How to Improve Your Brand's Visibility on Perplexity AI: The Ultimate GEO Guide

Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine. Instead of showing a list of websites like Google, it gives users direct answers, often using just a few trusted sources.

That means if your brand isn't one of those sources, you're invisible.

The good news?

You can improve your chances of being cited—just like with SEO, but with new rules sometimes called GEO.

This guide will show you step by step how to boost your visibility on Perplexity, get more traffic, and make sure your brand is part of the conversation.

Let's dive in.

How Perplexity AI Actually Works?

Perplexity is not a search engine in the classic sense. It's an AI answer engine.

To do that, it combines two technologies:

1. A Large Language Model (LLM)

Like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, Perplexity is built on top of a foundational AI model (called "Sonar") trained on a massive corpus of text data: books, websites, academic papers, and more. This gives it general knowledge about almost every topic.

2. Real-Time Web Search via RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

Here's where it gets really powerful. Perplexity doesn't just rely on what it has learned during training. It also performs a live web search every time a user submits a query — a process known as RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). This means it can access fresh, up-to-date information and cite actual sources.

According to our findings, the process typically looks like this:

1. The user enters a prompt (a question or request).
2. Perplexity processes the intent and identifies missing information in its internal model.
3. It launches a real-time web search. (on Google from what we know so far)
4. It selects a limited number of trusted sources.
5. It summarizes the information into a readable answer.
6. It cites the original sources under the answer.

What Kind of Sources Does Perplexity Trust?

Based on a study of 32,961 queries across Perplexity, Gemini and ChatGPT Search made by Qwairy, the most commonly cited domains include:

• Youtube — the #1 source
• Official government website
• Comparison Website

In short: You don't optimize for keywords, you optimize to be the best possible answer.

And that's what this guide will help you do — step by step.

Step 1 : Understand the Prompts Users Type in Perplexity

Before you can improve your visibility on Perplexity, you need to know what your audience is asking. Unlike traditional SEO where you optimize for short keywords, Perplexity works with conversational prompts — full questions, often long and specific.

Think:

Why This Matters

Perplexity doesn't rank pages like Google. It builds answers based on relevance to the user's question, and it tends to cite only a few trusted sources. If your content doesn't match the intent and format of those prompts, you'll be invisible.

So your first mission is to identify the right prompts. Here's how 👇

1. Use Qwairy to Generate Real User Prompts

Qwairy is a GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) platform that helps brands identify which prompts users type into LLMs like Perplexity. You can:

• Enter your brand name
• Qwairy will analyze LLMs' perception of your brand
• It will suggest relevant questions and keywords
• It even shows which competitors are currently mentioned (and you're not)

This gives you a starting list of questions to target with your content strategy.

2. Use Google Search Console with Regex Filters

Even though Perplexity doesn't give keyword data, you can use your Google Search Console to find real user questions. Most users ask similar things on Google and Perplexity.

Apply this Regex to your queries:

^(who|what|where|when|why|how|which|can|should)\s

This will show you all the queries starting with questions — great candidates for Perplexity prompts.

You can also use:

^(best|vs|top|cheapest|reviews)

These reveal comparison-style prompts, which LLMs love to answer.

3. Use Perplexity's Own Suggestions

Go to perplexity.ai and type in a basic keyword.

Example:

Type "best CRM for startups" and press enter.

→ You'll get an answer, and underneath, a list of follow-up questions like:

• "What CRM offers the best integrations?"
• "How does HubSpot compare to Zoho?"

These related questions are golden — they're exactly what Perplexity users are clicking next. They reveal intent, framing, and language you should reuse in your own content.

4. Use Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT Suggestions

Other LLMs like Copilot or ChatGPT (especially with web access enabled) can give you prompt ideas too.

Try asking:

Or even:

These tools simulate user behavior and often suggest very natural, high-intent prompts.

5. Add Your Own Business Logic

Don't forget your internal knowledge:

• What questions come up in your sales calls?
• What does your customer support team answer every day?
• What questions perform well in your Google Ads or blog articles?

Many high-performing prompts are hiding in plain sight.

✅ Key Takeaway

You need to build your visibility on real, high-intent prompts — not keywords.

Use Qwairy, regex filters, and the LLMs themselves to reverse-engineer the questions your users care about.

Then, you'll know exactly what to write for.

The future of SEO is topical. You don't optimise for keyword anymore : you build a content media optimise for everything that your client might search on the web.

Step 2 : Identify Your Current Visibility in Perplexity

Once you've identified the prompts your audience is typing, the next step is to measure where your brand currently stands. In traditional SEO, you'd check your Google rankings. In the world of LLMs like Perplexity, the logic is different — but just as measurable.

Your brand can appear in two different ways on Perplexity:

• 🏷️ As a Brand Mention — your name is cited as a product, service, or actor in the response
• 📚 As a Source — one of your webpages is directly linked or cited in the references

To succeed in GEO, you want to track both.

1. Search Your Brand and Products Directly

Start simple: go to perplexity.ai and type:

👉 Look at the answer.

