Perplexity SEO: How to Get Your Site Cited by Perplexity AI

Key takeaways

Perplexity searches the web in real time for each question and shows numbered citations to the sources it used.
It runs two fetchers: PerplexityBot, which builds its search results and respects robots.txt, and Perplexity-User, which fetches pages a user asked for and generally ignores robots.txt.
Perplexity rates whole websites, not pages, for its source labels, and says payments and partnerships do not affect those labels.
There is no paid way into the answers. Crawl access, clear facts and mentions on trusted sites are what work.

2Perplexity fetchers: PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User

Numberedcitations in every Perplexity answer, linking to the original sources

Top 3Reddit's place among domains Perplexity cites most (Semrush)

What is Perplexity SEO?

Perplexity SEO is the work of getting your pages chosen as numbered sources in Perplexity's answers. Because Perplexity searches the web live for each question, it rewards pages it can crawl, that answer the question plainly and that come from sites it trusts. It is GEO applied to one engine, with its own crawler rules and source labels.

Perplexity explains in its help center that it searches the internet in real time, gathers information from sources such as articles, websites and journals, and that each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources. That visible list is the difference from ChatGPT or Gemini, where a business is often named with no link. On Perplexity, being a source usually means a clickable citation. For the general method across all engines, see the GEO hub.

Which Perplexity crawlers should you allow?

Allow PerplexityBot. Perplexity says it is designed to surface and link websites in its search results, is not used to train AI models, and recommends allowing it in robots.txt. The second fetcher, Perplexity-User, visits pages when a user asks about them, and Perplexity says it generally ignores robots.txt because a person requested the fetch.

Fetcher	What it does	Follows robots.txt?	Should a business allow it?
PerplexityBot	Surfaces and links websites in Perplexity search; not used for model training	Yes	Yes, if you want citations
Perplexity-User	Fetches a page because a user asked about it	Generally no, by Perplexity's own description	Nothing to do in robots.txt; a firewall rule would be needed to stop it

One detail surprises people: Perplexity's robots.txt help page says that even when a page is blocked, it may still index the domain, the headline and a brief factual summary. Blocking does not make you disappear completely, it only removes the full text Perplexity could quote.

What was the Cloudflare and Perplexity dispute about?

In August 2025, Cloudflare reported that Perplexity used undeclared crawlers with a generic browser user agent to reach sites that had blocked its declared bots, and removed Perplexity from its verified bots list. Perplexity replied the same day that Cloudflare got almost everything wrong about how AI assistants work. The dispute matters if your CDN blocks AI traffic.

Cloudflare's report counted about 20 to 25 million daily requests from the declared fetcher and 3 to 6 million from the stealth one, and added rules to block the latter for all its customers, including free plans. Perplexity's answer argued that fetching a page because a user asked is an assistant acting for a person, not a crawler. For you, the practical point is simple: if your site sits behind Cloudflare or another CDN with an "AI bots" switch, check what it blocks. You may be stopping PerplexityBot too, and with it your citations.

How does Perplexity decide which sources to trust?

Perplexity does not publish a ranking formula. It does publish its source labels: Government, Academic and Trusted. It rates the whole website, not each page, and checks things like whether the site corrects its mistakes, says who wrote each piece and keeps news apart from advertising. Most domains have no label at all.

The source labels page also states that Perplexity's partnerships, payments and other business arrangements do not affect a site's label. You do not need a label to be cited, but the criteria are a good checklist of trust signals any site can show: named authors, visible corrections, clear separation between advice and sales. Outside the site, forums count: a Semrush study of 217,000 prompts found Reddit among the three most cited domains in Perplexity.

Perplexity SEO in 6 steps

Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt and in your CDN or firewall. Check the CDN's AI bot settings, not just the file.
Answer in the first paragraph. Perplexity quotes short passages; the clearest answer to the exact question wins.
Back claims with sources. In the original GEO study, citing sources, adding quotations and adding statistics were the methods that raised visibility most.
Show who is behind the content: author names, credentials, an about page and a corrections line on articles.
Keep pages fresh where facts change: prices, availability, regulations. Perplexity searches live, so outdated pages lose to updated ones.
Earn mentions on sites Perplexity already cites for your topic: review sites, industry lists, Reddit threads. Never fake them.

If you sell products, Perplexity also runs a merchant program with an application form; its page does not publish fees or covered countries, so read the terms before you sign. The robots.txt guide explains how to allow one bot and block another, and the ChatGPT citations guide covers the other big answer engine.

How do you track Perplexity citations?

Run your buyer questions in Perplexity every month and record whether your pages appear in the numbered sources, and in which position of the list. Then watch referral visits from perplexity.ai in your analytics; GA4 groups traffic from AI assistants in its AI Assistant channel. Perplexity offers no official report for site owners.

Keep the same questions, the same language and the same settings each month, and compare trends rather than single answers. Do the test in Spanish too: in my GEO audits the Spanish answers often cite different sources than the English ones. GA4's AI Assistant channel will show whether those citations bring visits. If you want help with all of this, the home page explains how I work.

Frequently asked questions

Does Perplexity use Google results?

Perplexity says it searches the internet in real time and runs its own crawler, PerplexityBot, to build its search results. It does not say it copies Google's ranking.

Does blocking PerplexityBot remove me from Perplexity?

Mostly. Perplexity says it may still index the domain, headline and a brief factual summary of blocked pages, but not the full text.

Can I pay to be cited by Perplexity?

No. Perplexity says partnerships and payments do not affect its source labels, and its merchant program is separate from the answers' citations.

Is PerplexityBot used to train AI models?

Perplexity says no: PerplexityBot is used to surface and link websites in its search results, not to crawl content for AI foundation models.

Why does Perplexity cite Reddit so often?

Forums answer real questions in plain words, which is what answer engines look for. A Semrush study found Reddit among the three most cited domains in Perplexity.

About the author

Juan José Giraldo is an SEO consultant in Medellín, Colombia, with 5+ years of experience. He works on technical and local SEO for 600+ US car dealerships at Reunion Marketing, an Inc. 5000 agency, and supervises the SEO of 18 US online stores with more than 3 million products at Prontomowers. Read more · LinkedIn.

Perplexity SEO: how to get your site cited in Perplexity answers.