Most AI engines treat citations as a footnote. Perplexity put them front and centre. Every answer shows its sources, ranked, hyperlinked, and tagged by domain. The user can see exactly which brands and publishers shaped the response.
That single design choice has had outsized effects. Among the professionals we talk to — solicitors, accountants, procurement leads, technical buyers — Perplexity has quietly become the default vendor-research tool. They use it not just for the answer, but for the trail of sources behind the answer. They click through. They notice which brands keep appearing across the citation list. They form opinions before any vendor outreach has happened.
For brands, the implications are sharp. Perplexity rewards content that is genuinely citation-worthy. It pulls disproportionately from sources with clear authorship, fresh dates, structured data, and definitive language. A brand that publishes thoughtful, attributed material consistently — including third-party publications — appears in Perplexity citation lists at a rate well above its sheer SEO ranking would suggest.
The audience is also more valuable than the absolute numbers imply. Perplexity volume is a fraction of ChatGPT's. But Perplexity users are deeper into their research process, more often professional, and more often near a purchase decision. Citation share on Perplexity correlates with inbound enquiry quality at most B2B clients we work with.
If you are evaluating where to invest GEO effort across engines, Perplexity is the highest-leverage second choice after Google AI Overviews. It is small enough to be winnable. It is influential enough to matter.