• Are you mentioned?
• Are your competitors mentioned instead?
• Is one of your pages cited below?

If you're not showing up at all, that's a red flag — but also an opportunity.

2. Track Brand Presence with Qwairy

Tools like Qwairy let you automate this process. Here's how it works:

• Qwairy tracks which prompts are most relevant to your brand
• For each prompt, it checks:
  • ✅ If your brand is mentioned
  • ✅ If your site is cited as a source
  • ❌ Or if you are completely absent

It even shows a score of visibility vs your competitors, so you can know exactly:

• Who's winning attention
• Where you're falling short
• What content or domains are outranking you

Here is a video if you want to understand how Qwairy works:

3. Do It Manually If Needed

If you don't use a GEO tool, you can still do it by hand. Here's a simple method:

1. List your most strategic prompts (from section 2)
2. Search them one by one on Perplexity
3. Check:
   • Who is mentioned in the answer?
   • What URLs are cited below the response?
4. Create a spreadsheet:
   • Column A: Prompt
   • Column B: Brand mentioned (Y/N)
   • Column C: URL cited (Y/N)
   • Column D: Competitors mentioned

This might take time, but it gives you full control over the audit.

You can copy paste the following table in your favorite Excel file:

4. Understand the Difference Between Brand and Source Visibility

Let's take an example:

🔍 Prompt: "What is the best drill brand in Europe?"

• If Perplexity says "Bosch, Makita and DeWalt are top choices", then Bosch is mentioned as a brand
• If the article cited is from "bestdrillreviews.com/bosch-vs-makita", then that page is listed as a source

Some prompts will only include brands. Others will only cite articles.

Step 3 - Optimize Your Content for Perplexity Citations

Now that you know the right prompts and where your brand stands, it's time to take action. This is where GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) really starts: shaping your content so Perplexity can find it, understand it, and want to cite it.

Unlike traditional SEO where keyword density or backlinks dominate, GEO is about clarity, authority, and structure. LLMs don't "rank" you — they decide whether your content is useful for answering a question.

Let's break down what works.

1. Make sure you have some content to answer the prompt

This is obviously the first step to optimise for LLM visibility.

If you want to rank for a query you have to answer this query somewhere with a page or with a dedicated passage in a page.

2. Structure Your Content Like an LLM Would Write It

Imagine: When you type a question, perplexity has to search the web and analyse documents in a couple of seconds.

That means your document need to be very easy to digest.

What this means in practice:

• Use clear headers (H2/H3) for each topic
• Write in short paragraphs
• Use bullet points () — 99% of LLM-generated answers use them
• Start answers with a summary sentence, then elaborate

🧠 Example:

This makes it easier for the LLM to quote exactly the portion it needs.

3. Focus on Information Density and Precision

Perplexity doesn't want fluff. It wants useful, fact-based content.

Include:

• Definitions (e.g. "GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization, a strategy to improve visibility on AI search engines.")
• Stats & data (especially from trusted third parties)
• Comparisons (X vs Y is a frequent query style)
• How-to steps and lists

📌 Pro tip: LLMs prefer impersonal and neutral tone — avoid "we believe", "our product", or too much promotional language. Focus on helpful content first.

4. Add Sources and External References in Your Content

LLMs trust content that already cites other sources.

Why? Because they prefer verified, well-contextualized information.

• Link to studies, white papers, or industry benchmarks
• Use factual anchors ("According to a 2024 report by...")
• Include quotes from experts

5. Use Schema Markup and Structured Data (Optional, But Smart)

LLMs like structure — and structured data helps. Add:

• FAQPage schema
• HowTo markup for guides
• Product and Review markup if relevant

This isn't as important for Perplexity as it is for Google, but it does help LLMs parse content more easily when crawling your page.

6. Refresh Old Content With GEO-Optimized Structure

Don't just create new content — rework your best existing articles to match LLM patterns:

• Add summaries and bullet points
• Break long text into clearer sections
• Reframe intros to be more question-based
• Include terms and expressions seen in Perplexity answers

🧠 Example of a great opening:

7. Create "Best X for" content

Perplexity (and LLMs in general) love comparison content. They can transform it easily to make an answer.

A good GEO strategy is creating this content on your website and ranking well with this content so that LLM can use it easily.

This is exactly what tally.so, a free form builder, did: their content Best free online form builders generates 10% of their signup on ChatGPT.

We did a full analyse of their strategy in this video:

Step 4 - Optimize Your Authority via Trusted Sources

You've structured your content. You've aligned it with real prompts.

But if your domain isn't trusted by Perplexity's underlying model — or cited by other trusted sources — you still might not appear.

Like other LLM-based answer engines, it relies on a limited set of highly trusted sources. The model needs to ensure that what it cites is reliable, objective, and easy to summarize.

So how can you become one of those trusted sources — or, at least, get cited by them?

🎯 The Goal: Be the Kind of Source Perplexity Trusts

In the Qwairy study, over 59,000 sources were identified across SearchGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. While the data isn't split by model, strong patterns emerge.

