Perplexity SEO: How Perplexity Finds and Cites Websites
Perplexity searches the web for its answers and links the sources it used, so being cited starts with PerplexityBot being able to read your pages; Perplexity says that bot surfaces sites in its search and is not used to train foundation models. Leadee measures Perplexity citations through Perplexity's own API. Test PerplexityBot access on your site below for free.
By the Netbase JSC team · Updated
How does Leadee work with Perplexity?
- Uses the official API: Perplexity API (Agent API, sonar model)
Can PerplexityBot reach your site?
Leadee is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Perplexity. “Perplexity”, “PerplexityBot” and the other bot names on this page are Perplexity's own, used only to describe what this tool measures.
What are Perplexity's crawlers, and does robots.txt apply?
Perplexity documents two user agents. They do different jobs, and only one of them reliably follows robots.txt, so treat them separately.
| User agent | What it does | Published IP ranges |
|---|---|---|
| PerplexityBot | Surfaces and links websites in Perplexity search results. Perplexity says it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models. | perplexity.ai/perplexitybot.json |
| Perplexity-User | Fetches a page when a Perplexity user asks a question that needs it. Perplexity says it generally ignores robots.txt, because a person requested the fetch. | perplexity.ai/perplexity-user.json |
Sources: Perplexity docs: Perplexity crawlers; RFC 9309: Robots Exclusion Protocol (read 2026-11-10).
How does Leadee measure Perplexity?
Leadee's tracker sends buyer questions to Perplexity's Agent API (sonar model) and records which brands the answer names and which domains it cites. Each run is billed at the cost Perplexity reports in its own response. Perplexity retired the older chat-completions endpoint on 2026-09-27, and the tracker moved to the Agent API.
Signed-in members can also run one live "Does AI know you?" check through Perplexity, up to 3 a day. Once GA4 is connected, visits referred by perplexity.ai count as AI traffic.
Tutorial
Insight
Tool
Service
Disclosure
Leadee is not affiliated with or endorsed by Perplexity.
Related
Platform guidePlatforms
Free toolPerplexity bot access test
Free toolAI Crawlers and Robots.txt
Free toolJavaScript Rendering and AI Crawlers
GEO guideHow AI Chooses Suppliers
What do people ask about Perplexity SEO?
Does blocking PerplexityBot stop Perplexity from training on my site?
Perplexity says PerplexityBot is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models; it surfaces and links sites in Perplexity search. Blocking it mainly removes your pages from what Perplexity can find and cite.
Can robots.txt block Perplexity-User?
Perplexity says Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt, because a user asked for the page. A firewall rule is the only reliable block, and it also stops Perplexity from reading a page a user asked about.
Does Leadee scrape the Perplexity website?
No. Leadee measures Perplexity only through Perplexity's official API, as it does for every engine it tracks.
Can GEO guarantee results?
No. AI answer engines change their output frequently, and no vendor — including Leadee — can guarantee a ranking or a mention. Leadee publishes confidence intervals on every metric so you can see how much a result can vary run to run.
How does Leadee measure AI visibility?
Leadee runs your prompt set against each AI engine on a weekly to daily schedule, depending on plan, through official vendor APIs (OpenAI, Gemini, Perplexity, Anthropic, DataForSEO) — never by scraping consumer chat interfaces — and reports mention rate, citation rate, average position, share of voice and sentiment with a 95% confidence interval.
Who do I talk to?
Email support@leadee.ai or use Talk to an expert at https://leadee.ai/contact-sales — the Netbase JSC team behind Leadee replies by email or WhatsApp — or WhatsApp the CEO directly at https://wa.me/84937869689.