Engine guide: Perplexity

How to get cited by Perplexity

Perplexity shows its sources beside every answer. That makes it easy to test and unforgiving of a blocked page.

The short answer

Perplexity documents two agents: PerplexityBot, which surfaces and links sites in its search results and is not used for foundation-model training, and Perplexity-User, which fetches pages a person asks about. Allow PerplexityBot and its published IP ranges, keep pages fast, and state facts with dates.

What ranked on 26 September 2026: Ranking pages are mostly GEO tool blogs. Perplexity's own bot documentation rarely reaches page one, though it is the primary source for which agents to allow.

Last reviewed 19 October 2026 · 2 sources

What makes Perplexity different

Its docs are specific about crawler access, and WAF rules are where sites usually fail.

PerplexityBot surfaces and links sites. It is not used for foundation-model training
Perplexity-User fetches on a user's request and generally ignores robots.txt
Robots.txt changes can take up to 24 hours to take effect
A WAF can block both bots, so allow by user agent and published IP list
Sources appear as numbered cards beside the answer

Claim and reality

Things that sound right and are not.

Flip a card for what is actually true.

Claim
Blocking PerplexityBot keeps our content out.
Claim
Long guides get cited more.
Claim
One test run tells us where we stand.

Where to start

In order. Tick as you go, or copy the list.

0 of 5 done

Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt and in CDN or WAF bot rules, by user agent and IP list.
Check key pages return full HTML quickly.
Add a visible last-updated date and a short summary to time-sensitive pages.
Run core prompts several times and note which source domains recur.
Correct your details on the recurring third-party domains.

Questions

Asked most.

How do I know if Perplexity is blocked?

Check robots.txt and WAF rules for PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User. Perplexity documents allow rules for Cloudflare and AWS WAF.

Does Perplexity use Google or Bing?

Its docs describe PerplexityBot surfacing sites in its own results. I found no published list of other providers. Crawler access is the part you control.

Why do Reddit threads outrank us?

Threads carry first-hand answers in plain language that match conversational questions. Answer the same question plainly on your page and in the thread.

Evidence, labelled

What is confirmed, what is reported, what is a hunch.

Each claim is labelled and sourced. Google rows speak only for Google.

Last reviewed 19 October 2026 · 2 sources

Confirmed: Stated in the platform's own documentation or measured in published data.
Reported: Third-party study or vendor data. Method and conflicts noted.
Hypothesis: Plausible and common advice. No controlled public evidence.

PerplexityBot is for search results, not training.
Confirmed
Perplexity says it surfaces and links sites and is not used to crawl content for foundation models.
Perplexity, crawlers (opens in a new tab)
Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt.
Confirmed
Perplexity says a user requested the fetch. Changes to PerplexityBot rules can take up to 24 hours.
Perplexity, crawlers (opens in a new tab)
A page that matches a sub-question gets cited.
Reported
Preprint on generative engines, ChatGPT focus: titles and paragraphs matching the question helped within a site.
arXiv preprint, Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab)
Answer-first placement lifts Perplexity citations.
Hypothesis
Common advice. I found no controlled public test for Perplexity.
No public source

Sources, fetched 19 October 2026

01Perplexity crawlers: PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User (opens in a new tab)Perplexity Docs · No date shown
02What Drives AI Citations? Content, Retrieval and Model Knowledge (Chen and Koudas) (opens in a new tab)arXiv 2610.15033 (preprint) · 10 Oct 2026

Go deeper

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