Perplexity
Also called: Perplexity AI
Definition
Perplexity is a conversational search engine launched in 2022. Unlike an assistant that sometimes answers from memory, it runs a web search for almost every question, then writes an answer where each claim points to a numbered source.
Its crawler, PerplexityBot, explores the web to feed its index. Because it cites a lot, and visibly, Perplexity is often one of the first engines where a brand sees traffic arriving from AI, with perplexity.ai as the referring site in its analytics.
Example
Asked “which tool can transcribe my meetings?”, Perplexity shows an answer with numbers in square brackets and, above it, the pages it read: a comparison, a discussion thread, a product page.
What it means for your AI visibility
Every source Perplexity cites is clickable. So it's an engine where a citation of your site turns into a visit more easily, as long as PerplexityBot can read your pages.
Free toolAI crawler simulatorSee your page the way GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot see it.Related terms
- Generative engineA generative engine writes an answer from several sources instead of showing links. Examples: ChatGPT Search, Perplexity.
- CitationA citation is when an AI points to a page as a source of its answer, with a link. Unlike a plain mention, it can bring traffic.
- AI crawlerAn AI crawler is a bot that browses the web on behalf of an AI company, to train its models or feed its answers.
- AI trafficAI traffic covers the visits a site gets from AI assistants and generative engines, when a user clicks on a cited source.
- RAGRAG lets an AI look for documents before answering, then write its answer from what it found.
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