Perplexity SEO is the work of getting your pages found by Perplexity’s crawler and cited in its answers. Most of it is ordinary technical SEO aimed at a different bot, plus content that answers questions plainly. This page covers Perplexity only. For AI engines in general, see generative engine optimization, and for the bigger picture, how People Also Ask differs from AI Overviews.
How Perplexity finds and cites pages
Perplexity’s help center describes the process in four steps: it interprets your question, searches the internet, compiles the most relevant findings into an answer, and cites them. “Each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources,” it says, and the search happens “in real-time” (Perplexity Help Center). Its Research mode goes further: the same page says Deep Research “performs dozens of searches automatically” and reads hundreds of sources.
So unlike a model answering from memory, Perplexity has to be able to reach your page to cite it. That makes access the first job.
Perplexity’s two crawlers
Perplexity documents two user agents on its crawler page, and they behave differently:
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity-User | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is for | “designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity” | Fetches a page when a user’s question needs it, and may link it in the answer |
| Used for AI training? | “It is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models” | Not used for crawling or for training foundation models, Perplexity says |
| Follows robots.txt? | Yes, Perplexity tells you to allow it there | No: because a user asked, “this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt rules” |
| Published IP list | perplexity.ai/perplexitybot.json | perplexity.ai/perplexity-user.json |
Perplexity also says changes to these robots.txt settings can take up to 24 hours to show in its systems.
Should you allow PerplexityBot?
If you want to be cited, yes. Perplexity’s own advice: “To ensure your site appears in search results, we recommend allowing PerplexityBot in your site’s robots.txt file and permitting requests from our published IP ranges”. In robots.txt that can be as simple as:
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /The robots.txt file is often not the problem. Firewalls are. Perplexity’s docs walk through allow rules for Cloudflare and AWS WAF that match the user agent together with the published IP ranges, and warn that Cloudflare’s Bot Fight Mode “can’t be skipped with WAF custom rules”, so it may still challenge Perplexity’s bots. If your site sits behind a bot shield, check its settings as well as robots.txt.
Can you block Perplexity?
You can disallow PerplexityBot in robots.txt, which Perplexity says it follows. Perplexity-User is different: by Perplexity’s own description it generally ignores robots.txt, so blocking it means a firewall rule.
That line has been disputed. On 4 August 2025, Cloudflare said it had seen Perplexity use a generic browser user agent and IPs outside its published ranges when its declared crawlers were blocked, and that it had de-listed Perplexity as a verified bot (Cloudflare). Perplexity replied that Cloudflare had confused its traffic with BrowserBase, a third-party cloud browser service it says it only occasionally uses, and argued that user-driven AI assistants should not be treated as malicious bots. It also said its user-driven agents “do not store the information or train with it” (Perplexity). We can’t settle that argument here. If blocking matters to you, read both posts and check your own logs.
What gets a page cited by Perplexity?
Perplexity’s help article and crawler docs don’t list ranking factors, and we haven’t found an official list. Be wary of anyone who claims to know the formula. What you can do follows from how the system works: it searches, reads and quotes. So:
- Be reachable. PerplexityBot allowed, not challenged by your firewall, and pages that load.
- Answer the question near the top. A clear first sentence under a clear heading is easy to quote and easy to check.
- Be the source, not a summary. Original data, first-hand testing and specific numbers give an answer engine something no other page has.
- Show dates. Perplexity is built for current information, so make it obvious when a fact was checked.
- Cover the follow-up questions. Think about what a reader asks next, and answer that too. The questions people already ask on Google are a good place to find them. PAA Box is our free Chrome extension that opens Google’s People Also Ask questions up to four levels deep and exports them to CSV. It does not read or track Perplexity.
None of these is a guarantee. They are the same habits that help on Google, which is why most sites don’t need a separate Perplexity strategy.
How to check whether Perplexity cites you
- Ask it. Put your target questions to Perplexity and read the numbered citations. Answers change, so repeat the check over time.
- Read your server logs. Look for the PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User user agents. Perplexity recommends checking both the user agent and its published IP ranges, since a user agent alone can be faked.
- Use a tracker if you need scale. Ahrefs Brand Radar, for example, lists Perplexity among the AI platforms it runs prompts through (Ahrefs, checked 5 November 2026; see their pricing page for cost).
For the same job on Google, see AI Overview tracking, and for ChatGPT, how to appear on ChatGPT.