Does Perplexity recommend your product?

Perplexity is the easiest engine to work on, because it shows its homework. Every answer carries inline citations, so the pages that decided the recommendation are listed right there. Check by asking your category's buying questions on a schedule and reading the citation list, not by asking once and hoping.

How does Perplexity answer "what should I use for X"?

Perplexity is search first. It runs queries, retrieves a set of pages, and writes a short answer from what those pages say, with a numbered citation after almost every claim. It is not mostly recalling training data the way an offline chat answer does, which is why a new product can appear in its answers within weeks of the right pages existing.

The follow up questions matter too. A buyer rarely stops at the first answer. They ask "which is cheapest" or "which works for a small team", and each follow up runs a fresh retrieval that can name a different winner.

What sources does Perplexity cite?

Whatever ranks and reads like an answer. Comparison posts, roundups, documentation, pricing pages, news, and community threads. Forum discussions do unusually well because they contain plain statements of preference, the sentence "we switched from A to B because of C" is exactly what the summarizer wants.

Two consequences. First, an AI citation is worth more than a ranking, since the cited page shapes the sentence the buyer reads. Second, being absent from the three roundups it keeps citing is usually the whole problem, and that is fixable.

How to check whether Perplexity recommends your product

Write down the questions your buyers actually ask, in their words. Oetzi asks each tracked question to Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Google AI on a schedule, shows who was named instead of you, and lists the threads and pages each answer cited. Two credits per question across all five engines, and the first check runs during setup.

Watching one engine by hand is possible. The reason to automate is drift, since the answer moves as the retrieved pages move, and you want the trend rather than one screenshot from a Tuesday.

What actually moves the Perplexity answer

Get into the pages it cites. When the citation list is the same four roundups every week, the work is being included in those roundups on honest terms, which usually means having a page that states what you cost and who you are not for.

Be in the threads. Perplexity cites forum conversations often, so answering the what do you use threads on Reddit and Hacker News while they are live puts your name inside a future source. Reddit monitoring is how you find those while they still have replies.

Name yourself consistently. One product name, one category phrase beside it, on every page you control. Retrieval matches phrasing, so a product described five different ways is harder to retrieve than one described the same way everywhere.

Questions

Does Perplexity always search the web?

Its answers are built around retrieval, and it shows the sources it used as inline citations. That makes it the most responsive of the five engines to new pages and new threads, and the most transparent about why it recommended what it recommended. If you want to know what to fix, read the citation list under an answer that names your competitor.

How do I get cited by Perplexity?

Be on the pages it already cites for your category, and make your own pages answer the question directly. Comparison content that states pricing, limits, and who the product suits gets pulled more often than a homepage. Forum threads count, so a useful reply in a live recommendation thread can end up inside the sources of future answers.

How often should I check my share of model?

Weekly is enough for most founders, since the underlying pages do not change daily and you want a trend rather than noise. Check more often around a launch, a pricing change, or a competitor's funding news. Oetzi runs the check on the cadence you set and keeps the history so you can see whether a month of work moved anything.