Key Takeaways
- Perplexity gives real-time, citation-backed answers using multiple LLMs.
- It’s growing fast and competing with Google’s AI summaries.
- Coalition leaders say SEO isn’t dead. Visibility, structure, and quality content still drive results.
- AI doesn’t replace strategy. It rewards the people doing it right.
Table of Contents
What is Perplexity?
Perplexity AI launched in December 2022. It was started by Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski. Instead of blue links, it gives direct answers, includes citations, and keeps the conversation going if you ask follow-up questions. It runs on a mix of models like GPT-4.1, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and their in-house Sonar.
The aim of Perplexity is not to offer an AI chatbot with search. Its to create a conversational search experience.
FAQs
Should businesses pivot away from SEO?
No, not at all. Web pages and content still need to be SEO-optimized for Perplexity (and other LLMs) to find them. Otherwise, content won’t be discoverable by search engines and AI.
How does Perplexity decide what to serve?
The responses Perplexity generates are based on an algorithm that considers the credibility, authority, and structure of the content (similar to Google’s E-E-A-T).
What should Brands do to ensure they appear in AI searches?
Focus on improving the site structure and making sure the content featured on the site is organized, crawlable, and adds authority to the site.
How Perplexity Search Works
Perplexity crawls the live web, pulls the best info it can find, and summarizes it with links to sources. That’s a break from how most chatbots work. They usually guess an answer from what they were trained on, and you don’t get to see where the info came from.
Their model is built on what they call conversation plus citation. In theory, Perplexity gives you the context and the credibility at the same time. That combination helps users trust the output and also dig deeper if they want.
Where Perplexity is Going
As of June 2025, Perplexity is estimated to be handling about 30 million searches a day. That’s more than 780 million queries a month. The company’s valuation is close to $14 billion. They’re based in San Francisco and have 700 employees.
They’ve been growing more than 20 percent month over month. That kind of pace means they’re getting attention, not just from users, but from potential partners and investors too.
Why Perplexity Matters
There’s a lot of noise about AI making SEO irrelevant. Joel Gross, my brother and co-founder was direct on that point:
LLMs can only summarize what’s already visible. If your content isn’t showing up in the right places … AI won’t know you exist.
That’s not just true for Perplexity. It applies to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and every other LLM that uses web data.
Jordan Brannon made the same case in a recent Coalition Tech newsletter update. He pointed out that AI search isn’t replacing the need for strategy. It’s reshaping how strategy works. Brands showing up in Perplexity results are the ones already doing the right things. That means crawlability, structured content, authority, and multi-platform visibility.
AI search demands visibility across platforms like Apple, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.
The real needle mover for Perplexity would be if it can land an exclusive partnership with, or even acquisition by Apple. Apple dominates the mobile browser market in the US and has ceded valuable real estate to Google (for a valuable consideration). Today, Perplexity represents less than <1% of all traffic to Coalition clients (over 300). But it has gained slightly more market share in the past 12 months. But, Safari runs nearly half of all traffic to our clients in the same time period (24 million sessions out of 62 million sessions), despite mainly being dominant on mobile.
What Coalition Sees
We’ve had clients asking if they should pivot away from SEO. The short answer is no. The long answer is that search is evolving, not disappearing.
Perplexity and tools like it still need something to summarize. They’re not inventing content. They’re compressing what’s already out there. If your site structure is a mess, or if your content is buried three clicks deep, you’re invisible to users and to AI.
That’s why Coalition hasn’t changed its core strategy. We’re still focused on SEO, PPC, email, and strong content because those things are what AI tools look at. If you’re already showing up in Google, you’re probably in Perplexity too. If you’re not, it’s time to fix that. Reach out to the experts at Coalition today and get a free strategy review!
Next Up
We’ll break down what a rumored Apple and Perplexity deal could mean, how Perplexity decides what to show, and what actions brands should take now to future-proof their visibility.
