How to Get Cited by Perplexity for B2B Software Queries

Perplexity shows its work. Every answer comes with numbered citations, and the API returns the search results behind them with a URL, a title, and a date for each. That makes it the most legible of the four engines the AI Shortlist Index tracks, and the one where the age and shape of a page count for the most. This page covers how the sonar model picks what it cites for a property-ops software question, what the Index has and does not have on it yet, and what a vendor should do first.

How Perplexity picks sources

Perplexity’s API documentation describes the sonar models as search-first. A request runs a web search, the model writes from what was retrieved, and the response returns two fields alongside the text: citations, the URLs the answer rests on, and search_results, each with a url, a title, and a date. There is no answer without retrieval on sonar. A vendor that is not in the retrieved set has no route into the answer.

The same documentation lists the controls a developer can set on that retrieval: search_recency_filter (day, week, month, year), date-range filters, search_domain_filter for allowing or blocking domains, and search_context_size inside web_search_options. The Index sets none of them. It calls default sonar, US, unpersonalized, so the answer is what a property manager with nothing configured would see. The filters still matter to a vendor, because they show what the retrieval layer knows about a page: when it was published or updated, and what domain it lives on. Perplexity’s documentation attaches a date to every search result and offers recency filtering as a first-class option, which is why we treat freshness as a stronger signal on this engine than on ChatGPT or Gemini.

Perplexity’s help center documents PerplexityBot as its crawler and says a site has to allow it for pages to surface in answers. A robots.txt rule written for a different bot two years ago can cut a vendor out of this engine entirely.

The September 2026 edition records no Perplexity runs; the engine is marked missing and carries no mention rate for any vendor. What the Index does have is one ChatGPT run in the maintenance category, which is useful as a picture of what any retrieval-first engine finds when it searches for a 300-door maintenance question. That run, captured through the OpenAI API on 3 September 2026 before ChatGPT capture moved to the app, consulted 124 pages: reddit.com threads (38), appfolio.com (16), buildium.com (12), then vendor sites and a handful of listicles on buildium.com, lula.life, ustechautomations.com, and essentify.ai. Our hypothesis is that Perplexity’s citations for the same prompt draw from the same pool, weighted toward pages carrying a recent date, and that the cited set is much smaller than the consulted set. The October edition will confirm or correct that.

Sonar does not fall back on what the model remembers about your company. To be in the answer you have to be in the search results for the query the model ran, and then you have to be the passage it can quote.

What that implies you should do, in order

First, be retrievable. Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt, confirm your pricing, integrations, and comparison pages return their text without JavaScript, and check that the canonical on each one points at itself. If the retrieval layer cannot open the page, nothing below this matters.

Second, put a real date on every page that answers a buying question and keep it true. Pricing, integrations, “for property managers with 300 doors”, “alternatives to” pages. Sonar returns a date with every search result. An undated page, or one whose visible date is 2023, competes at a disadvantage against a page carrying this year’s date when Perplexity’s own filters treat recency as a selectable signal. Updating the date without updating the content is a short-lived trick; update the pricing table and the integration list, then the date.

Third, shape the page so one passage answers the question. The prompt library is written the way a PM asks: mvn-int-01 is “Which maintenance coordination software integrates with AppFolio?” and mvn-prob-02 describes tenants calling about non-emergencies at 2am and asks which services handle after-hours triage. The page that gets cited for the first one has a heading with AppFolio in it and a first paragraph that says, in one sentence, that your product integrates with AppFolio and what the integration does. The page that gets cited for the second names after-hours coverage in the first hundred words and says what it costs. A retrieval-first model quotes the passage that answers the question and skips the page that opens with a paragraph about your mission.

Fourth, be on the third-party pages a search for those queries returns. In the maintenance category that meant reddit.com threads in r/PropertyManagement and r/PptyMgmtSoftware, PMS blog roundups on buildium.com, PMS marketplace and help-center pages, and category pages on g2.com and capterra.com. The category source map is the targeting list; it will show Perplexity’s own citations once the runs exist, and until then it shows the ChatGPT set.

Fifth, own the comparisons. mvn-cmp-01 is “Property Meld vs Latchel: which is better for a property management company with about 600 doors?” and mvn-alt-03 is “What are the alternatives to Lula for finding maintenance vendors as a property manager?” A retrieval-first engine searching for those quotes whichever page answers them with a table and a date. If that page is on a competitor’s domain, the competitor wrote your entry.

Sixth, measure by URL, not by feel. Because the API returns the cited URL, you can check whether the citation that carried your mention was your page, a competitor’s comparison, or a listicle where you appear seventh. Those are three different positions with three different fixes. The Index reports them separately, and so does the Audit.

What the Audit finds

The Shortlist Audit is $3,500 and takes seven days. It runs the full 25-prompt set for your category across all four engines and delivers your position, plainly; the cause, as ranked findings labeled verified, inferred, or hypothesis with evidence links; the source gap, meaning which of the top ten cited sources in your category you are absent from; a 90-day fix scoped to a Sprint; and what we won’t promise, which is rankings, traffic, leads, or revenue. If we can’t name the cause, you don’t pay for implementation.

On the Perplexity column the Audit reads every URL the answer rested on, run by run, resolves which vendor each one supports, and checks the date the retrieval layer saw for it. A vendor whose own pages carry the mention has a different problem from one who only appears through a third party’s roundup, and the fix is scoped accordingly. If you want to talk before requesting anything, book a 20-minute call.

The mechanism in more depth, including what changes when Perplexity changes models, is in the methodology guide for Perplexity citations. The other three engines have their own pages: getting your software named by ChatGPT, appearing in Google AI Overviews, and getting into Gemini’s grounded answers. All of it rolls up to the Shortlist practice page.