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PerplexityBot

What's the verdict?

         

SumGuy

10:44 pm on Mar 29, 2026 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I had my IP-blocking down for an hour today (planned) and noticed a hit from PerplexityBot (AWS 18.97.9.102). It got my url-re-write (you are a bot) so I don't know what it asked for.

There was a thread here back about 2 years ago on this bot - I would have posted this there but thread was closed.

I'm wondering what's the verdict on this bot? It doesn't get much press like openAI / ChatGPT / Grok does so I have no idea if people are using it. Has anyone seen it as a referer? Am I missing out on anything by blocking it?

Martin Potter

11:55 pm on Mar 29, 2026 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



It is on my block-list and I have seen it only a couple of times in the last few months, visiting my small website, getting only a simple "404" each time. Can't recall if it asked for robots.txt. So I can confirm that it is still active, even for small targets.

lucy24

12:16 am on Mar 30, 2026 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



:: close study of logs and headers, followed by prolonged head-scratching ::

They seem to have given up on me, only periodically asking for robots.txt (where they get the comprehensive Disallow: due to various header deficits). Unfortunately I don't save headers forever, but it kinda looks as if they changed headers at some time in early 2025, because before then they did get the occasional page.

earlier thread, from August 2024 [webmasterworld.com]

So yet another case of a robot that on Site A never requests robots.txt, while on Site B they request nothing but.