Definition
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's crawler for surfacing and linking websites in its answers, and Perplexity says it isn't used to train AI models.
PerplexityBot explained
Perplexity is an AI answer engine that searches the web for most questions and shows numbered sources beside its answers. PerplexityBot builds the index behind those results. Perplexity's documentation says the bot respects robots.txt and is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.
Perplexity also uses a second agent, Perplexity-User, for fetches a person triggers during a conversation. Because a user requested the page, Perplexity says Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt. Perplexity publishes IP ranges for both, so you can allow them in a web application firewall, and notes that changes can take up to 24 hours to take effect.
If you want citations in Perplexity, allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt and make sure your CDN or firewall isn't challenging it. Because Perplexity shows its sources so visibly, it is also a practical place to test whether your pages are being picked up for the questions you care about.
Example
You search Perplexity for “how to choose a payroll provider for a remote team” and see competitors cited but not your detailed guide. Your logs show PerplexityBot receiving 403 errors from your firewall. Allowing Perplexity's published IP ranges makes the guide eligible to be cited.
Why it matters
Perplexity links its sources prominently, so access for PerplexityBot directly affects whether your pages can earn visible citations and referral visits.
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- Perplexity: Perplexity crawlers (checked 30 Sep 2026)
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Related terms
- AI crawlerAn AI crawler is an automated bot run by an AI company that fetches web pages to train models, to build a search index, or to answer a user's question.
- OAI-SearchBotOAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler for surfacing websites in ChatGPT search, and blocking it keeps your pages out of ChatGPT search answers.
- ClaudeBotClaudeBot is Anthropic's crawler for web content that may be used to train its AI models, separate from its Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User agents.
- LLM citationAn LLM citation is a link or named source that an AI assistant shows alongside its answer to indicate where the information came from.