AI Search

What Is Perplexity?

Definition

An AI-first search engine that answers queries with generated responses supported by inline citations to web sources, positioned as an alternative to traditional search engines.

Why It Matters

Perplexity has become the go-to AI search tool for many researchers, professionals, and students. Its answers always include citations, which means content that is cited earns both brand visibility and referral traffic. Unlike Google, Perplexity's click-through behaviour favours cited sources rather than top-ranked links.

How It Works

Perplexity uses its own crawler (PerplexityBot) plus partnerships with search APIs to retrieve web content. When a user asks a question, Perplexity retrieves relevant sources, generates a conversational answer, and shows each cited source as a numbered reference. Its ranking emphasises factual clarity, recency, and source diversity.

Real-World Example

A Perth digital agency's blog post on "Core Web Vitals benchmarks for Australian e-commerce" is cited by Perplexity for similar queries. The agency sees 80–120 Perplexity referral visits per month — a channel invisible to Google Analytics before mid-2024.