PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes content for Perplexity AI, the answer engine that competes with Google Search and ChatGPT for high-intent queries. Identified by User-Agent 'PerplexityBot' and 'Perplexity-User' for live fetches.
Perplexity weights recency and citation accuracy heavily. Pages with clear FAQ schema, dated content, and structured llms.txt files tend to surface more often in Perplexity answers than in other engines.
Perplexity publishes a public crawler policy and IP ranges. The user-facing experience displays citation links prominently below each answer, which makes Perplexity citations particularly valuable for referral traffic.
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Frequently asked
Why does Perplexity matter for citations?
Perplexity displays citation links prominently below every answer. Unlike ChatGPT or Claude, Perplexity citations often drive measurable referral traffic. For B2B brands, ranking in Perplexity answers is one of the highest-leverage AIO targets.
How does PerplexityBot rank content?
Recency, FAQ schema, structured llms.txt files, and citation count from authoritative sources are the main signals. Perplexity weights freshness more heavily than ChatGPT or Claude do.
Should I allow Perplexity-User in robots.txt?
Yes. PerplexityBot indexes proactively; Perplexity-User fetches pages on demand when users ask Perplexity about a specific URL. Both should be allowed for full coverage.
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