Engines · Perplexity
Visibility in Perplexity: The technical conditions for being cited
Perplexity shows numbered sources next to every answer, so which sites are chosen as sources is directly visible. This page covers Perplexity’s bots, how to allow them and how visibility is measured.
Perplexity uses PerplexityBot to surface and link websites in its search results; the bot does not collect data for foundation model training and respects robots.txt. Perplexity-User visits pages in response to a user’s question. Perplexity publishes the IP ranges of both bots; you may need to allow them in your firewall.
Which Perplexity bots visit your site?
| Bot | Purpose | robots.txt |
|---|---|---|
| PerplexityBot | Surfacing and linking sites in Perplexity search results; not used for foundation model trainingSource 1: Perplexity crawlers | Respected; changes may take up to 24 hours to applySource 1: Perplexity crawlers. |
| Perplexity-User | Visiting a page to help answer a user’s question; not used for web crawling or trainingSource 1: Perplexity crawlers | Generally ignored, because the user started the requestSource 1: Perplexity crawlers. |
Could your firewall be blocking Perplexity?
It could. Many firewalls and bot protection services block unfamiliar requests. Perplexity publishes the IP ranges of its two bots in separate JSON filesSource 1: Perplexity crawlers; allowing those ranges makes your robots.txt permission actually work. Our readiness test shows which bots robots.txt allows; firewall rules have to be checked in your server logs.
How do we measure Perplexity?
- The fixed question set is asked the same way every month; each question twice.
- Because Perplexity numbers its sources, the full source list is recorded: your site, a competitor or a third-party source?
- The accuracy of brand information in the answer is marked separately.
Frequently asked questions
01Does Perplexity use my content for model training?
According to Perplexity’s documentation, neither PerplexityBot nor Perplexity-User collects content for foundation model trainingSource 1: Perplexity crawlers.
02What happens if I block PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot is used to surface and link sites in search results and respects robots.txt; Perplexity recommends allowing itSource 1: Perplexity crawlers. If you block it, your site is not crawled for that purpose.
03How does Perplexity choose its sources?
Perplexity’s bot documentation does not detail source selection. We measure which sites are cited with the question set.
Sources
- [1]Perplexity crawlersPerplexity · accessed: 26 September 2026
How to cite this page
Kaynaq. (26 September 2026). Visibility in Perplexity: The technical conditions for being cited. https://kaynaq.pages.dev/en/ai-engines/perplexity
Updates and corrections
No corrections on this page yet. If you spot an error, write to us; we publish every fix here with its date.