GEO FixAI search readiness check

AI search fix

PerplexityBot blocked — how to fix it

When PerplexityBot is blocked, Perplexity's crawler cannot fetch your public URLs for retrieval and citations. Blocks usually come from robots.txt disallow rules or Cloudflare WAF challenges — often both. Add an explicit Allow section for PerplexityBot in robots.txt, create matching skip or allow rules at the CDN edge, and verify HTTP 200 on key pages in logs. Unblocking improves crawl eligibility; it does not guarantee Perplexity will cite your site.

PerplexityBot may crawl less frequently than Googlebot. Review policy over several weeks of logs, not a single quiet day, before concluding the bot is still blocked.

Unblock PerplexityBot

  1. Fetch live robots.txt and remove disallow rules affecting PerplexityBot.
  2. Add a dedicated User-agent: PerplexityBot section with Allow for public paths.
  3. Cloudflare: custom rule to skip Bot Fight for PerplexityBot user-agent.
  4. Test with logs or curl -A PerplexityBot on a public URL.
  5. Monitor for successful 200 fetches over 24–72 hours.

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See what AI crawlers hit on your site

Technical blockers, missing context, weak AI-readiness signals — in one HTML report.

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You'll get an HTML report on PerplexityBot access and robots.txt on your domain.

Frequently asked questions

Is PerplexityBot the same as Perplexity-User?

No. Unblocking PerplexityBot targets automated crawl; Perplexity-User is a separate string for other traffic.

Will unblocking guarantee Perplexity citations?

No. Crawl access is required; citations still depend on relevance and trust.

Should I allow PerplexityBot if I block GPTBot?

That is a valid policy choice — document each bot independently in robots.txt.

Related questions

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