To get cited by Perplexity, let its PerplexityBot crawler through your robots.txt and your firewall, then show up in the places its long source lists draw from: roundups, Reddit and LinkedIn, and a clear page of your own for each buyer question. Perplexity says every answer carries numbered citations, and in our scans it cited about 20 third-party sources per answer, roughly four times as many as ChatGPT.
How does Perplexity find sources?
Perplexity describes itself as an answer engine: it searches the web, picks out sources it trusts and writes one answer from them. Its help center says it searches the internet in real time for each question, gathers material from sources such as articles, websites and journals, then summarizes it with numbered citations that link to the originals.
Two modes go further. Pro Search researches across more sources for a fuller answer, and the Research mode, by Perplexity's account, runs dozens of searches and reads hundreds of sources before writing a report. Pro users can also choose which model writes the answer, including models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Access is controlled by two agents, and they follow different rules.
| Agent | What Perplexity uses it for | Robots.txt |
|---|---|---|
| PerplexityBot | Surfacing and linking websites in Perplexity's search results; Perplexity says it is not used to train AI foundation models | Controlled by it. Perplexity recommends allowing it, plus requests from its published IP ranges |
| Perplexity-User | Visiting a page when a user's question needs it, then linking that page in the answer | Generally ignored, because a user asked for the fetch |
On one point Perplexity's documentation goes further than OpenAI's and Anthropic's crawler pages: firewall setup. If a web application firewall protects your site, Perplexity says you may need to allow its bots explicitly, and it gives rule recipes for Cloudflare and AWS that match both the user agent and the published IP ranges. Changes can take up to 24 hours to show up in its systems.
What did Perplexity cite in our scans?
Our scans cover the questions Cituna tracks about AI visibility software: 33 scans in the 30 days to 22 September 2026 (how we count). Perplexity gave 552 answers containing 11,131 citations to third-party sites, about 20.2 per answer. ChatGPT averaged 4.7 and Gemini 3.5. Perplexity also cited more different sites than any other engine in our scans: 361, not counting the vendors Cituna tracks as competitors.
Its five most-cited sites were llmpulse.ai (300 citations), reddit.com (300), rankability.com (294), aiclicks.io (292) and geoptie.com (221). Four of the five sell AI visibility or AI search software, according to their own homepages. The fifth is Reddit.
Set aside the vendors Cituna tracks as competitors and the engines' own pages, and look at the 100 third-party sites Perplexity cited most:
- Roundups took 73% of their 3,071 citations. The biggest was writesonic.com (155), for alternatives lists, followed by tryanalyze.ai (94), amplitude.com (92), zapier.com (79) and airops.com (76).
- Community sites took 15%: Reddit (300), LinkedIn (113) and business.quora.com (36). The LinkedIn pages in our sample were individuals' articles, such as one person's list of 15 AI search visibility tracking tools.
- Articles took 10%, review sites 2% and reference sites 1%.
The mix depended on the question. For "best AI visibility tracking tool", the sites cited included roundups on amplitude.com, zapier.com and integrate.io. For "how to get cited by ChatGPT", they included Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora's business site and searchengineland.com.
Perplexity also took some questions too literally. For "best Profound alternative", it cited ranker.com 47 times, for lists of alternative music artists. For "how to get cited by ChatGPT", it cited the APA Style blog's page on how to cite ChatGPT 16 times. The study of what seven AI engines cite counts the full cost of these misreadings, and what Perplexity cites has the engine's complete source list.
What does that mean for your site?
More seats, smaller seats. With about 20 sources per answer, there is more room in a Perplexity answer than in a ChatGPT or Gemini answer, but each citation is a smaller part of what the reader sees. Aim for several placements per question: your own page, two or three roundups and a community thread.
Communities count. Reddit alone matched the most-cited vendor site, and LinkedIn was cited 113 times. A useful, openly affiliated answer in a thread your buyers read, or a signed LinkedIn article, is a real route into Perplexity. Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn in AI answers compares how much each engine leans on them.
Your name has to be unmistakable. When a product name is also an everyday word, Perplexity can retrieve the everyday meaning. Put the category next to the name in titles, headings and descriptions.
Check the firewall, not just robots.txt. Perplexity gives firewall rules a section of their own in its crawler documentation. A robots.txt that allows PerplexityBot does nothing if a bot filter rejects the request first.
How do you get cited by Perplexity, step by step?
- Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt on every host and subdomain you want cited.
- Add a firewall or CDN rule that allows PerplexityBot by user agent and by the IP ranges at perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json, following Perplexity's Cloudflare or AWS recipe.
- Wait a day, then check your server logs for PerplexityBot requests that succeed.
- Run each of your buyer questions in Perplexity and copy the full source list, not just the first few links.
- Group the sources into roundups, community threads, articles and review sites, and note which ones already mention you.
- Ask the authors of the roundups that do not include you to add you, with a reason that fits their list. How to get into "best tools" roundups covers the pitch.
- Take part in the Reddit threads and LinkedIn conversations Perplexity cites, under your own name and with your affiliation stated.
- Pair your product name with its category everywhere it appears, starting with your homepage title.
- Track your share of Perplexity's citations as well as simple presence, since a mention among 20 sources is not the same as a mention among four. How to measure AI share of voice walks through it.
What to do first
- Check robots.txt and your firewall for PerplexityBot today, since a bot filter can block it without any sign in robots.txt.
- Copy Perplexity's full source list for your three most valuable questions.
- Pitch the most-cited roundup that leaves you out.
- Answer one live Reddit or LinkedIn discussion that Perplexity cites, openly and under your name.
- Add your category to your homepage title if your name could mean something else.