Websites blocking Perplexity-User
The user-agent Perplexity uses when it visits a page in response to a specific user question rather than as part of scheduled crawling.
Operated by Perplexity · User-request fetcher · operator documentation
3.95%
block Perplexity-User
974K of 24.68 million domains with a known robots.txt policy
0.13%
block it by name
32,351 domains, the rest inherit a blanket
* block
0.40%
restrict it by name
98,081 domains name it and close some of its paths
0.84%
name it in robots.txt
208K domains give it rules of their own
Data for Oct 2026. All four percentages
divide by the same 24.68 million domains. Blocked counts both
explicit User-agent: Perplexity-User blocks and blanket
* blocks the crawler inherits.
Blocking trend
2%
4%
6%
Aug 2026
Sep 2026
Oct 2026
Share of domains with a known robots.txt policy
blocking Perplexity-User in each monthly crawl. The denominator moves with each crawl and is
defined in the methodology.
Historical mentions, HTTP Archive
0.3%
0.5%
0.8%
1%
Feb 2025
Jul 2025
Dec 2025
Apr 2026
Sep 2026
Share of sites in each month's
HTTP Archive crawl whose robots.txt named
Perplexity-User. This series counts
mentions only (the archive keeps no rule text), comes from a different population than our own
crawl above, and the two are never merged.
High-authority sites blocking Perplexity-User by name
| Domain | OPROpen Page Rank | Blocking since |
|---|---|---|
| linkedin.com | 9.82/10 | Aug 2026 |
| nytimes.com | 9.28/10 | Aug 2026 |
| cnn.com | 9.16/10 | Oct 2026 |
| amazon.co.jp | 9.16/10 | Sep 2026 |
| amazon.de | 9.13/10 | Oct 2026 |
| usatoday.com | 9.08/10 | Oct 2026 |
| wired.com | 9.07/10 | Oct 2026 |
| lnkd.in | 9.05/10 | Aug 2026 |
| cbc.ca | 9.03/10 | Oct 2026 |
| uol.com.br | 8.92/10 | Oct 2026 |
| huffpost.com | 8.91/10 | Aug 2026 |
| newyorker.com | 8.90/10 | Oct 2026 |
| mashable.com | 8.87/10 | Sep 2026 |
| francetvinfo.fr | 8.87/10 | Aug 2026 |
| arstechnica.com | 8.84/10 | Aug 2026 |
| buzzfeed.com | 8.84/10 | Oct 2026 |
| zeit.de | 8.81/10 | Sep 2026 |
| pcmag.com | 8.80/10 | Aug 2026 |
| nikkei.com | 8.79/10 | Oct 2026 |
| welt.de | 8.78/10 | Oct 2026 |
| epfl.ch | 8.74/10 | Oct 2026 |
| rfi.fr | 8.73/10 | Aug 2026 |
| verywellmind.com | 8.72/10 | Aug 2026 |
| metro.co.uk | 8.72/10 | Aug 2026 |
| people.com | 8.70/10 | Aug 2026 |
| bild.de | 8.70/10 | Oct 2026 |
| vanityfair.com | 8.64/10 | Oct 2026 |
| adage.com | 8.62/10 | Aug 2026 |
| asahi.com | 8.62/10 | Oct 2026 |
| chron.com | 8.62/10 | Aug 2026 |
Sites whose robots.txt names Perplexity-User (or a legacy
alias) with a full block, ranked by Open Page Rank. Sites blocking every crawler with a blanket
* rule are counted above but not listed here. Since dates start at our first
observation of the rule.