Perplexity crawlers
Perplexity operates 2 crawlers that may reach your site. They do different jobs, so a single blanket rule for all of them is almost always the wrong call.
| User-agent | Type | What it does |
|---|---|---|
PerplexityBot | Search | Builds the index an assistant searches when it answers. |
Perplexity-User | User-triggered | Fetches your page because someone asked about it just now. |
What blocking each one costs
- Search
- Blocking removes you from answers happening right now.
- User-triggered
- Blocking means that person gets told the page could not be read.
robots.txt
To let every Perplexity crawler through:
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /To block all of them:
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Disallow: /robots.txt is honoured voluntarily. It is the right way to state your intent, and it is not an access control — treat anything you genuinely need kept out as needing authentication.
Sources
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