At a glance
| robots.txt name | PerplexityBot |
|---|---|
| Company | Perplexity |
| Kind | AI search. Finds pages for Perplexity answers |
| Visits sites | Yes |
| User agent | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot) |
| Official page | docs.perplexity.ai |
PerplexityBot visits sites to find pages for Perplexity answers. It is a search crawler, so it reads pages so the assistant can quote, cite and link to them. Blocking it usually means the assistant cannot cite or link to the site.
For a business, being readable by PerplexityBot matters because it affects whether Perplexity can use the site in answers. If you block it, Perplexity may not be able to cite or link to you. To allow it, use Allow: / or no rule for it. To block it, add a group to robots.txt with its User-agent line and Disallow: /.
robots.txt lines
User-agent: PerplexityBot Disallow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot Allow: /
Questions
What is PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's AI search crawler. It finds and reads pages so Perplexity can quote, cite and link to them in answers.
Should I block PerplexityBot?
It depends. Blocking it usually means Perplexity cannot cite or link to the site. If you want Perplexity to be able to use your pages in answers, allow it.
How do I block PerplexityBot in robots.txt?
Add these two lines to robots.txt: User-agent: PerplexityBot and Disallow: /
Does blocking PerplexityBot affect AI search or Google?
Blocking PerplexityBot affects Perplexity's ability to cite or link to the site. It does not affect Google.