PerplexityBot
Perplexity · Answer index · robots.txt token perplexitybot
3% of 30,177 measured domains disallow perplexitybot in robots.txt at the site root. Separately, and independently of robots.txt, 10.6% of 30,183 reachable domains refuse a request carrying this exact user agent at the network edge - a refusal the site's robots.txt does not declare and its owner often has not chosen.
Measured 2026-10-06 by direct request to every domain in the corpus. Method: how this is measured. Reuse under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.
Cite as: Crawl Census, "PerplexityBot blocking rate", measured 2026-10-06. https://crawlcensus.com/bot/perplexitybot
What it is definition
Indexes and links pages in Perplexity search results; not used to collect foundation model training data.
PerplexityBot is operated by Perplexity and classified here as answer index. These agents build the index an answer engine queries at question time. Disallowing one removes the site from those answers and from the citations that link back to it. Training is governed by separate tokens, so this is the expensive block, not the protective one.
Disallowing perplexitybot removes the site from the index Perplexity queries when it answers a question. The engine can then neither quote nor link the page, which is a traffic decision rather than a licensing one. Model training is governed by separate tokens.
- robots.txt token
- perplexitybot
- Operator
- Perplexity
- Purpose
- Answer index
- Honors robots.txt
- yes
- Documentation
- https://docs.perplexity.ai/docs/resources/perplexity-crawlers
Identity on the wire exact string
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)curl -A 'Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)' https://example.com/Replace the host with your own. A 403, a challenge page or an empty body means the edge is blocking the agent whatever robots.txt says.
How to allow it, how to block it robots.txt
User-agent: perplexitybot
Allow: /Absent any rule, the agent is already allowed, so this group only matters when your * group disallows something. Naming the agent replaces the * group for it entirely, so repeat here every disallow you still want to apply to it.
User-agent: perplexitybot
Disallow: /Disallowing perplexitybot removes the site from the index Perplexity queries when it answers a question. The engine can then neither quote nor link the page, which is a traffic decision rather than a licensing one. Model training is governed by separate tokens.
Sites that block it 60 shown
See every measured domain that blocks PerplexityBot
This list is served from a cache rebuilt just now. It is discarded the moment a rescan records a policy change for this agent, so a site that has just changed its robots.txt will drop off it within one scan rather than waiting for the cache to expire.
Compare Perplexity
Perplexity runs 2 agents in this registry, and they do different jobs. Blocking one says nothing about the others.
Common questions answered
Does blocking PerplexityBot remove me from Perplexity?
Yes, in effect. PerplexityBot builds the index Perplexity reads at question time, so disallowing it takes the site out of those answers and out of the citations that link back to it. This is the block that costs traffic.
How do I verify PerplexityBot requests are genuine?
Perplexity publishes the address ranges its agents fetch from in its crawler documentation. Compare the source address against that list. Independent testing has recorded retrieval from addresses outside the published ranges and without the declared token, so a match confirms a genuine request but a miss does not prove the traffic is not Perplexity.
Check your own site free
See whether your robots.txt admits PerplexityBot today, and whether your edge agrees with it.