How this works
Blocking usually isn't deliberate. It comes from a setting someone switched on months ago, or from a security tool doing what it was installed to do. Either way, PerplexityBot asks for a page and gets a refusal instead of your content.
Why it matters
When PerplexityBot is blocked, Perplexity has nothing of yours to read. It answers questions about your industry using your competitors' pages instead. You don't see an error and nobody tells you. The traffic simply never arrives.
How to fix
There are only two reasons a site turns PerplexityBot away. Check them in this order.
1. A rule in your robots.txt file. This is a small text file at yoursite.com/robots.txt that tells crawlers where they may go. Open that address in your browser. If you see these two lines, PerplexityBot is blocked:
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /Delete them. You don't need to add anything in their place. With no rule against it, the crawler is allowed. Changes take effect immediately.
2. Bot protection on your CDN or hosting. If robots.txt looks clean and Perplexity still can't get in, something is refusing the crawler at the server level. On Cloudflare this is usually the Block AI Bots setting, or a firewall rule someone added. Turn it off, or add PerplexityBot to the exceptions. Changes take a few minutes to apply.
Where to change this on your platform
WordPress
your robots.txt is normally managed by an SEO plugin. In Yoast SEO it's edited under Tools: how to edit robots.txt through Yoast SEO.
Shopify
the file is generated from a theme template you can edit: editing robots.txt.liquid.
Wix
Wix gives you a built-in editor for the file: editing your site's robots.txt file. Wix also has a separate switch for AI crawlers: blocking AI crawlers from your site.
Squarespace
you can't edit robots.txt by hand here. Squarespace writes it for you, and one checkbox controls it: Request that AI models exclude your site, under Settings → Crawlers. Worth knowing: as of today that checkbox doesn't cover PerplexityBot at all. So if Perplexity can't reach a Squarespace site, the block is coming from somewhere else, usually a CDN or firewall in front of the site.
If you can't find the setting
Some hosted platforms don't let you change this at all. If you've checked robots.txt and your security settings and Perplexity still can't get in, ask your hosting provider whether they filter crawler traffic. That's the one place a site owner can't see from the outside.
