Measured engine
Perplexity
What we measure about how Perplexity answers cite your site, how we sample it, and the limits of that number.
Citation sampling on Perplexity unlocks on the Starter plan and up, because each sample is a real paid query. See pricing.
What we measure on Perplexity
- Answer Share. A fixed prompt set is run against Perplexity, several samples per prompt. A prompt counts as present only when a strict majority of its samples cite your domain as a source.
- Citation Rate. The share of sampled Perplexity answers that cite your domain at all.
- Owned Citation Share. Of every citation Perplexity returned in the window, the share pointing at a domain you own.
- Average citation position, computed only where Perplexity actually exposes a position.
- Ghost citations. Answers that use your page as a source without naming your brand anywhere in the text.
- Run over run change, claimed only when the 95% interval on the difference excludes zero and Fisher's exact test clears p below 0.05.
How we sample it
Perplexity is not deterministic, so we sample rather than ask once. Every reported share ships with a 95% Wilson score interval and the exact sample size behind it. Below three real samples per prompt the number is labeled provisional, not measured. A run that fails writes no aggregate at all, so a gap stays a gap and never becomes a zero.
What we do not measure here
Stating the limit is the point. A number is only trustworthy next to the boundary of what it does not cover.
- A bare brand mention with no source link. We report it separately and never count it as a citation.
- Referral traffic from Perplexity. We measure whether Perplexity cites you, not how many people clicked through.
- Any engine we did not sample. A Perplexity number is labeled Perplexity and is never generalized to other engines.
The full method, with every denominator and error treatment, lives on how we measure. When another tool shows the vocabulary without the math, hold it up to measured vs asserted.
Every surface we measure
Engines we sample
Crawler families we observe