Perplexity

Perplexity matters out of proportion to its user numbers, for one reason: it cites everything, visibly, with links. That makes it the cheapest diagnostic available.

Use it as a test, not just a channel

Ask Perplexity the questions your customers ask. Look at which sources it pulls. If it is citing a directory listing about you rather than your own site, that is a concrete, visible signal that your site is less readable than a third party's summary of it.

No other assistant gives you that feedback for free, and no tracking tool tells you why — it just tells you that you were not mentioned.

What it appears to favour

Two things stand out consistently: freshness and specificity. Pages with a machine-readable date and a direct answer to a narrow question surface more than broad overview pages.

That is inference from observation, not documented behaviour, and it is worth saying so. But it lines up with what the platform is for — people use Perplexity when they want a sourced answer to a specific question.

The blunt version

If you cannot get cited by Perplexity for a question you genuinely have the best answer to, the problem is almost certainly mechanical. Run the free check on that page and look at what fails.

On accuracy. Retrieval architectures change without announcement, and none of these companies publish full details. This page states what is documented, flags what is inferred, and avoids claiming internals nobody outside the company can verify. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.