What Is PerplexityBot?
PerplexityBot is the web crawler for Perplexity AI that indexes web content to power the AI search engine's real-time information retrieval and answer generation capabilities, enabling conversational search experiences. You can see how often PerplexityBot visits your website by setting up Dark Visitors Agent Analytics.
Agent Type
Expected Behavior
AI search crawlers index websites to power AI-driven search engines, similar to how traditional search crawlers work for Google or Bing. They regularly scan sites to build and update their index, with crawl frequency varying based on content freshness, site authority, and perceived importance. Unlike traditional search engines with relatively predictable crawl schedules, AI search crawlers may visit more sporadically or in bursts depending on their algorithmic indexing priorities.
Detail
| Operated By | Perplexity |
| Last Updated | 21 hours ago |
Top Website Robots.txts
Country of Origin
Top Website Blocking Trend Over Time
The percentage of the world's top 1000 websites who are blocking PerplexityBot
Overall AI Search Crawler Traffic
The percentage of all internet traffic coming from AI search crawlers
Top Visited Website Categories
User Agent String
| Example | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot) |
Access other known user agent strings and recent IP addresses using the API.
Robots.txt
In this example, all pages are blocked. You can customize which pages are off-limits by swapping out / for a different disallowed path.
User-agent: PerplexityBot # https://darkvisitors.com/agents/perplexitybot
Disallow: /Frequently Asked Questions About PerplexityBot
Should I Block PerplexityBot?
Generally no. PerplexityBot enables users to discover your content through an AI-powered search engine. These platforms typically provide attribution and link back to original sources, potentially driving traffic to your site. Blocking it may reduce your visibility in those AI search results.
How Do I Block PerplexityBot?
If you want to, you can block or limit PerplexityBot's access by configuring user agent token rules in your robots.txt file. The best way to do this is using Automatic Robots.txt, which blocks all agents of this type and updates continuously as new agents are released. While the vast majority of agents operated by reputable companies honor these robots.txt directives, bad actors may choose to ignore them entirely. In that case, you'll need to implement alternative blocking methods such as firewall rules or server-level restrictions. You can verify whether PerplexityBot is respecting your rules by setting up Agent Analytics to monitor its visits to your website.
Will Blocking PerplexityBot Hurt My SEO?
Blocking AI search crawlers will likely hurt your SEO performance in AI-powered search engines. As these platforms gain market share, preventing indexing could significantly reduce your visibility in AI search results and organic traffic from users who prefer AI-powered search interfaces.
Does PerplexityBot Access Private Content?
AI search crawlers generally only index publicly accessible content, similar to traditional search engines. They typically respect authentication barriers and don't attempt to access private content behind login walls. However, they may index content that's publicly accessible but not intended for search engines, such as staging environments or development sites if they're not gated properly.
How Can I Tell if PerplexityBot Is Visiting My Website?
Setting up Agent Analytics will give you realtime visibility into PerplexityBot visiting your website, along with hundreds of other AI agents, crawlers, and scrapers. This will also let you measure human traffic to your website coming from AI search and chat LLM platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
Why Is PerplexityBot Visiting My Website?
PerplexityBot discovered your site through standard web discovery methods like following links from other indexed sites, processing your sitemap, or finding references to your domain elsewhere on the web. Your site was selected for indexing to make your content searchable through their AI-powered search engine.
How Can I Authenticate Visits From PerplexityBot?
Agent Analytics authenticates agent visits from many agents, letting you know whether each one was actually from that agent, or spoofed by a bad actor. This helps you identify suspicious traffic patterns and make informed decisions about blocking or allowing specific user agents.