How to Get Cited by Perplexity (What Its Crawler Docs Actually Say)

By Katleen, Founder of PARCHMNT · Updated October 29, 2026

To get cited by Perplexity, allow PerplexityBot in your robots.txt, publish pages that answer a specific question in their first paragraph with linked sources and a visible date, and be present in the community threads and review sites Perplexity leans on. Then ask it the question yourself and read the sources panel to see whether you are there.

Perplexity shows its sources more openly than any other assistant, which makes it the easiest one to learn from. This post is built on Perplexity's own crawler documentation, the research into what generative engines cite, and what the sources panel shows when you look.

How does Perplexity choose what to cite?

Perplexity cites pages its search crawler has read and judged relevant to the question. As of October 2026, its documentation says PerplexityBot "is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity," that it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models, and that Perplexity recommends allowing it in robots.txt.

A second agent, Perplexity-User, fetches a page when a person asks about it. The same page says it "supports user actions within Perplexity," is not used for crawling or training, and generally ignores robots.txt rules because a user requested the fetch. Each setting works independently, and Perplexity says changes may take up to 24 hours to be reflected.

The practical consequence: being citable starts with the crawler being allowed in. A page PerplexityBot cannot read cannot be surfaced, however good it is.

Which robots.txt lines let Perplexity in?

A site is in unless its robots.txt says otherwise. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and look for a User-agent: PerplexityBot group. If it is followed by Disallow: /, the crawler is out. If there is no such group and no User-agent: * group with Disallow: /, it is in.

To say so explicitly, and to keep it in even if a later rule blocks other bots:

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

Many "block AI bots" templates list PerplexityBot alongside the training crawlers, because the templates were written when every AI bot looked the same. Perplexity's documentation separates search from training, as OpenAI's does for OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot. Our post on checking whether robots.txt blocks AI crawlers has the full list of lines.

What page shape gets cited?

The page that gets cited answers the question in its first paragraph, supports each claim with a linked source, says when its facts apply, and reads as if written by a person who has done the thing. Perplexity quotes passages, so each section has to make sense on its own.

The research on generative engines measured this directly. Aggarwal and colleagues at Princeton and Georgia Tech found in 2023 that adding citations, quotations and statistics raised a page's visibility in generative engine answers by 30 to 40 percent, and they tested on Perplexity itself: keyword stuffing performed about 10 percent worse than doing nothing. For a page you want Perplexity to cite, that means one more linked figure beats one more repetition of the phrase, every time.

Dates matter more on Perplexity than on Google, because its answers lean toward recent pages. Put the date the text last changed where it can be seen, and mean it: a page whose "updated" date moves while its facts stay from 2021 is the kind of page a reader notices. Our guide to writing a blog post that gets quoted by AI covers the shape section by section.

Why do community threads and reviews show up so often?

Ask Perplexity a "which should I choose" question and read the sources panel: forum threads, Q&A sites and review pages appear next to the articles, often above them. That is an observation anyone can repeat in a minute, not a published statistic, and it has a plain explanation: those pages contain many first-hand answers to exactly the question asked, dated, from people with no page to sell.

What to do with it:

1. Answer real questions in the communities your customers use, under your own name, with the detail only you have. A signed, useful answer in a thread Perplexity already reads is a mention in the place it counts.
2. Collect honest reviews on the sites your customers read, because review pages are sources too.
3. Describe your business the same way everywhere, so the assistant can connect the thread, the review and your site as one business.

PARCHMNT is a writing tool that researches what ranks for a search, writes the page, checks every claim and tracks where it lands in Google and AI answers. Its Get mentioned plan lists, for a particular business, the communities and review sites worth being present in, with the rules each one has on self-promotion, and one specific action for Perplexity among the assistants.

How do you check whether Perplexity cites you?

Ask Perplexity the question your page answers, in two or three wordings, and open the sources panel on each answer. Write down three things: whether your page is among the sources (and how high), whether your business is named in the answer, and whether it is recommended rather than mentioned. Repeat monthly with the same wordings, because answers change as the web changes. In our experience the sources panel changes between wordings of the same question, which is why PARCHMNT's visibility check records consistency across phrasings rather than one answer.

The sources panel is also the diagnosis. If your page is missing, the pages that are there show what Perplexity preferred: a more direct opening, a fresher date, a thread with more first-hand detail. Each is something you can change.

What should you do when Perplexity cites a competitor instead?

Read the cited page the way an editor would: what does it answer in its first paragraph that yours does not, which sources does it link, when was it updated, and where else is that business mentioned? Then close the gaps on your page and get mentioned where they are mentioned.

Resist the urge to rewrite the whole page. The usual gap is narrow: an opening that explains instead of answering, a figure without a source, a question the cited page covers in a section yours lacks. Fix the gap, keep the rest, and check again next month.

Key takeaways

• PerplexityBot decides what Perplexity can surface; allow it in robots.txt. Perplexity-User fetches on a person's request and generally ignores robots.txt.
• PerplexityBot is not used for training, by Perplexity's own account.
• Citations, quotations and statistics raised visibility 30 to 40 percent in the research that defined the field; keyword stuffing made pages about 10 percent worse on Perplexity itself.
• Community threads and review pages appear in Perplexity's sources often; be present in them under your own name.
• Ask Perplexity your question monthly and read the sources panel; it shows exactly what beat you.

Frequently asked questions

Does blocking PerplexityBot stop Perplexity-User?

No. Perplexity says the two agents are independent and that Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt because a user asked for the page. Blocking PerplexityBot removes your site from Perplexity's search results; it does not stop a person from asking Perplexity to read a page they already have the address of.

Does Perplexity use pages for training?

Perplexity's documentation says PerplexityBot is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models, and that Perplexity-User is not used to collect content for training either. If you want to be cited, there is no training tradeoff to weigh on Perplexity's side.

How fresh does a page need to be?

Perplexity publishes no figure. Its answers favour recent pages, so keep the date the text last changed visible and honest, and refresh the page when its facts age or when the question people ask has shifted, not on a calendar.

Does Perplexity need structured data?

Perplexity's documentation does not mention schema markup, so there is no evidence it is required. Structured data still helps Google and makes your author and date explicit, so keep it; just do not expect it to move Perplexity by itself.

How to get cited by Perplexity, in one list

Allow the crawler, write the answer first, be present where Perplexity looks, and ask it monthly. If you would rather have the research, the writing, the checks and the monthly asking done for you, try one article free.