How Luxury Agents Appear in Perplexity

How luxury agents appear in Perplexity answers: what PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User do, robots.txt and WAF access, and what Perplexity does not promise.

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An agent appears in a Perplexity answer when Perplexity can retrieve a page about that agent and choose to surface or link it. Perplexity's own crawler documentation says PerplexityBot "is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity," and it recommends allowing that bot in robots.txt and allowing requests from Perplexity's published IP ranges. A second user-agent, Perplexity-User, may visit a page when someone asks a question, "to help provide an accurate answer and include a link to the page," and Perplexity says that fetcher generally ignores robots.txt because a person requested the visit. The crawler documentation does not publish a ranking formula or promise a mention. Agents can make sure their pages are reachable, clear and consistent wherever Perplexity might look. The same idea, from OpenAI's side, is covered in How Luxury Agents Appear in ChatGPT Answers.

At a glance

Question	Short answer	Source
Which Perplexity crawler is meant to surface sites in search results?	PerplexityBot	Perplexity, Perplexity Crawlers
What if I block PerplexityBot?	Perplexity recommends allowing it in robots.txt if you want your site to appear in search results	Perplexity
Is PerplexityBot used to train foundation models?	Perplexity says it is not	Perplexity
What about Perplexity-User?	It may fetch a page when a user asks a question, so the answer can include a link. Perplexity says it generally ignores robots.txt because the user requested the fetch	Perplexity
Are the two settings independent?	Yes. "Each setting works independently"	Perplexity
How fast do robots.txt changes register?	Up to about 24 hours	Perplexity
Can a WAF or CDN block me even if robots.txt allows the bot?	Yes. Perplexity says you may need to explicitly allow its bots at the WAF, matching each user-agent to its own published IP ranges	Perplexity
Does Perplexity publish ranking factors?	Not on the crawler page fetched for this article	Perplexity Crawlers (no ranking list)

How Perplexity finds an agent

Perplexity describes two separate user-agents, with independent robots.txt settings.

PerplexityBot is the search crawler. Perplexity says it is "designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity" and "is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models." To make a site eligible to appear in those results, Perplexity recommends:

allowing PerplexityBot in robots.txt;
permitting requests from the IP ranges published at perplexitybot.json.

The example user-agent string (the version number may change) is Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot).

Perplexity-User is not that crawler. Perplexity says it "supports user actions within Perplexity": when someone asks a question, Perplexity "might visit a web page to help provide an accurate answer and include a link to the page in its response." It "is not used for web crawling or to collect content for training AI foundation models." The example user-agent string is Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user), and the matching IP list is perplexity-user.json. Because a person asked for the fetch, Perplexity says this fetcher "generally ignores robots.txt rules."

A question like "who are the luxury agents in Miami Beach?" may cause Perplexity to retrieve pages and, if it cites them, to name the agents those pages describe. What it says about an agent is only as good as the pages it can reach.

Step 1: Make sure Perplexity can reach your site

Perplexity's documentation is specific:

Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt if you want to be eligible to appear in Perplexity search results.
Allow traffic from the published IP ranges for that bot — not just a user-agent string, which anyone can spoof.
Give changes up to 24 hours to register.
Treat Perplexity-User as a separate setting. Blocking it in robots.txt may not stop a user-initiated fetch.
If the site sits behind a WAF (Perplexity publishes notes for Cloudflare and AWS WAF), confirm the firewall allows each bot from its own IP list. Perplexity says each bot should be matched to its own ranges, and those ranges "are updated regularly."

hauteliving.com's robots.txt, checked Nov. 8, 2026, already has explicit Allow: / rules for both PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User. That is only half of what Perplexity asks for. The other half is whether the host or CDN actually lets verified requests through.

Step 2: Give Perplexity something clear to cite

Perplexity does not publish ranking factors on the crawler page, so treat these as hygiene, not a formula:

One clear page per agent. Name, brokerage, license market and areas served should be in the visible text of the page, not only in images or scripts.
Consistency. The same name, brokerage and markets on your website, brokerage profile, Google Business Profile and directory listings make it easier for any engine to match them to one person.
Answer real questions. Pages that plainly answer what buyers and sellers ask about your market are the kind of content a citation-backed answer can link.
Don't hide pages. Check page-level indexing directives, robots.txt access for PerplexityBot and CDN access separately. Technical accessibility is not a guarantee of citation.
Video and transcripts help discovery elsewhere. See Video, YouTube and AI Search.

Step 3: Check what Perplexity says, then fix the sources

Ask Perplexity the questions your clients would ask, and open any links it shows. If it cites outdated or wrong pages, fix or update those pages. The same habit helps with Google and with ChatGPT: see AI Overviews & Luxury Agent Discovery and How Luxury Agents Appear in ChatGPT Answers.

What not to believe

"Guaranteed placement." Perplexity's crawler documentation explains how to become eligible to be crawled and linked. It does not promise that any page will be cited.
"Pay to be recommended." The official crawler page fetched for this article does not describe paid placement in answers.
"Blocking PerplexityBot also blocks user-initiated fetches." Perplexity says the two settings are independent, and that Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt.
"Allowing PerplexityBot means my site is used to train foundation models." Perplexity says PerplexityBot is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models, and that Perplexity-User is not used to collect content for that purpose either.

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Related

FAQ

How does Perplexity decide which real estate agents to mention?
Perplexity's published crawler documentation explains how its bots retrieve and link pages. It does not publish the factors it uses to choose among pages it can reach.

What is PerplexityBot?
It is Perplexity's crawler for surfacing and linking websites in Perplexity search results. Perplexity says it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models, and it recommends allowing the bot in robots.txt and by permitting requests from Perplexity’s published IP ranges.

What is Perplexity-User?
It is a separate user-agent that may visit a page when a person asks Perplexity a question, so the answer can include a link. Perplexity says this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt because the user requested the fetch, and that it is not used for crawling or for training-data collection.

Should I allow PerplexityBot if I care about being cited?
Perplexity recommends allowing it in robots.txt "to ensure your site appears in search results," and allowing its published IP ranges. That makes a site eligible to be crawled and linked. It is not a promise that any given page will be cited.

My robots.txt allows PerplexityBot. Why might I still be missing?
Perplexity says a WAF or similar protection may still block the bot unless you allow it from the matching published IP ranges. User-agent strings alone are easy to spoof and are not how you should verify a real crawler.

How long after a fix will Perplexity notice?
Perplexity says robots.txt changes can take up to 24 hours to register. When a page is recrawled or cited after that depends on Perplexity's systems.

Does allowing PerplexityBot mean my content is used to train foundation models?
Perplexity says PerplexityBot is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.

Sources

Perplexity, Perplexity Crawlers (accessed Nov. 8, 2026; https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots redirects here)
Perplexity, perplexitybot.json and perplexity-user.json (published IP ranges; both files accessed Nov. 8, 2026, creationTime 2026-10-28)
hauteliving.com robots.txt (accessed Nov. 8, 2026): explicit Allow: / for PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User)