Rattlesnakes By Mail

Googlebot vs Perplexity-User

Googlebot and Perplexity-User compared on 10 documented fields, from 19 claims, last verified 2026-09-15.

FieldGooglebotPerplexity-UserComparison
cites_sourcesyesyessame
honours_crawl_delaynonot_documenteddifferent
observed_verified_request_ratio_census0.991not documenteddifferent
publishes_ip_listyesyessame
purpose_documentedsearchuser_fetchdifferent
reads_llms_txtnonot_documenteddifferent
respects_robots_txtyesnodifferent
separate_search_and_training_tokensyesnot_documenteddifferent
user_agent_string_fullMozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user)different
verifiable_by_rdnsyesnot_documenteddifferent

Differences

FieldGooglebot statementPerplexity-User statement
honours_crawl_delayGoogle does not support the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive for Googlebot.Perplexity does not publish whether Perplexity-User honours the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive.
observed_verified_request_ratio_censusGooglebot requests to Rattlesnakes By Mail matched Google's published IP ranges on 108 of 109 requests between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z. Googlebot's first request to Rattlesnakes By Mail in that window was /robots.txt at 2026-09-14T11:53:00Z.not documented
purpose_documentedGooglebot crawls pages for Google Search, Google Images, Google Video, Google News, and Discover.Perplexity-User visits web pages to answer questions that users ask Perplexity.
reads_llms_txtGoogle Search does not use llms.txt files.Perplexity does not publish whether Perplexity-User reads llms.txt files.
respects_robots_txtGooglebot obeys robots.txt rules when crawling automatically.Perplexity-User ignores robots.txt rules because a user requests each Perplexity-User fetch.
separate_search_and_training_tokensGoogle separates Search crawling under the Googlebot token from Gemini training under the Google-Extended token.Perplexity does not document Perplexity-User as a search or training opt-out token.
user_agent_string_fullGooglebot sends the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html).Perplexity-User sends the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user).
verifiable_by_rdnsGooglebot requests are verifiable by reverse DNS lookup resolving to googlebot.com, google.com, or googleusercontent.com.Perplexity does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method for Perplexity-User.

Sources