Engine visibility guide
Perplexity access, retrieval, and citation are three separate events.
Perplexity describes a search-first answer product with citations and original-source links. Ready Scan follows the evidence from verified crawler access to ranked retrieval and then to the answer that cites, mentions, recommends, or omits the brand.
If I allow PerplexityBot, will Perplexity start citing my brand?
No. Allowing PerplexityBot and its published IP ranges removes an access barrier and preserves discovery eligibility; it does not guarantee retrieval or citation. Perplexity documents PerplexityBot for surfacing and linking websites, and Perplexity-User for certain user-triggered fetches. Prove visibility only when the owned domain appears in a current ranked result or the completed answer cites, mentions, or recommends the brand for a tracked buyer question. Ready Scan records bot acquisition separately from answer inclusion, and it keeps UI observations separate from API observations because Perplexity says configuration or model differences can produce different outputs.
Follow the evidence from eligibility to citation
A clean Perplexity measurement does not skip stages. Verified crawler access shows that a page was reachable; ranked retrieval shows that the search system selected a result; an answer citation shows that a displayed response linked the page; recommendation evidence shows how the brand was treated against alternatives.
Eligibility
PerplexityBot can access the page under the documented crawler policy. This is an acquisition signal, not answer proof.
Retrieval
The domain or page appears in current ranked search results for the tracked query.
Citation
The completed Perplexity answer links the owned page as a source for the buyer question.
Recommendation
The answer substantively proposes the brand, conditionally recommends it, or places a competitor ahead of it.
Build a Perplexity visibility baseline
Test branded, category, use-case, and competitor-comparison questions. Retain the mention status, recommendation stance, cited domain and page, citation position, competing products, locale, surface, model, and timestamp. The Search API provides controlled ranked-result evidence, while an LLM answer with citations is a different surface; neither may silently replace the consumer answer being scored.
Check whether Perplexity retrieves and cites your brand.
Follow the evidence from crawler eligibility to ranked retrieval, answer citation, and recommendation.