PerplexityBot
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's crawler. It reads web pages so Perplexity can find them and link them in its answers, and it isn't used for model training.
PerplexityBot is the crawler Perplexity uses to find web pages and link them in its search results. If you want Perplexity to cite your site, this is the bot that needs to be able to read it.
Perplexity says in its crawler documentation that PerplexityBot isn't used to collect content for training AI foundation models. Its job is search: knowing which pages exist and what they say, so Perplexity can point people to them.
Why it matters for your answers
Perplexity searches the web for every answer and numbers its sources, so the pages it can read shape what it says. If PerplexityBot is blocked on your site, Perplexity has a harder time finding your pages, and the sources in its answers about your category are more likely to be someone else's.
For example, say Kestrel Roasters blocks every bot it doesn't recognise, PerplexityBot among them. Someone asks Perplexity for the best single-origin coffee subscription. Perplexity can still name Kestrel from reviews and lists on other sites, but it can't cite Kestrel's own page, with Kestrel's own description of what it sells.
Allowing it
PerplexityBot follows the rules for its name in your robots.txt. To let it in, make sure no rule blocks it, either a group that names PerplexityBot or a * group that covers every bot.
Check your host or CDN as well. A firewall that turns bots away blocks PerplexityBot just as surely as a robots.txt rule, and you won't see it in the file.
PerplexityBot is separate from Perplexity-User, which fetches a page when someone asks a question that needs it. Blocking one doesn't block the other.
PerplexityBot in AnswerOrbit
The Audit tab in Website reads your robots.txt every day and shows whether PerplexityBot, and each of the other AI bots we know, is Allowed, Partly allowed or Blocked. If a bot that could read your site is suddenly blocked, we email you. See Website and AI traffic.