How do I tell if our site is being ignored by Perplexity?

There isn’t a guaranteed public “ignored/not ignored” flag from Perplexity, so the practical way is to test whether your pages are discoverable, retrievable, and cited in Perplexity answers.

What to check

1) Search your site in Perplexity directly

Try queries that should strongly match your site:

• site:yourdomain.com
• exact brand name
• key product/page titles
• unique phrases from a page

If Perplexity can’t find or cite pages that are clearly indexed elsewhere, that’s a signal.

2) See whether Perplexity cites your domain

Ask questions where your site should be a top source:

• “What does [your company] offer?”
• “How does [your product] work?”
• “What are the specs/features of [your model/page topic]?”

Look for:

• citations to your domain
• whether it quotes/uses your page content
• whether it prefers competitors or unrelated sources

No citations doesn’t always mean ignored, but repeated absence across many relevant queries is a warning sign.

3) Test with unique content

Use pages with:

• unique product names
• unique terminology
• long-tail questions your site answers best
• content that’s not mirrored elsewhere

If those pages never appear, it may be a retrieval/indexing issue.

4) Check if the page is accessible to crawlers

Make sure you’re not blocking AI/search crawlers accidentally:

• robots.txt
• meta robots tags (noindex, nofollow)
• canonical tags pointing elsewhere
• login walls / geo-blocking / JS rendering issues
• bot protections or WAF rules

If Perplexity can’t fetch the page, it may act like the site doesn’t exist.

5) Compare against other search engines

If Google/Bing can surface and cache the page but Perplexity never does, the issue may be:

• Perplexity’s retrieval coverage
• how the page is structured
• lack of authoritative signals
• crawling/access restrictions

6) Look for indirect evidence in server logs

If you control server logs, check for crawler access from Perplexity-related user agents or traffic patterns. This won’t prove inclusion in answers, but it can tell you whether they’re visiting your pages.

A simple diagnostic workflow

1. Pick 10 important pages.
2. Create 10 queries that should trigger each page.
3. Run them in Perplexity.
4. Record:
   • whether your domain appears
   • whether the correct page is cited
   • whether the content is accurate
5. Repeat after fixing crawl/index issues.

Common reasons a site seems “ignored”

• content is thin or not clearly answerable
• pages are hard to crawl/render
• strong technical blocks (robots, noindex, WAF)
• canonicalization issues
• low authority/low external references
• content duplicated elsewhere
• query intent is better satisfied by more authoritative sources

If you want a stronger answer

If you share:

• your domain
• 3–5 target pages
• the kinds of queries you expect Perplexity to answer

…I can help you build a quick test matrix and identify likely crawl/indexing issues.