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The AI company Perplexity is complaining their bots can't bypass Cloudflare's firewall
(www.searchenginejournal.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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So, I assume Perplexity uses appropriate identifiable user-agent headers, to allow hosters to decide whether to serve them one way or another?
And I'm assuming if the robots.txt state their UserAgent isn't allowed to crawl, it obeys it, right? :P
No, as per the article, their argumentation is that they are not web crawlers generating an index, they are user-action-triggered agents working live for the user.
Except, it's not a live user hitting 10 sights all the same time, trying to crawl the entire site... Live users cannot do that.
That said, if my robots.txt forbids them from hitting my site, as a proxy, they obey that, right?
yeah it's almost like there as already a system for this in place
THE CAKE DAY IS NOW. (i dont have an image at hand)
i really wish we wouldn't do those. feels too reddity.
but thanks.
as you wish
*monkeys paw curls and i turn into cake*
Its not up to the hoster to decide whom to serve content. Web is intended to be user agent agnostic.