How to appear on Perplexity
Perplexity answers by searching the web at the time of the question and cites sources with clickable numbers. To appear you must be readable by its crawler, have pages that answer directly and, for choice questions, be named in the third-party sources Perplexity uses for your industry. We track every day which sources it cites, and which cite your competitors but not you.
How does Perplexity choose its sources?
For each question Perplexity runs one or more searches with its own system and crawlers, reads a small set of pages and writes a summary with numbered citations.
The chosen pages tend to be relevant to the exact question, contain a clear answer and come from credible sources: publications, comparison sites, documentation, communities.
What to check for Perplexity
- PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User allowed in robots.txt and by bot protection
- Main content present in the HTML
- Pages that answer the exact question, with data and comparisons
- Presence in the comparison articles, rankings and communities cited for your industry
- Up-to-date information on pricing, features and positioning
Crawlers and tokens to know
- PerplexityBot
- Perplexity-User
What do we measure on Perplexity?
Every day we ask Perplexity your buyers' questions, by country and language, and record for each answer whether you are named, your position against competitors, the tone and the cited sources. From that we derive mention rate, share of voice, average position and a 0–100 visibility score, with alerts when something changes.
Perplexity FAQ
Does Perplexity use Google?
+
Perplexity runs web searches with its own system and crawlers, such as PerplexityBot, and shows sources as numbered citations.
Why does Perplexity cite my competitors and not me?
+
Usually because the sources it finds talk about them and not you, or because your pages don't answer the question or can't be read by its crawler.
How quickly do results show on Perplexity?
+
Perplexity searches in real time, so improvements can show quickly, as soon as new or improved pages are found.
The other AI engines we monitor
ChatGPT
With search on, it cites the pages it finds on the web; without it, it answers from what the model learned.
Gemini
Google's assistant: it relies on Google Search for up-to-date information.
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft's assistant: it is built on Bing search, so your Bing visibility matters.
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode
AI answers inside Google Search: they start from Google's ranking systems and explore several sub-questions.
How often does Perplexity name you today?
The free audit shows how the main AI engines answer the top 10 questions in your market, against 3 competitors, with 3 priority actions.