Aizii Learn · AI Search

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# How to get Perplexity to recommend your brand

Perplexity recommends brands its two fetchers can reach, and the two follow opposite rules. PerplexityBot builds the retrieval index and respects robots.txt; Perplexity-User fetches pages on behalf of real user questions and generally ignores robots.txt, per Perplexity's own documentation. The user-initiated fetcher is the stronger citation signal. Perplexity keeps its own retrieval index rather than leaning on another search engine's, so work you did for Bing does not carry over. If PerplexityBot is blocked, your pages never enter the index. If your product content only exists after JavaScript runs, the index holds empty pages.

**One warning first:** there is no way to submit your brand to Perplexity. Anyone selling guaranteed placement is selling something they do not control.

## Why Perplexity skips your brand

Perplexity's failure modes are its own:

1.  The two fetchers split the job and split the rules. Robots.txt governs PerplexityBot, which builds the index, but it does not govern Perplexity-User, which answers questions. The most common failure is blocking PerplexityBot in robots.txt while assuming Perplexity still sees the brand through Bing or through the user fetcher. Perplexity's docs describe only its own indexing pipeline, so that assumption has no documented basis, and the index has no path to your pages.
2.  JavaScript-only product content. Perplexity documents no rendering behavior, and an independent study of AI crawler traffic from late 2024 found its fetcher does not execute JavaScript. If price and availability only appear after scripts run, Perplexity indexes the shell. The study is dated, but the practical rule has not changed: put product facts in the initial HTML.
3.  Assuming Bing optimization covers Perplexity. The claim that Perplexity runs on Bing has no primary-source backing in either direction. Being indexed in Bing is not being indexed in Perplexity.

## Step 1: Let PerplexityBot into the index

Check your robots.txt at \[yourdomain.com\]/robots.txt, replacing yourdomain.com with your actual domain. If nothing loads, create the file at the root of your site. Then add these rules near the top, before any broad disallow rules:

```
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /
```

Allowing Perplexity-User in the file costs nothing, but be honest about what it does: since a user requested the fetch, Perplexity's docs say this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt rules. The line that actually matters is PerplexityBot. That is the index builder, and PerplexityBot respects robots.txt. Unlike some engines, Perplexity runs no training crawler: its docs state plainly that neither bot is used to crawl content for AI foundation models, so allowing them is purely a visibility decision. Robots.txt changes take up to 24 hours to take effect.

## Step 2: Check the edge, not just the file

This is the finding our scans surface most often. The robots.txt file says allow, but a bot rule at the CDN or firewall blocks PerplexityBot before it reads a page. The file is what you declare; the edge is what enforces. Perplexity publishes allowlist guidance for Cloudflare and AWS WAF, which tells you where to look: in Cloudflare, open Security \> Bots and confirm AI crawler rules are not challenging or blocking PerplexityBot; in AWS WAF, check your bot-control rules the same way. A robots.txt allow means nothing while the edge says deny.

## Step 3: Prove it worked

After a few days, check your server logs for both tokens:

```
grep -i "perplexitybot\|perplexity-user" /var/log/nginx/access.log
```

The full user-agent strings from Perplexity's own docs, so you know what a real hit looks like:

```
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user)
```

User-agent strings are spoofable, so match the tokens and then validate the request IPs against Perplexity's published lists: perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json and perplexity-user.json. A PerplexityBot hit from an IP that is not on the list is not Perplexity. Read the two tokens differently: PerplexityBot hits mean your pages are entering the index; Perplexity-User hits mean a real user question just fetched your page, which is the stronger signal that your brand is citable.

## Step 4: Put product facts in the initial HTML

View source on a product page. If the price, name, description, and availability are in the HTML, you are fine. If they only appear after JavaScript executes, Perplexity's index holds the shell. You do not need to rebuild the site: server-side rendering or pre-rendering the product templates puts the same facts in the first byte of the page without changing what shoppers see. Keep product URLs stable, since frequently changing URLs fragment your index presence.

### A hypothetical, to make it concrete

Say you run a skincare brand on WooCommerce. Your robots.txt allows PerplexityBot, so the site looks compliant. But a Cloudflare bot rule set months ago challenges all unrecognized crawlers, and your product prices render client-side from a pricing widget. A scan would flag two separate problems for one engine: PerplexityBot allowed on paper but challenged at the edge, and product pages that index as empty shells. Neither is fixed by more Bing optimization. The fixes are an edge allowlist for PerplexityBot and server-rendered product pages. After that, the same pages Perplexity could not reach become citable.

### The fundamentals

These mechanics are shared across every engine and covered in full in their own guides:

-   •llms.txt: the file format, a complete sample, and per-platform publish steps, see our [guide to writing a good llms.txt file](https://aizii.ai/learn/ai-search/how-to-write-a-good-llms-txt-file)
-   •Product schema: the JSON-LD markup Perplexity reads to verify price and availability, see our [product schema guide for AI search](https://aizii.ai/learn/ai-search/how-to-add-product-schema-markup-for-ai-search)
-   •Every AI crawler in one reference table, see our [robots.txt guide for AI search](https://aizii.ai/learn/ai-search/how-to-write-robots-txt-for-ai-search)

## What this guide does not cover

Appearing in Perplexity's answers is one step. Perplexity re-crawls on its own schedule, your catalog changes, and citation behavior shifts as the product evolves, which is why monitoring exists. And a citation is not a checkout: letting the agent finish the purchase is a separate job.

For the ChatGPT version of this playbook, see our guide to getting ChatGPT to recommend your brand. For the Claude version, see our guide to getting Claude to recommend your brand.

## Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User?

PerplexityBot is the background indexing crawler that builds Perplexity search cache. Perplexity-User is the real-time fetcher that visits your page when an end user submits a prompt.

Why does Perplexity cite Reddit and YouTube instead of my official site?

Perplexity heavily favors user discussions and independent reviews to avoid corporate bias. If your site blocks PerplexityBot or lacks third-party verification, it will rely solely on external forum commentary.

How fast does Perplexity reflect robots.txt updates?

Perplexity generally updates its crawler permissions within 24 hours of detecting changes in your robots.txt file.

## Check your own brand now

Run the free scan. It takes seconds, no signup, and shows exactly where Perplexity stands with your site: aizii.ai/aeo-scan

[Run the free scan](https://aizii.ai/aeo-audit)