How Perplexity finds and cites brands
Checked against Perplexity documentation on November 4, 2026
Ocita doesn't track Perplexity. It tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews. This guide explains how Perplexity behaves.
Perplexity is built around search. It says it searches the internet in real time, condenses what it finds into one answer, and adds numbered citations linking to the original sources. That makes it a useful place to see which pages shape answers in your category.
The two Perplexity crawlers
Perplexity’s docs describe two agents.
- PerplexityBot surfaces and links websites in Perplexity’s search results. Perplexity says it isn’t used to crawl content for AI foundation models. To appear in results, it recommends allowing PerplexityBot in robots.txt and permitting requests from its published IP ranges.
- Perplexity-User supports actions people take in Perplexity. When someone asks a question, it may visit a page to help answer and link to it. Because a person requested the fetch, Perplexity says it generally ignores robots.txt rules. It isn’t used for web crawling or for collecting training data.
What to check first
- Read your robots.txt and confirm PerplexityBot isn’t blocked, either by name or by a
User-agent: *rule. The free AI crawler checker does this for you. - Check that your CDN or firewall allows Perplexity’s published IP ranges.
- Look at what Perplexity cites for your category’s questions. Those pages are where you’re compared.
Work on the sources
Since answers show their sources, you can see where competitors are named and you aren’t. Those reviews, lists and communities are the places worth reaching.
What Ocita does today
Ocita doesn’t track Perplexity. It tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews. Its AI crawler check still shows whether your robots.txt allows PerplexityBot.