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What is Perplexity-User? How to allow or block Perplexity's crawler

User-agent string to match in robots.txt and server logs: Perplexity-User

Operator

Perplexity

Purpose

AI search & live answers

robots.txt

Ignores robots.txt

Official docs

Perplexity documentation ↗

Perplexity-User fetches a specific page when a Perplexity user's question requires it. Because each fetch is directly user-initiated, Perplexity treats it like a browser rather than a crawler — which is also why it generally does not obey robots.txt.

Does Perplexity-User respect robots.txt?

Perplexity's own documentation says Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt because fetches are user-requested.

Verify it's really Perplexity-User

The user-agent string above is self-declared, so anything can send it. Perplexity publishes Perplexity-User's IP ranges as JSON, which is what makes a rule verifiable: check the request's IP against the published prefixes instead of trusting the name. Requests claiming to be Perplexity-User from outside those ranges are spoofed — useful to know whether you're allowing or blocking it.

Block Perplexity-User with robots.txt

robots.txt — block
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Disallow: /

⚠ Because Perplexity-User's robots.txt compliance is unreliable, pair this with a firewall or CDN rule matching the user-agent string if blocking actually matters to you.

Explicitly allow Perplexity-User

robots.txt — allow
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /

Block Perplexity-User at the server or CDN

Perplexity-User's robots.txt compliance is absent, so a robots.txt rule alone may not stop it. These enforce the block. Matching on the user-agent string still trusts a self-declared header — pair it with an IP check against the published ranges above for a rule that can't be spoofed.

nginx
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Perplexity-User") {
    return 403;
}
apache — .htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Perplexity-User [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
cloudflare — WAF expression
(http.user_agent contains "Perplexity-User")

Find Perplexity-User in your server logs

shell
grep -i "Perplexity-User" /var/log/nginx/access.log | wc -l

Should you block Perplexity-User?

For most sites, no. Perplexity-User powers visibility: blocking it removes your pages from the cited answers Perplexity's assistant shows its users — the AI-era equivalent of de-indexing yourself from a search engine. Block it only if you deliberately don't want that audience. Our guide on blocking AI bots covers the trade-offs in detail.

Check and monitor Perplexity-User on your site

Related reading

Frequently asked questions

What is Perplexity-User?

Perplexity-User is Perplexity's agent for AI search and live answers. Fetches a page a user asks Perplexity to browse live.

Does Perplexity-User respect robots.txt?

Perplexity's own documentation says Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt because fetches are user-requested.

How do I block Perplexity-User?

Add "User-agent: Perplexity-User" followed by "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt file. Because this bot's robots.txt compliance is not reliable, enforce the block with firewall or CDN rules (for example a Cloudflare WAF rule matching the user agent) if it matters to you.

Does blocking Perplexity-User hurt my Google rankings?

No. Perplexity-User is separate from Googlebot, which handles Google Search indexing. Blocking Perplexity-User has no effect on your traditional search rankings, but it does remove your pages from the AI answers Perplexity's assistant serves to its users.

How can I tell if Perplexity-User is crawling my site?

Search your server access logs for the string "Perplexity-User" — for example: grep -i "Perplexity-User" /var/log/nginx/access.log | wc -l. Our free AI Bot Log Analyzer does this in your browser: paste a log file and it counts hits per AI crawler, including Perplexity-User, with per-path breakdowns.

How do I use Perplexity-User?

You don't — Perplexity-User isn't a tool you run. It's Perplexity's own crawler, operated by Perplexity, that visits your site from their infrastructure. The only control you have over it is whether you allow or block it, via robots.txt or a server rule. If you're looking to crawl other sites yourself, you'd write your own crawler or use a crawling library; sending "Perplexity-User" as your user agent would be impersonating Perplexity.

Where is the official Perplexity documentation for Perplexity-User?

Perplexity publishes it at https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots. That page is the authoritative source for the user-agent string and Perplexity's stated crawling policy, and Perplexity also publishes Perplexity-User's IP ranges as JSON at https://www.perplexity.ai/perplexity-user.json so you can verify requests rather than trusting the header.

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