Perplexity separates search crawling from user-triggered requesting pages

The two agents have different documented purposes. PerplexityBot concerns search crawling, while Perplexity-User page requests a page in the context of a user action. Combining both under “AI crawler” destroys useful signal: routine discovery and a request-specific page request become indistinguishable.

Separating roles supports a narrower question: what kind of access are we observing? Bot indicates the documented search crawl, while User indicates a request-triggered product page request. Neither describes the private index, ranking, or the complete path from query to answer.

Section sources:[1] Perplexity Docs

Do not trust a User-Agent alone; it can be copied. Match the address against the current official IP endpoint and preserve list version and verification time. If DNS verification is used, perform reverse and forward-confirmed reverse lookup. A mismatch remains claimed or unknown rather than entering verified-bot statistics.

At minimum, record the time, URL, response status, response size, complete User-Agent label, network-address verification result, and bot role. Long-term analytics do not need raw network addresses: after verification, truncate and HMAC-hash them under the privacy policy. Keep PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User totals separate.

A short repeatable check can use one page address. First request only the server response headers (the HEAD method), then request the complete page (the GET method). Record the result, compare the crawler's technical name (User-Agent) and IP address with the current official list, and repeat the check a week later. If the list or server response changes, create a new verification record instead of rewriting the old one.

Section sources:[1] Perplexity Docs

A successful 200 response proves that the page was delivered to that request. It does not show that the page entered an index, was selected for an answer, supplied a fact, appeared as a visible link, or brought a person to the site. To claim a source link, preserve an answer archive with visible source naming to the exact URL.

If the server sees a request with the PerplexityBot user agent, first record the time, URL, status, and verified IP range. That is an observed crawl. If a later Perplexity answer links to the same URL, that is a separate observation: the match does not prove that this crawl produced the source link. Keep two rows in the report rather than one conversion.

Before classifying a request, check the user agent, the official range list, forward and reverse DNS confirmation, URL, and response code. Separate crawler, user page request, and unknown automation. Do not block an agent by name alone; record the rule and risk first. Support any source link claim with a separate archived answer.

Perplexity's documentation explains the roles of PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User, but it does not reveal which requested documents entered a particular answer's candidate set or why one link became visible while another did not. A verified Perplexity-User request therefore remains a user-triggered page request unless the answer and its exact URL are preserved separately.

Keep separate fields in analytics for verified crawl, user page request, referrer, and observed source link. A combined number is acceptable only as a technical request count, not as an answer-influence metric. Each week, test classification rules against several real log entries.