Perplexity answers a question in prose with citations attached to it. For a measurement product that is unusually convenient: the sources are part of the visible answer rather than something to be inferred, so the question 'what is this answer built on' has a literal answer.
We put the same weekly question set to it as to every other engine, and record the same things: whether you were named, in what order, alongside whom, and which sources the answer leaned on.
Why the citations matter more here
- They are the actionable halfA visibility percentage tells you where you stand. The cited sources tell you what the engine was reading when it decided, which is the part a content plan can respond to.
- Citation is not the same as mentionAn answer can cite your page as a source while recommending somebody else. That is counted separately, because it is a different situation with a different fix.
- Source kinds, not just domainsYour own pages, a review or comparison site, a community thread, a marketplace. A market whose answers are built on forum threads calls for different work from one built on vendor documentation.
What we can honestly tell you: whether this engine named you, in what order, alongside whom, and citing what — in the answers we bought, on the days we asked. What nobody can tell you is why it chose you, or that a change on the site will move it. We report the measurement and leave the causal story alone until we have measured enough weeks to know what its own noise looks like.
Do the engines agree with each other?
Less often than you would expect, which is why everything is reported per engine. A blended score across four engines hides the disagreement, and the disagreement is usually the interesting part.
What if an answer names nobody at all?
That is a real finding and it counts in the denominator. It is recorded as an empty answer, and it is deliberately not the same as a call that failed, which produced no measurement at all.
Try it on your own site, free
No card, and the free tier does not expire — the first verdict takes about six weeks to arrive.