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How to block PerplexityBot in robots.txt
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's crawler that indexes pages so they can surface (and be linked) in Perplexity answers.
Block PerplexityBot from your whole site
User-agent: PerplexityBot Disallow: /
Block only part of your site
User-agent: PerplexityBot Disallow: /blog/ Disallow: /docs/private/
Notes
Perplexity says PerplexityBot isn't used to train foundation models. Blocking it mainly removes you from Perplexity's index, and therefore from its citations. Perplexity also uses Perplexity-User for fetches a user asks for. Weigh referral traffic before blocking.
A crawler follows only the most specific group that matches its name. If you add a User-agent: PerplexityBot group, it stops reading your User-agent: * rules entirely. Repeat any rules you still want it to follow inside its own group.
robots.txt is a request, not an access control. Reputable crawlers honour it; to enforce a block, use your CDN or firewall. Changes are usually picked up within about a day, because crawlers cache robots.txt.
Check it
Run your domain through the checker. It shows whether PerplexityBot and 11 other AI crawlers are allowed or blocked, and which line decides it.