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How does Perplexity choose its sources?

Short answer

Perplexity chooses sources in three stages: (1) query rewriting expands your question into multiple sub-queries, (2) retrieval fetches pages from its crawler plus third-party search indexes, (3) a passage scorer ranks each page by relevance, entity match, and citation-worthiness. The top 3-5 passages become citations.

Stage one is query rewriting. Perplexity's planner turns your one question into 3-5 sub-queries that cover different angles. This is why Perplexity often cites niche pages your Google-only research would miss — the sub-queries surface long-tail matches.

Stage two is retrieval. Perplexity runs its own PerplexityBot crawler, but also queries external search indexes (Google, Bing, others depending on region) for extra recall. The union of these results becomes the candidate pool for scoring.

Stage three is passage scoring. Each candidate page is chunked into passages; each passage is scored on relevance to the sub-query, entity alignment, freshness, and structural clarity (headings, schema, definitions). The top 3-5 passages get quoted, and their source URLs appear in the citation bar.

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Frequently asked

Does Perplexity have its own crawler?›

Yes. PerplexityBot crawls the open web. Sites that block it lose eligibility for citations regardless of Google/Bing rank.

How do I optimise for the passage scorer?›

Definition-first paragraphs, question-shaped H2s, FAQPage schema, and dense entity anchoring. See our /answers/how-to-rank-on-perplexity guide.

Does Perplexity favour recent content?›

For time-sensitive queries, yes — freshness is one of the scoring factors. For evergreen queries, structure and authority matter more.

Can I see why Perplexity picked a specific source?›

No user-facing reason is shown, but the citation quote reveals the passage the scorer selected. Analyse that passage's shape and replicate it.

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