How to Get Cited by Perplexity, Gemini and Claude

PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Claude-SearchBot: what Perplexity, Google and Anthropic document about their sources and crawlers, and how to check your site.

By Hadrien Bonato-Pape · Published on October 9, 2026 · Strategy

To get cited by Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, your site first has to be open to their search crawlers (PerplexityBot, Googlebot, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User), then offer pages that answer clearly, with sourced facts. Each company documents its own rules, and they don't fully overlap: blocking the wrong crawler can make you invisible in one assistant without changing anything in the others.

This article pulls together what Perplexity, Google and Anthropic say themselves about their sources and crawlers (pages reviewed in late September 2026). It builds on our pillar guide, GEO: how to get recommended by ChatGPT without paying, which covers the general method and OpenAI's side.

Why look at each assistant separately?

Because each one runs its own crawlers, and each crawler has a specific job: some feed a search engine, some fetch a page when a user asks a question, some collect data to train models. The rule that follows is simple: allow the search crawlers, and make a deliberate call on the training crawlers. The details change from company to company.

How does Perplexity choose its sources?

Perplexity describes itself as an answer engine. Its Help Center explains that it searches the internet and gathers information from sources such as articles, websites and journals, and that each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources. Getting cited means showing up in those numbers.

Its crawler documentation separates two agents:

• PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in Perplexity's search results. It respects robots.txt, and Perplexity explicitly recommends allowing it there. The documentation states it isn't used to collect content for training AI foundation models.
• Perplexity-User steps in when a user asks a question: it may visit a page to help build the answer and include a link to it. Because a user requested the fetch, this agent generally ignores robots.txt rules.

Perplexity publishes the IP ranges for both, which you can hand to your host or firewall provider if they block automated visits by default.

How does Google choose sources for AI Overviews and Gemini?

With Google, you need to separate Search (AI Overviews and AI Mode) from the Gemini apps.

AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google's AI features and your website page is clear:

• there are no additional requirements and no special optimizations needed to appear;
• to be shown as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet;
• these features may use a "query fan-out" technique, running multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources to build a response. A page that nails one specific subtopic can get cited even if it doesn't target the main question;
• you don't need AI text files or any special schema.org markup;
• the usual controls still apply: nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex limit what can be reused.

The Gemini apps and Google-Extended

Google documents a separate token, Google-Extended. Set in robots.txt, it lets you decide whether content Google crawls can be used to train future Gemini models and for grounding (providing content from the Search index to the model at prompt time) in the Gemini apps. Google states that Google-Extended does not affect a site's inclusion in Google Search and is not a ranking signal.

In practice: blocking Google-Extended won't pull you out of AI Overviews, but it can keep the Gemini apps from using your content to ground their answers. If being cited in Gemini matters to you, don't block it on reflex.

How does Claude choose its sources?

Claude, Anthropic's assistant, can search the web. The help page Enabling and using web search says Claude processes multiple sources and that every response includes citations so users can verify them. On Team and Enterprise plans, a workspace owner has to turn on web search first. The pages we reviewed don't say which search index is used.

Anthropic describes three crawlers in its article on crawling the web and how to block it:

• ClaudeBot collects web content for model training. Blocking it excludes your future content from training datasets.
• Claude-User visits pages when a user asks a question. Blocking it may reduce your site's visibility in user-directed web search.
• Claude-SearchBot crawls to improve search result quality. Blocking it may reduce your site's visibility and accuracy in user search results.

All three honor robots.txt directives, including Crawl-delay to slow them down, and Anthropic publishes their IP addresses so you can verify them.

Which crawlers should you allow? The cheat sheet

For reference, OpenAI follows the same logic (OAI-SearchBot for search, GPTBot for training), as explained in our GEO pillar guide.

How do you check your site in fifteen minutes?

1. Open your robots.txt (yoursite.com/robots.txt) and look for the names in the table. A "Disallow: /" line under PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot or Googlebot makes you invisible to that service.
2. Check the catch-all rules: "User-agent: *" followed by "Disallow: /" blocks everyone, search crawlers included.
3. Ask your host whether a firewall or "bot protection" setting blocks automated visits. If so, give them the IP lists Perplexity and Anthropic publish.
4. Check Google indexing in Search Console: a page that isn't indexed can't be a supporting link in AI Overviews.
5. Look for nosnippet tags on your key pages: they stop Google from reusing the text.

What makes one page get cited over another?

Once access is sorted, none of the three companies publishes a ranking recipe. What they do document points the same way: pages that answer a specific question, content in text rather than baked into an image, verifiable facts. For Kestrelwood Cycles, a fictional bike shop, that means one page per question customers actually ask ("How much is a full tune-up?", "Do you repair e-bikes from any brand?"), with the answer in the first lines, prices in plain text and current hours.

Add a brand description that reads the same everywhere and real customer reviews: we cover those levers in the GEO guide and, for local businesses, in local business: Google reviews and AI answers. And remember that advertising doesn't buy a citation: ChatGPT's ads, for example, are kept separate from its answers, as ChatGPT Ads: how they work explains.

How can you tell if you're being cited?

• On Google, visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in Search Console's Performance report under the "Web" search type, without being broken out separately.
• On Perplexity and Claude, the pages we reviewed don't document a tracking parameter. Look in your analytics for visits whose source is those assistants' domains, when the referrer is passed along.
• Everywhere, the most reliable method is still a fixed list of questions asked each month to the same assistants, logged in a tracking sheet. We walk through it in how to measure your visibility in AI answers.

Brand consistency with Oposto

A big part of getting cited plays out over time: describing your brand the same way everywhere and publishing useful content regularly. Oposto learns your brand from your website, its content DNA (voice, colors, products, audience), and uses it to draft posts, carousels and short videos consistent with that description, which you approve before it publishes them to your social accounts. Oposto doesn't change your website or your robots.txt: the checks above are still yours to run. Free plan, no credit card required: try Oposto.

Frequently asked questions

Does blocking Google-Extended remove you from AI Overviews?

No. Google says Google-Extended has no effect on inclusion in Google Search and isn't a ranking signal. It covers Gemini model training and grounding of answers in the Gemini apps.

Do you need to allow ClaudeBot to get cited by Claude?

Anthropic doesn't present it as a requirement. ClaudeBot is for training; it's Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User that, if blocked, may reduce your visibility in searches made with Claude.

Does Perplexity respect robots.txt?

PerplexityBot does. Perplexity-User, which fetches a page when a user asks, generally ignores those rules, according to Perplexity's documentation.

Do these assistants need an llms.txt file or special markup?

Google says no AI text files or special schema.org markup are needed for its AI features. The Perplexity and Anthropic pages we reviewed don't mention any such file.

Can you pay to get cited?

None of the pages we reviewed describes a paid way into the answers. Citations depend on crawler access and the quality of your pages.