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Which sources does Perplexity cite for B2B software?

Perplexity shows its sources on every answer, which makes it the most auditable AI engine. Yet the published studies on what it cites disagree. Here is what is documented, what was measured, and how to read it for a software category.

·6 min read·By the ZivRank team

What Perplexity documents

Perplexity retrieves pages live, cites them with numbered links, and uses a declared crawler, PerplexityBot, to surface sites.

  • Perplexity’s help center states: “Each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources” [2].
  • PerplexityBot “is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity” and “is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models” [1].
  • Perplexity-User, which fetches pages when a user asks, “generally ignores robots.txt rules” [1].

Crawler behavior has been disputed: in August 2025 Cloudflare accused Perplexity of using undeclared crawlers to bypass no-crawl rules [8], and Perplexity replied that Cloudflare had confused its traffic with a third-party service [9].

What studies found on cited domains

Three large studies, three different pictures. The disagreement comes from what is counted, when, and on which questions.

StudyScopeWhat it found for Perplexity
Profound, 2025 [3]Citations collected Aug 2024 to Jun 2025, all topicsReddit 6.6% of citations, then YouTube 2.0%, Gartner 1.0%
Ahrefs, June 2025 [4]Brand Radar, “mention share”, all topicsYouTube and Wikipedia on top; Reddit outside the top 10
Semrush, Nov 2025 [5]230,000+ prompts over 13 weeksReddit, LinkedIn, NIH, Microsoft and Google as top sources; Wikipedia at 0.8%

None of these is specific to B2B software. One smaller 2026 study did look at software discovery questions through the Perplexity and OpenAI APIs: Reddit was cited 11 times, by Perplexity only [6]. On review platforms, a Profound representative told G2 that for Perplexity, close to 75% of cited reviews come from G2 [7] (a vendor statement without a published sample).

How to read this for your category

Market-wide averages do not tell you which pages Perplexity cites for your buying questions. Measuring them directly does.

  • Run your own questions. Perplexity’s visible sources make it simple to list the domains it reuses for each question.
  • Group by intent. Discovery questions (“best tools for…”) and evaluation questions (“X vs Y”, “X pricing”) often pull different sources.
  • Look for the pages, not just the domains. “Reddit” is millions of threads; the one thread that answers your category is what matters.
  • Re-check regularly. Cited sources change from month to month on every engine (see why one AI answer is not a measurement).

What moved Perplexity in our case study

For a US B2B SaaS vendor, we produced and placed a small number of assets built for the client’s buying questions, then re-measured with the same protocol. Answers naming the client on Perplexity went from 21 to 50 out of 250 per measurement, the largest change of the four assistants. Read the case study.

Frequently asked questions

How does Perplexity choose its sources?
Perplexity retrieves web pages in real time for each question and links its answer to numbered sources. It does not publish a ranking formula. Its crawler, PerplexityBot, must be able to reach your pages for them to be surfaced.
Does Perplexity cite Reddit a lot?
Some studies rank Reddit as Perplexity’s most cited domain (Profound, Semrush), while Ahrefs did not find it in Perplexity’s top 10. The difference comes from method and time window. Check your own questions rather than relying on a market-wide average.
Should I allow PerplexityBot?
If you want to appear in Perplexity answers, yes. Perplexity states that PerplexityBot surfaces and links websites in its results and is not used to train AI foundation models.
Why measure Perplexity separately from ChatGPT?
Because they cite different sources and react differently to the same content. In our case study, Perplexity moved the most while ChatGPT stayed flat.

Sources

Every figure in this article comes from the sources below, checked on October 11, 2026. Bracketed numbers in the text refer to this list.

  1. [1] Perplexity, Perplexity Crawlers, undated, checked October 11, 2026.
  2. [2] Perplexity Help Center, How does Perplexity work?, undated, checked October 11, 2026.
  3. [3] Profound (Nick Lafferty), AI Platform Citation Patterns, June 5, 2025, updated August 2025.
  4. [4] Ahrefs (Patrick Stox), The 10 Most Mentioned Domains for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews Across 78.6M Searches, June 11, 2025.
  5. [5] Semrush (Luke Harsel), The Most-Cited Domains in AI: A 3-Month Study, November 10, 2025.
  6. [6] Growfusely (Pratik Dholakiya), I Analyzed 1,739 AI Citations. Here’s What ChatGPT and Perplexity Actually Cite, July 28, 2026.
  7. [7] G2 Learn Hub (Kamaljeet Kalsi), Does G2 Get Ranked in AI LLM Search?, November 5, 2025.
  8. [8] Cloudflare, Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade website no-crawl directives, August 4, 2025.
  9. [9] Perplexity, Agents or Bots? Making Sense of AI on the Open Web, August 4, 2025.