PerplexityBot
Perplexity's web crawler — the user agent that fetches pages to cite in Perplexity AI answers.
Definition
PerplexityBot is the user agent identifier used by Perplexity AI's crawler when fetching pages for citation. Site owners control its access via robots.txt; blocking it removes the site from Perplexity's answer surfaces. Perplexity also runs Perplexity-User for real-time fetches triggered by user queries — both have to be allowed for citation eligibility.
When to use
See also
- Perplexity — AI answer engine that searches the live web and returns synthesized answers with inline citations.
- robots.txt — Plain text file at /robots.txt that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not fetch.
- AI crawler — Web crawler operated by an AI company — GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended.