can also take time to propagate, so check your logs afterwards.
How do I know a request really came from PerplexityBot?
Match both the user-agent and the source IP against perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json. Perplexity recommends combining the two checks, since a user-agent string alone can be copied.
Related terms
- OAI-SearchBot
OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler for surfacing websites in ChatGPT's search features, and sites that opt out of it are not shown in ChatGPT search answers.
- ClaudeBot
ClaudeBot is Anthropic's web crawler that collects web content that could contribute to training Anthropic's Claude models.
- GPTBot
GPTBot is OpenAI's web crawler for collecting content that may be used to train OpenAI's generative AI foundation models.
Worked example: Tesla, public AI answers, Oct 4, 2026: Proofsource's first scan of Tesla, 25 buyer questions and 5 brand questions, one answer per question on each of four engines. A small sample from one brand, shown as an example, not a benchmark.
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