As Australian SMEs increasingly focus on search visibility, understanding how your website performs on emerging platforms like Perplexity is crucial. Perplexity isn’t a traditional search engine; it’s an ‘answer engine’ powered by artificial intelligence. This means it directly answers user questions, often sourcing information from multiple websites. Appearing in these answers – and therefore driving qualified traffic – is a significant conversion opportunity.

So, how do we check if Perplexity is including your website in its responses? It’s a little different to checking Google rankings. Here’s a practical approach:

• Formulate Specific Questions: Think about the exact questions your ideal customers are asking that your website answers. Don’t just search for keywords; phrase them as complete questions. For example, instead of “small business loans”, try “what are the best small business loans in Australia?”.
• Use Perplexity Directly: Go to perplexity.com and enter those questions. Carefully review the responses. Perplexity clearly cites its sources. Look for your website listed within those citations.
• Check Multiple Variations: Perplexity’s results can vary based on phrasing. Try several different ways of asking the same question to get a comprehensive view.
• Focus on ‘Focus’ Results: Perplexity often provides a ‘Focus’ result – a concise answer. Even if your site isn’t in the initial ‘Focus’ answer, it might be in the supporting sources listed below. This is still valuable visibility.

It’s important to understand that Perplexity prioritises authoritative and well-structured content. If your website isn’t appearing, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s being penalised. It likely means the AI hasn’t identified your content as a strong answer to relevant questions. This is where optimising for ‘answer intent’ becomes vital. We need to ensure your content directly and comprehensively addresses user queries.

Regularly checking Perplexity, and refining your content strategy based on the results, will become increasingly important. As AI-powered answer engines gain traction, they’ll represent a growing share of search traffic. The next step is to analyse the questions Perplexity *isn’t* answering with your content, and create new resources to fill those gaps. This proactive approach will position your business for success in the evolving search landscape.