PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User: two agents, two different rules
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Short answer
Perplexity runs two documented agents. PerplexityBot indexes sites so they can be linked in Perplexity results, and Perplexity's documentation states it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models. Perplexity-User visits a page to answer a specific user question. Both publish IP ranges as JSON.
The strings
Quoted from Perplexity's own bot documentation, read 23 August 2026.
| Field | PerplexityBot | Perplexity-User |
|---|---|---|
| robots.txt token | PerplexityBot | Perplexity-User |
| User agent | 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) |
| IP ranges | perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json | perplexity.com/perplexity-user.json |
| Purpose | Surface and link websites in Perplexity results | Visit a page to help answer a live user question |
Neither one is a training crawler
This is the fact most blocklists get wrong about Perplexity. Its documentation says directly that PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity, and that it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.
So the usual reason for blocking an AI bot, keeping your text out of a training set, does not apply to either Perplexity agent. Blocking PerplexityBot buys you nothing on training and costs you the ability to be linked in Perplexity answers.
What blocking costs a store
Perplexity cites sources inline and links them, which makes it one of the few assistant surfaces that sends measurable referral clicks rather than absorbing the answer. A store that blocks PerplexityBot removes itself from that.
There is a second path into Perplexity that robots.txt does not govern, which is its merchant programme and product feed. We wrote that up separately, and the two are worth treating as different projects.
How you actually change this on Shopify
Shopify generates robots.txt for you and there is no field in the admin for it. To change a rule you add a `robots.txt.liquid` template to your theme, which Shopify then renders instead of the default while still keeping its own future updates.
Shopify's help page is blunt about the risk: editing this file is an unsupported customization, Shopify Support will not help with it, and it says in as many words that incorrect use of the feature can result in loss of all traffic. Copy the default rules first, add your block, and read the rendered file at /robots.txt afterwards.
- Online Store, then Themes, then Edit code
- Add a new template called robots.txt.liquid
- Keep the default rules, then add your own user-agent group
- Load yourstore.com/robots.txt and read what actually rendered
Checking a request really came from Perplexity
Perplexity publishes both agents' IP ranges as JSON at the URLs in the table above. Anything can send a header claiming to be PerplexityBot, so if you are investigating load or an unexpected fetch, resolve the address against the published list before acting on it.
Frequently asked questions
What is PerplexityBot's user agent string?
Perplexity documents it as "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)". Its robots.txt token is simply PerplexityBot.
What is the difference between PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User?
PerplexityBot indexes sites so they can be surfaced and linked in Perplexity results. Perplexity-User fetches a specific page because a user's question required it. They take separate robots.txt rules.
Does PerplexityBot train AI models on my content?
Perplexity's documentation states that PerplexityBot is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models, and that its purpose is to surface and link websites in Perplexity search results.
How do I block PerplexityBot on Shopify?
Add a robots.txt.liquid template to your theme with a User-agent: PerplexityBot group. Shopify treats this as an unsupported customization and warns that incorrect use can result in loss of all traffic, so preserve the default rules.
Sources
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