What is Perplexity?
TL;DR
Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that answers questions by searching the web and providing concise answers with inline source citations.
Last updated: 2026-03-09
Definition#
Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that combines the conversational abilities of an LLM with real-time web search. When you ask Perplexity a question, it searches the web, reads relevant pages, synthesizes an answer, and provides numbered citations linking back to its sources.
Unlike traditional search engines that return a list of links, Perplexity returns a complete answer with sources. This makes it one of the most citation-friendly AI platforms — every answer includes specific page references that users can click through.
Perplexity uses PerplexityBot to crawl and index web content. The bot is identified by its user-agent string and can be controlled through your robots.txt file.
Why It Matters for AI Readiness#
Perplexity is one of the fastest-growing AI platforms and is known for its heavy use of citations. Getting cited by Perplexity delivers direct, clickable traffic to your site.
To maximize your visibility in Perplexity results, ensure PerplexityBot is allowed in your robots.txt, use answer-first content structure, and maintain strong authority signals.
Related Concepts#
Perplexity uses RAG to retrieve and cite web content. It competes with ChatGPT and Google AI. AI Citations from Perplexity are among the most valuable because they are always visible in the answer.
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