You asked Perplexity a question about your industry. The answer lists a few brands with source links next to them. Neither your brand nor your site is there. In this article we explain how Perplexity reaches sites, why your brand may not be showing up, and what to check for each cause. If you are curious about the causes on the ChatGPT side, our article Why doesn't ChatGPT recommend my brand? is a separate guide.
How does Perplexity reach sites?
In its crawler documentation, Perplexity defines two separate user agents:
- PerplexityBot: used to show and link to sites in Perplexity search results. According to the documentation, it does not crawl content for training foundation AI models. Perplexity recommends that sites that want to appear in search results allow this bot in robots.txt.
- Perplexity-User: may visit pages when a user asks a question in Perplexity. Because the user starts the action, this agent generally ignores robots.txt rules. According to the documentation, this agent also does not collect content for web crawling or model training.
The key point here: Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot in order to appear in search results. So the first thing to check is whether this bot can access your site.
1. Can PerplexityBot access your site?
The first place to look is your robots.txt file. Add /robots.txt to the end of your site's address, open the file and check:
- Is there a Disallow line for PerplexityBot?
- Is there a general block under "User-agent: *" that shuts out all bots?
- Is only Googlebot allowed while other bots are blocked?
Even if robots.txt looks clean, you may not be done. A security plugin, hosting company or CDN can stop bot traffic with its own setting. Perplexity publishes the IP addresses PerplexityBot uses in a separate list. If your firewall blocks these addresses, this list can be used to write an allow rule.
Do not expect results right after the change. According to Perplexity's documentation, it can take up to 24 hours for changes to be reflected in its systems.
2. Are you on the pages Perplexity reads?
Perplexity shows source links next to its answers. This makes things much easier: you can see directly which pages the engine reads.
In answers that mention your competitors, look at the sources one by one. A common finding is that these sources are "best X" style list pages, industry guides or comparison articles. If your competitors are on these pages and you are not, the engine mentions them.
An Ahrefs study of ChatGPT shows that such lists make up 43.8 percent of cited source links. This study looked at ChatGPT, not Perplexity. We have not seen a source that confirms a similar share for Perplexity. But you can check for yourself which pages Perplexity cites in your own category by looking at its answers. We explained how to get onto these lists in How do you get on "best companies" lists?.
3. Does your page answer the question being asked?
Perplexity builds its answer from pages it finds on the web and links to those pages. If your site has no section that directly answers the buyer's question, your page may not be chosen as a source.
To check, read your own service page as an outsider would:
- Does the first paragraph say what you do, who you serve and where you are?
- Are the questions buyers often ask there as subheadings, with a short, clear answer below each?
- Is important information inside images, or written as text?
When you fix the text, use only the services you actually offer and the information you actually have. Adding numbers you do not have or claims that cannot be verified backfires.
4. Is your brand name the same everywhere?
Perplexity collects information from different pages. If your brand appears under one name on your site and under another name, or with a different service description, on external profiles, the engine may not be able to connect this information to the same brand. Describing your brand name, category and service area with the same sentences on your site and your external profiles reduces this problem.
Can you decide based on a single answer?
No. AI answers change even for the same question. A study SparkToro published in January 2026 looked at ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI features. According to the study, in ChatGPT and Google's AI, the chance of the same brand list appearing in two answers is below one percent. This study does not cover Perplexity. Still, the same caution applies to Perplexity: not appearing once does not mean you never appear.
The right method is to ask the questions your buyers ask as a fixed list at regular intervals, and to track the results for each engine separately.
Which questions should you ask in Perplexity?
When you check your own position, setting up the questions correctly matters as much as the result itself:
- Do not put your brand name in the question. A question like "Is brand X good?" tells you nothing about visibility.
- Use the sentences a buyer would actually type, such as "Companies offering X service in Izmir" or "Which brand should I choose for X?"
- Mix different intents: comparison, price, location and use-case questions.
- Ask the same questions to ChatGPT and Gemini too. If you are missing only in Perplexity, the cause is most likely specific to Perplexity.
Which cause applies to you, and how can you tell?
This order works well:
- Measure first. See which questions you are not mentioned in on Perplexity, and compare with ChatGPT and Gemini.
- If you never appear only in Perplexity, check PerplexityBot access first.
- If access is clean, look at the pages cited as sources in the answers. If there are list pages and you are not on them, the work is outside your site.
- If your own pages are never cited as sources, go back to your page text.
- After making changes, measure again with the same question list.
No tool or agency can guarantee that Perplexity will mention you. What you can do is measure your position honestly and take the steps that raise your chances of being recommended, one by one.
AIShortlist asks the questions you approve to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity separately and shows the results by engine. The Sources screen shows the pages the engines cite and the lists your brand is missing from, and the Site screen shows whether AI bots, including PerplexityBot, are blocked. You can run a 10-question measurement with the free trial. No card is required.