AI SearchPerplexity
Last verified: 2026-07-16 · maintained by Unsourced
PerplexityBot is the background crawler that builds Perplexity's standing index — the library the answer engine retrieves from. Being catalogued by it is what makes a page eligible to appear later as a numbered, linked source.
PerplexityBot runs on a crawl schedule rather than in reaction to any one question: its job is to keep a broad, current map of the web so the answer engine always has something to pull from. A page it has catalogued becomes eligible to be surfaced and credited whenever a relevant query comes along, which makes coverage by this crawler the foundation of showing up at all. Shut it out and you're missing from the library before a single question is asked.
PerplexityBot can be checked two independent ways, and a real request passes both. Its source IP has to fall inside the 12 ranges Perplexity publishes, and it has to forward-confirm by reverse DNS: the IP resolves to perplexity.ai, perplexity.com, and that hostname resolves back to the same IP. Anything carrying the PerplexityBot user-agent that fails either test is an impostor, whatever the header says.
Recommended: bait. Allowing it is the precondition for ever being cited: it catalogues you into Perplexity's standing index, so a block leaves you absent from the library before any question is even asked.
If you do choose to act in robots.txt (which crawlers honour but don't enforce):
# PerplexityBot: recommended to ALLOW — blocking can cost you AI visibility User-agent: PerplexityBot Disallow:
What does PerplexityBot do?
It crawls on a schedule to build Perplexity's standing index — the library the answer engine pulls from. A page it has catalogued becomes eligible to be surfaced and credited when a relevant question comes up.
Is PerplexityBot the same as Perplexity-User?
No. PerplexityBot builds the index ahead of time; Perplexity-User fetches a page live when a question needs one the index doesn't already hold. One maintains coverage, the other answers in the moment.
Will blocking PerplexityBot remove me from Perplexity?
Largely — block the indexer and you're absent from the library before any question is asked, so you can't be cited from it. Live fetches by Perplexity-User are a separate, narrower path.
Unsourced checks each crawler against published ranges andreverse DNS, and shows where AI search cites you instead of a competitor.
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