How Perplexity Chooses Its Sources (and How to Be One) | How-to Guide

How Perplexity finds pages, which of its crawlers obey robots.txt, why it cites some sites and not others, and what a local business can change so its pages are usable as a source.

Perplexity answers questions by searching the web, reading a handful of pages and writing a summary with numbered citations. Every citation is a link a customer can click. So the question for a business owner is practical: what makes a page one of the few it reads and quotes?

The two Perplexity crawlers

Perplexity's own crawler documentation names two user agents. PerplexityBot builds its search index, the pool of pages it can later surface and link. Perplexity says it respects robots.txt and recommends allowing it, together with its published IP ranges if you use a firewall. Perplexity-User is different: it fetches a page because a person asked a question that needs it, and the documentation says it generally ignores robots.txt because the request is made on a user's behalf. Perplexity also states that neither agent collects content to train foundation models.

The practical takeaway: if you block PerplexityBot, your pages are unlikely to be in the pool it chooses from. Check that your robots.txt, and any security plugin or CDN bot setting, is not turning it away by accident.

What seems to decide which pages get cited

Perplexity does not publish a ranking formula, so be wary of anyone who claims to know it. What you can observe by asking it questions and reading the citations is consistent with ordinary search logic:

  • The page answers the exact question. A page titled "How much does a boiler service cost in Bristol?" with a direct answer near the top is easier to use than a general services page.
  • The facts are stated, not implied. Prices, areas covered, opening hours and qualifications written as sentences can be quoted. Text inside images cannot.
  • The page is readable without scripts. If the words only appear after JavaScript runs, a fetcher may receive an empty shell.
  • Other sources agree. When directories, review sites and local news describe you the same way, an answer that names you is better supported.
  • It is current. For time-sensitive questions, fresher pages with a visible updated date tend to be preferred.

Run your own check

Open Perplexity and ask the five questions a new customer would ask, phrased the way they would type them: "best emergency electrician near Croydon", "how much to rewire a three-bed house", "is a fuse box upgrade worth it". Note which sites are cited. Usually you will see a mix of directories, review platforms, forums and one or two business sites. The business sites that appear are your model. Look at how their page is built: the heading, how soon the answer arrives, how specific the numbers are.

Then look at the directories that keep showing up. If Perplexity relies on a particular trade directory for your area and you are not on it, getting listed there is a sensible next step.

Things that do not help

Stuffing a page with the word "Perplexity", writing different text for bots than for visitors, or publishing dozens of near-identical city pages. Those tactics either do nothing or risk trouble with Google, which still sends most local search visits. Perplexity also offers publisher and advertising programmes, but those are commercial arrangements, not a route into organic citations for a small business.

A steady approach

Pick the questions customers ask before booking, answer one properly each week on your own site, and keep the answer specific to your area and prices. Over a few months you build a set of pages that any answer engine can quote, and Google can rank them too.

Answering those customer questions one page at a time is what SEO God Mode sets up for a We.Inc site, with topics taken from your own services and every draft held for your approval.

Frequently asked questions

Does Perplexity respect robots.txt?

Perplexity says PerplexityBot, its indexing crawler, follows robots.txt. Perplexity-User, which fetches pages for a specific person's question, generally does not, according to its documentation.

Does Perplexity train AI models on my site?

Perplexity's crawler documentation states that neither PerplexityBot nor Perplexity-User is used to crawl content for training foundation models.

Can I pay to be cited by Perplexity?

Organic citations are not sold. Perplexity runs advertising and publisher programmes, but a business site gets cited by being a clear, accessible answer to the question asked.

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