Every AI bot · Perplexity

PerplexityBot

Perplexity's crawler that builds an index for AI search answers.

In robots.txt: User-agent: PerplexityBot

Named by5.5%of readable robots.txt files on the top 1M (33,061 of 600,979)

Of those, block it41.7%shut it out of the whole site (13,777 of 33,061)

Same sites, since CC-MAIN-2026-34+0.0 ptsshare of the same 394,690 sites that block it by name: 1.6% → 1.6%

Via Cloudflare's file2.2%of its blocks come from Cloudflare's ready-made robots.txt (302 of 13,777)

41.7%

25.7%

32.6%

Block the whole site: 13,777Block some paths: 8,512Name it but allow it: 10,772

Every robots.txt file on the top 1M that names PerplexityBot, by what the rules that apply to it say.

Perplexity's other bots

Sites often treat one company's bots differently, depending on what each is for.

Bot	Purpose	Files naming it	Of those, block it
Perplexity-User	Fetches a page for a chatbot user	10,053	32.3%

Who does what

The highest-ranked sites on the top million in each group. Click one to see its whole robots.txt verdict.

Block it

Block some paths

Name it and allow it

Lists skip sites we don't showcase (adult content).

What this means for you: blocking PerplexityBot can keep your pages out of Perplexity's AI search answers, including any links back to you. Decide each bot on what it's for, not who runs it.