Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt and at your firewall, keep pages answer-first and current, and get onto the pages Perplexity already cites. Its sources barely change from run to run, so a placement that lands tends to stay.
Our pick
Want to see which pages Perplexity cites for your buyers' questions? supereo ours is our pick: it asks your buyers' questions on Perplexity and 6 engines in all, shows every source, reports how often each answer recommends you, and on Autopilot pitches you onto the pages those answers cite. The free audit takes about 2 minutes, no card.
| Crawler | What Perplexity says it does | robots.txt | IP list |
|---|---|---|---|
PerplexityBot | "designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity. It is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models." | Follows it; Perplexity recommends allowing it | perplexitybot.json |
Perplexity-User | "When users ask Perplexity a question, it might visit a web page to help provide an accurate answer and include a link to the page in its response." | "Since a user requested the fetch, this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt rules." | perplexity-user.json |
Source: Perplexity crawlers, read November 8, 2026. User-agent strings: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot) and Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user); Perplexity notes "the version number may change".
PerplexityBot builds Perplexity's index, which Perplexity describes as "covering hundreds of billions of webpages", with "tens of thousands of index update requests" processed each second. Its indexing "divides documents up into fine-grained units" that are "individually surfaced and scored against the original query", which is a plain argument for pages whose sections each answer one question.
# Perplexity search: builds the index its answers cite
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /
# Live fetches for a user's question (Perplexity says this one
# generally ignores robots.txt; allowing it changes nothing, blocking it
# needs your firewall)
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /Perplexity's docs say a firewall "may need to explicitly allow Perplexity's bots" and give the Cloudflare rule. Each bot is matched against its own IP ranges, the action is Skip for the security features those requests should bypass, and the rule goes "above any custom rules that block or challenge requests":
(http.user_agent contains "PerplexityBot" and ip.src in {<PerplexityBot IP ranges>})
or (http.user_agent contains "Perplexity-User" and ip.src in {<Perplexity-User IP ranges>})Two warnings from the same page. The ranges change, so "Set up automated processes to periodically fetch and update your WAF rules". And: "Cloudflare's Bot Fight Mode can't be skipped with WAF custom rules. If Bot Fight Mode is enabled, it can still challenge Perplexity bots that match this rule." If you run Bot Fight Mode, the Skip rule isn't enough. The rest of the Cloudflare checklist is in step 1 of the main guide.
Perplexity's help center says "Each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources". From supereo's runs:
One person ran 75 Perplexity searches and classified 926 citations. Their default mix: vendor-owned editorial 24.3%, YouTube and creator videos 14.1%, third-party comparisons 13.6%, Reddit and forums 12.4%, third-party listicles 11.2%, official product pages and docs 8.9%.
“Perplexity can be nudged, but it cannot really be controlled.”u/Apprehensive_Egg_374 on r/perplexity_ai · Jun 30, 2026 · Read the post
What helpsBecause the sources stay put, the lever is the pages Perplexity already cites for your questions: get listed on them, or publish the page type they are.
“…the pages that get quoted tend to have a plain one sentence answer near the top followed by the supporting detail. Dense intros that bury the point get skipped.”u/Playful_Net_8756 on r/GEO_optimization · Nov 5, 2026 · Read the post
What helpsThat matches how Perplexity says it indexes: in "fine-grained units" scored against the query, so each section should answer one question on its own.
Perplexity doesn't publish a crawl schedule, and its live fetcher is hard to see in logs: on our own Cloudflare zones in October 2026, none of 4,169 user-agent hits came from Perplexity-User's published IP ranges, and 18 Vercel projects logged no Perplexity-User requests in 90 days. PerplexityBot itself can arrive in bursts:
“From 26 Aug to 27 Oct, PerplexityBot fetched 23 distinct paths in total. Then on 28 Oct, between 06:14 and 06:16 UTC, it requested 82 paths from 8 IPs.”u/woodoo139 on r/TechSEO · Nov 1, 2026 · Read the post
Worth knowingKeep your sitemap current and your pages fast to serve, so a burst like that finds every page you want indexed.
So measure Perplexity by its citations, not its crawls: ask your questions, read the numbered sources, and check again after you change a page.
Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt and at your firewall, publish pages that answer one question per section, and get onto the pages Perplexity already cites for your buyers' questions. In our November 7, 2026 run it cited a domain under six months old in at least 8 of 28 answers.
From its own index, built by PerplexityBot. Perplexity says its system splits documents into "fine-grained units" that are "individually surfaced and scored against the original query". It doesn't publish its ranking signals.
PerplexityBot does; Perplexity recommends allowing it. Perplexity-User, which fetches pages for a user's question, "generally ignores robots.txt rules", per Perplexity's docs, so blocking it takes a firewall rule.
Perplexity says PerplexityBot "is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models" and that Perplexity-User isn't used to collect training content either.
Make sure a page on your site answers "what is [your brand]" in its first sentence, and that the roundups and directories in your category list you. Then ask Perplexity and read its sources.
Perplexity's statements come from its crawler docs (read November 8, 2026), its Search API announcement and its help center (November 9). Citation counts come from supereo's November 7, 2026 run and October 2026 panel, stability from its October 16 variance run, and log figures from our own Cloudflare zones and Vercel projects. Quoted posts are word for word. Full method.