AI search fix
PerplexityBot blocked — how to fix it
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's crawler for fetching pages used in AI answers and citations. When it is blocked in robots.txt or at the CDN edge, your content stays unavailable to Perplexity even if Google indexes it normally. The fix is to allow the PerplexityBot user agent in both layers and confirm production logs show successful fetches, not 403 or challenge responses.
Check robots.txt first for a `User-agent: PerplexityBot` section with Disallow rules, or a global disallow that catches all bots. Then review Cloudflare Bot Fight Mode, managed rules, and security plugins that treat automation as hostile. Mirror the same allow pattern you use for GPTBot so policy stays consistent across AI platforms you trust.
How to fix PerplexityBot blocked
- Open live /robots.txt and search for PerplexityBot or broad disallow blocks.
- Add or update a PerplexityBot section with explicit Allow paths you want crawled.
- In Cloudflare WAF, add an allow or skip rule when User Agent contains PerplexityBot.
- Deploy and verify with server logs or a controlled request using the PerplexityBot user agent.
- Monitor for 24 hours to confirm repeated successful responses.
You'll get an HTML report showing whether PerplexityBot is allowed in robots.txt and at your edge firewall.
Run Express CheckRelated questions
- Cloudflare blocking AI crawlers — how to fix itBroader edge-level allowlist pattern for trusted AI bots.
- AI crawlers blocked by robots.txt — how to fix itFix policy-level disallow rules that still block bots.
- Website not showing in Perplexity — how to fix itDiagnose visibility beyond PerplexityBot access alone.
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