Unblock PerplexityBot and get cited in answers
Your robots.txt blocks PerplexityBot. Perplexity is different from most AI surfaces in one important way: it cites and links its sources prominently, so being readable by it converts directly into referral traffic. Blocking it forfeits those citations to competitors.
Why does PerplexityBot matter more than most?
Because it’s a live-retrieval crawler. Perplexity fetches pages at answer time and shows numbered citations users actually click. This isn’t abstract training-data exposure - it’s a search engine that pays sources in links, and it can only cite what it can crawl.
How do you unblock it?
Find the blocking rule in your robots.txt - either an explicit User-agent: PerplexityBot disallow or an inherited User-agent: * rule - and open access:
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /Deploy the file to your web root, replacing the old one. While you’re in there, confirm Google-Extended isn’t blocked either, since the same 2023-era lists usually included it.
What if robots.txt looks fine but the check fails?
Then something upstream is refusing the request: bot-protection firewalls and CDN “AI bot” toggles commonly return 403s to PerplexityBot regardless of robots.txt. Allow it there too - our firewall check catches exactly this - then rescan to bank the points.
See where your site stands. The free scan takes about fifteen seconds and shows every fix.
Run a free AI visibility scan