Perplexity searches first and answers second, every time. Allow PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User in robots.txt. Write the direct answer at the top of the page.
How Perplexity decides who to name
Perplexity searches first and answers second, every time. The answer is a summary of the pages it retrieved, with a numbered source after each claim. It favours pages that answer the question directly, in the question's words, and it reads forums and community threads more readily than the other engines: a Reddit thread titled 'best X for Y' is often source [1].
What Perplexity reads
| Agent | What it does |
|---|---|
PerplexityBot | builds Perplexity's index; the crawler to allow |
Perplexity-User | fetches a page on a user's behalf when an answer needs it; Perplexity says this fetch does not always honour robots.txt, since the user asked for the page |
The lines to have in robots.txt, checked in seconds by the crawler access checker:
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /How Perplexity shows its sources
Numbered sources, shown with the answer, one per claim. The report records every cited URL and its position. Because every claim carries a source, Perplexity is the engine where being cited and being named go together most often.
What the report records
The report uses Perplexity's API with web search on, asked with the buyer's country set, and records the answer, the order of the names and the numbered sources.
When Perplexity is not scored the header says why: our key was refused, our quota ran out, or it timed out. Faults on our side; the report is re-run.
What to do for Perplexity
- Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt.
- Write the direct answer at the top of the page. Perplexity quotes the sentence that answers the question; a page that takes four paragraphs to get there is cited less.
- Be in the threads. Perplexity reads Reddit and the trade forums; a company that is named in a 'what do you use' thread is named in the answer.
Read next
ChatGPT · Gemini · Google AI Overviews · All four engines · By industry · Grounded answer, defined
Questions
Is Perplexity worth optimising for?
It is the engine with the most transparent sourcing, so it is the one where the work is easiest to verify: the source list shows exactly which page put a rival in the answer, and the report lists those pages.
Why is my competitor cited but not named?
Its page was read for a fact, a price or a definition, and the answer used the fact without recommending the company. Cited-not-named is counted separately in the report; it is a foothold, not a mention.
See whether Perplexity names you
Your website, region and work email. The score appears in about three minutes, and the report is a link you keep.