Every answer is built from cited sources
Perplexity says it searches the internet and gathers information from sources such as articles, websites and journals, and that each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources.[1]
Because every answer shows its sources, being one of the pages it cites, and being named on the pages it cites, is what gets a business recommended there.
PerplexityBot decides whether you can appear
PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in Perplexity's search results, and is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models. Perplexity recommends allowing it in robots.txt, and allowing requests from its published IP ranges, so your site can appear.[2]
Perplexity-User is different: it loads a page when a person's question needs it, may cite that page in the answer, and generally ignores robots.txt because a person asked for it.[2]
Some sources carry a label
Some citations show a shield icon with a Government, Academic or Trusted label. Labels apply to whole websites, not single pages. Perplexity's review asks questions such as whether a site corrects its mistakes, says who wrote each piece, and keeps news separate from advertising and opinion.[3]
Perplexity says its partnerships, payments and other business arrangements do not affect a site's label, and that a site without a label is not necessarily low quality; it may not have been rated yet.[3]
Perplexity's help pages do not say how it ranks individual pages for a given question, so treat anyone claiming to know its exact ranking formula with caution.
Sources
- How does Perplexity work? (Perplexity Help Center)
- Perplexity crawlers (Perplexity)
- Understanding source labels (Perplexity Help Center)
Numbered points come from these pages, read on 23 October 2026. Lines marked “Our reading” are our interpretation, not the company's words. CiteArtemis isn't affiliated with Perplexity.