Among the most cited types of websites, we find:

• Wikipedia — due to its structure, neutrality, and topical depth
• Media outlets — especially high-authority news like The Guardian, NYT, Le Monde
• Forums and community platforms — like Reddit or Stack Overflow
• Comparison and review platforms — Trustpilot, G2, Capterra, Avis Vérifiés
• Official or institutional sites — .gov, .edu, NGO pages
• Topical niche experts — highly focused blogs or resource hubs (e.g. for SaaS, finance, law)

1. Get Cited By Trusted Domains

If your domain isn't yet highly authoritative, aim to get mentioned by those that are.

Here's how:

• Publish guest posts on relevant media or expert blogs
• Run industry studies or surveys and pitch them to sector-specific publications
• Get reviewed on aggregators (Capterra, Trustpilot, G2, ProductHunt)
• Be listed in Wikipedia articles or open databases like Wikidata or Crunchbase

Each citation increases your "semantic reputation" — and boosts the chance of being pulled into LLM responses.

2. Improve Your Domain's Trust Signals

Even if you can't change your DA overnight, you can optimize signals that Perplexity and LLMs consider when evaluating a site:

• Add a clear About page with credentials
• Link to third-party references or data
• Keep your privacy policy, contact and legal pages up to date
• Avoid overly promotional language
• Include expert bios or author credibility (especially in YMYL niches)

The more your content looks like it was written for real humans — and reviewed by actual experts — the better.

3. Boost Your Visibility Through Strategic Partnerships

Perplexity may not index your site directly — but it might crawl the site that mentions you.

Tactics:

• Partner with associations or institutions (e.g. professional federations)
• Collaborate with influencers or micro-creators who rank well in your niche
• Sponsor whitepapers, podcasts, or newsletters that already appear in Perplexity citations

These efforts create second-degree exposure: your name is mentioned in a source that's already trusted.

4. Publish Evergreen, High-Trust Content

Certain content types tend to earn more citations:

• Comparisons: "Notion vs Trello — Which Project Tool Wins in 2025?"
• Research: "The State of E-commerce Logistics in Europe"
• Explainers: "What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?"
• Checklists or how-to guides: Practical, step-by-step formats

Make sure your content includes:

• Dates (e.g. "Updated July 2025")
• Data (with citations)
• Conclusions that summarize key takeaways

5. Monitor Which Sources Appear in Your Niche

Use Perplexity regularly to search:

📌 Write down:

• Which domains are consistently cited?
• Which formats are used?
• What tone and structure seems to perform?

This will help you build a "citation map": a view of what Perplexity trusts — and how to become part of that network.

6. Technical Optimization for LLM Bots

1. Make Sure LLMs Can Crawl Your Pages

The first step is ensuring that Perplexity's engine can access your content. Perplexity uses a combination of its own crawling infrastructure and APIs from trusted search providers.

Here's what to check:

• ✅ Your robots.txt allows crawling by LLM agents (e.g. User-agent: *)
• ✅ You're not blocking user agents like GPTBot, CCBot, or PerplexityBot
• ✅ Pages are not hidden behind login, paywalls, or JS-rendered navigation
• ✅ Avoid complex redirects or broken canonical tags

📌 Tip: Use a tool like Qwairy GEO audit to optimise your robots.txt for LLM crawler:

2. Optimize Metadata for Clarity and Intent

LLMs do look at meta information — not to rank you like Google, but to better understand what your page is about.

✅ Best practices:

• Clear and informative <title> tags
• Concise and neutral <meta description>
• Schema where relevant (FAQ, HowTo, Article)
• Avoid keyword stuffing or vague titles ("The Best Ever!" ≠ helpful)

3. Optimize Load Speed and Mobile Rendering

LLMs access your page content similarly to browsers. If a page takes 5 seconds to load or requires JS rendering, it might not get parsed correctly.

📌 Actions to take:

• Use image compression (WebP)
• Avoid heavy JS dependencies
• Implement lazy loading
• Serve a fast, responsive mobile version
• Test your site with tools like PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix

Even though Perplexity doesn't show a visual preview of your site, slow or broken pages are still a barrier to being cited.

4. Monitor Crawl & Visibility Logs Regularly

Use server logs or tools like Qwairy to check:

• Which pages are being accessed by bots
• How frequently they're crawled
• Whether there are crawl errors (e.g. 403, 404, 503)

We offer a special tool on Qwairy to monitor log analysis:

Conclusion

Perplexity AI is reshaping how users search — and how brands get discovered.

Unlike traditional search engines, it doesn't offer dozens of blue links. It chooses just a handful of trusted answers, favoring clarity, authority, and usefulness over everything else.

If your brand isn't part of the answer, you're simply invisible.

But that invisibility is not inevitable.

By applying the GEO principles outlined in this guide, you can:

• 🎯 Identify real prompts your audience types
• 🕵️‍♂️ Measure your brand presence (as a source and a mention)
• 🛠️ Structure your content for LLMs, not just for Google
• 🔗 Build strategic citations and backlinks from trusted sources
• ⚙️ Optimize your site technically for LLM crawlers like PerplexityBot