Search indexing crawler
PerplexityBot: what it is.
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's crawler for surfacing and linking websites in Perplexity search results.
Identity
- Operator: Perplexity
- User-agent token:
PerplexityBot - robots.txt token:
PerplexityBot - In Geordy's crawler directory: Indexes pages so Perplexity can cite them. See the full list.
What it does, per Perplexity
Perplexity says PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in Perplexity search results.
Perplexity says it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.
Perplexity documents a second agent separately: Perplexity-User, which supports user-initiated actions and which Perplexity says generally ignores robots.txt rules because a user requested the fetch.
robots.txt
Allow PerplexityBot
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /Block PerplexityBot
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /Perplexity names PerplexityBot as the robots.txt token. Its page does not print example lines, so the ones below are standard robots.txt syntax around that token.
Perplexity says each setting works independently and that changes can take up to 24 hours to take effect.
Perplexity publishes the addresses PerplexityBot uses at perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json, and recommends that file as the current source if you allowlist by IP.
What Geordy observes
Share of eligible sites where PerplexityBot requested each Geordy-served file at least once, over the 90 days to 12 November 2026.
| Format | Evidence | Sites with a request | Median requests per site per day | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Markdown | Established pattern | under 5% | 0 | Similar to others |
| Schema JSON (JSON-LD) | Established pattern | under 5% | 0 | Similar to others |
| YAML | Established pattern | about 5% | 0 | Similar to others |
| RSS Feed | Established pattern | under 5% | 0 | Similar to others |
| OG.json | Established pattern | 0% | 0 | Similar to others |
| LLMs.txt | Established pattern | 0% | 0 | Similar to others |
| Humans.txt | Established pattern | 0% | 0 | Similar to others |
| Manifest.json | Established pattern | 0% | 0 | Similar to others |
Figures are rounded and cover only sites that served the file for the whole window. Requests are to Geordy-served files, identified by user agent; a request is not evidence of use or citation. Pairs with too few independent sites are not shown. See how we measure.
Check your site
See whether your robots.txt currently allows or blocks PerplexityBot, and what else AI crawlers find on your site.
Sources
Last reviewed: 19 October 2026. Every statement about what PerplexityBot does comes from the operator's own documentation: