Perplexity searches the web in real time and cites the sources it uses in every answer. To be cited, allow PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User in robots.txt, make sure your pages are indexed and fast, and publish clear, factual, up-to-date answers to the questions your customers ask.
Key takeaways
- Perplexity shows numbered citations — being a source is visible and clickable.
- Allow both PerplexityBot (indexing) and Perplexity-User (on-demand fetching).
- Fresh, specific, well-structured pages are cited most.
How Perplexity chooses sources
For each question, Perplexity retrieves relevant pages, reads passages and writes an answer with numbered citations. Pages that answer the specific question clearly, with facts and recent dates, are strong candidates.
Allow its crawlers
Perplexity documents PerplexityBot, which indexes pages for search, and Perplexity-User, which fetches pages in response to a user’s question. Allow both if you want to be cited.
Make pages easy to cite
- Lead each section with a direct answer.
- Include numbers, prices, timeframes and named services.
- Show when the page was last updated.
- Use descriptive headings and lists.
Sources
- Perplexity, Perplexity crawlers
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