How Perplexity picks local businesses
Updated October 15, 2026
Perplexity searches the web for each question and builds its answer from what it finds, with numbered links to its sources. So it names businesses that the pages it reads agree on. In our stored answers it named more businesses per answer than any other assistant, about five, and leaned on sites like Thumbtack, BBB, Clutch and Yelp.
How does Perplexity answer a local question?
It runs a search, reads a handful of pages and writes an answer from them, citing each source. That makes it the easiest assistant to study: the sources are right there under the answer.
Perplexity names two crawlers in its docs. PerplexityBot finds pages for its search results; Perplexity-User fetches a page when someone asks about it. If your robots.txt blocks them, Perplexity has less of your own site to work with.
What does Perplexity cite for local businesses?
Across the Perplexity answers we've stored with their sources (9,298 links as of 15 October 2026), the most-cited sites were LinkedIn (508), Thumbtack (396), BBB (370), Clutch (348) and, further down, Yelp (147). Tax-industry sites showed up a lot too, because many of our runs are for accountants.
Those runs are mostly US cities, so the list leans American. In the UK or Australia you'd expect local directories in their place; read the sources under a few answers for your own trade and town to see which.
How many businesses does Perplexity name?
More than the others. Across 1,584 stored Perplexity answers it named at least one business 94.4% of the time and about 5.1 per answer, against roughly 2.7 to 3.4 for the other three. More names per answer means more chances to be one of them.
How do you get named by Perplexity?
Be on the pages it reads, and make your own pages worth citing:
- Look at the sources under answers for your trade and city, and get listed on those sites.
- Keep your profiles on them complete and identical to your website.
- Write a page for each question you want to be named for, with the answer in the first lines.
- Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt.
Check your business for free
Enter your website. We ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity the questions your customers ask and email you who they recommend.
Common questions
Does Perplexity use Google?
Perplexity hasn't published which search index it relies on for every query. What you can see is the list of sources under each answer, which tells you more than the index would.
Why does Perplexity name my competitor's directory profile instead of their site?
Because that's the page it found and trusted for the question. Directory profiles often answer "who's good near here" better than a business's own homepage does.
Which Perplexity model do you test?
Sonar, through the API. Sonar searches the web for each question, as the Perplexity app does.
Does Perplexity work for businesses outside the US?
Yes. It searches for the place in the question. In our London accountant runs it named well over a hundred different firms across 48 questions.