The Walled Web Newsletter

AI bots we track / AI assistants

Who blocks Perplexity-User?

Perplexity-User is Perplexity's AI assistant bot. It visits a page the moment a person asks an AI to. Perplexity says it generally ignores robots.txt: "Since a user requested the fetch, this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt rules." Source

26of 159
sites block it from the whole site
16of 26
of those name it in robots.txt
1of 159
block it from part of the site
4of 159
name it and let it in

Out of the 159 tracked sites whose robots.txt we could read. Test any other name.

Share of sites blocking Perplexity-User, Jan 2023 to now

The same 143 sites in every month. Before this bot existed, sites that block every bot they don't name already kept it out.

Perplexity-User 17%
0%5%10%15%20%2023202420252026Perplexity-User 17%0%5%10%15%20%'23'24'25'26
Table view
MonthPerplexity-UserSites with a file
Jan 20234%143
Feb 20234%143
Mar 20234%143
Apr 20234%143
May 20234%143
Jun 20234%143
Jul 20234%143
Aug 20234%143
Sep 20234%143
Oct 20234%143
Nov 20234%143
Dec 20234%143
Jan 20244%143
Feb 20244%143
Mar 20244%143
Apr 20245%143
May 20244%143
Jun 20244%143
Jul 20244%143
Aug 20244%143
Sep 20243%143
Oct 20243%143
Nov 20243%143
Dec 20244%143
Jan 20253%143
Feb 20253%143
Mar 20254%143
Apr 20254%143
May 20256%143
Jun 20256%143
Jul 20257%143
Aug 20256%143
Sep 20258%143
Oct 202510%143
Nov 202510%143
Dec 202512%143
Jan 202611%143
Feb 202612%143
Mar 202612%143
Apr 202613%143
May 202614%143
Jun 202616%143
Jul 202616%143
Aug 202617%143
Sep 202617%143
Oct 202617%143

Blocked by name (16)

AmazonInstacartYelpThe New York TimesBBCCNNFinancial TimesThe AtlanticThe New YorkerUSA TodayPoliticoThe VergeWIREDThe EconomistLinkedInTikTok

Blocked by the general rules for all crawlers (10)

NextdoorThe Wall Street JournalReutersRedditXFacebookInstagramPinterestThreadsIMDb

Blocked from part of the site (1)

Quora

Named and allowed (4)

Best BuyExpediaVrboIndeed

Recent changes

  • May to Sep 2026
    IMDb Now blocked: ClaudeBot, Applebot-Extended, Meta-ExternalAgent, Bytespider, MistralAI-Training, AI2Bot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and 9 more.
    More blocking
  • Mar to Jun 2026
    CNN Now blocked: Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, Perplexity-User and MistralAI-User.
    More blocking
  • Apr to Jun 2026
    Reuters Now blocked: GPTBot, MistralAI-Training, Amazonbot, Amzn-SearchBot, DuckAssistBot, MistralAI-Index, Claude-User, Perplexity-User and 1 more.
    More blocking
  • Jun 2026
    The Verge Now blocked: Meta-ExternalAgent, AI2Bot, Claude-SearchBot, DuckAssistBot, Claude-User, Perplexity-User, Meta-ExternalFetcher and MistralAI-User.
    More blocking
  • Apr to Jun 2026
    USA Today Now blocked: Amzn-SearchBot, Meta-WebIndexer, Perplexity-User, Google-Agent and Amzn-User.
    More blocking
  • Jun 2026
    The Wall Street Journal Now blocked: MistralAI-Training, AI2Bot, Claude-SearchBot, Amazonbot, Amzn-SearchBot, DuckAssistBot, MistralAI-Index, Meta-WebIndexer and 5 more.
    More blocking
  • Feb to May 2026
    Pinterest Now blocked: MistralAI-Training, AI2Bot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, Amazonbot, Amzn-SearchBot, MistralAI-Index, Meta-WebIndexer and 5 more.
    More blocking
  • Feb 2026
    Reddit Now blocked: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, CCBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Bytespider, MistralAI-Training and 17 more.
    More blocking
  • Dec 2025
    Amazon Now blocked: OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User and Meta-ExternalFetcher.
    More blocking
  • Oct 2025
    The New Yorker Now blocked: ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, DuckAssistBot, Meta-WebIndexer, Claude-User, Perplexity-User, Meta-ExternalFetcher and MistralAI-User. Now allowed: anthropic-ai.
    Mixed
  • Oct 2025
    TikTok Now blocked: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, CCBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, AI2Bot, anthropic-ai and 8 more.
    More blocking
  • Oct 2025
    WIRED Now blocked: ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, DuckAssistBot, Meta-WebIndexer, Claude-User, Perplexity-User, Meta-ExternalFetcher and MistralAI-User. Now allowed: anthropic-ai.
    Mixed