Perplexity AI: What It Says About You and How to Correct It

Perplexity AI is an AI-powered answer engine: you ask a question, it searches the web, and it writes an answer with numbered citations linking to the pages it used. When someone asks Perplexity about you or your business, those citations show you exactly which pages are shaping your reputation there. You can’t edit Perplexity’s answers, but you can report inaccurate ones and, more usefully, correct or outweigh the pages it cites.

This guide covers Perplexity specifically. For the general approach across all AI assistants, see our guide to managing your reputation in AI search.

How Perplexity AI works

Perplexity is built around live web search. For most questions it looks up current pages, reads them, and writes a summary with numbered references you can click. Users can ask follow-up questions, and Perplexity keeps the context of the conversation, running new searches as the questions change.

That design has two consequences for anyone worried about what it says about them:

• It is more transparent than most assistants. Because nearly every statement is tied to a numbered source, you can usually see where a claim came from.
• It depends heavily on what’s findable right now. A single well-ranking page, forum thread or complaint listing can dominate an answer about a small business or a private person, simply because there isn’t much else.

Perplexity uses its own crawler, PerplexityBot, alongside other search technology. If your site blocks PerplexityBot in robots.txt, Perplexity may be less able to cite your own pages, which leaves other sites to describe you.

What Perplexity says about people and businesses

A question like “What is [business] and is it trustworthy?” usually produces a short overview of what the business does, where it operates, what reviews say and any notable complaints, each with citations. For a person, it tends to list professional roles, companies, public appearances and news mentions.

Common problems in answers like these:

• Complaint sites punching above their weight. When few sources exist, a single post on a consumer complaint site can become a sentence in the answer.
• Old pages presented as current. A 2018 press release or an archived team page can be cited as if it reflects today.
• Name confusion. Two people or businesses with similar names can be merged, especially if one of them has more coverage.
• Misreading a source. Occasionally a citation doesn’t actually support the sentence attached to it. That’s a form of AI hallucination, and it’s worth checking every citation.

How to check what Perplexity says about you

1. Start signed out or in a private window. This keeps your own history and settings out of the test.
2. Ask the questions a customer or employer would. “Who is [full name]?”, “What does [business] do?”, “Is [business] legit?”, “[business] reviews and complaints”, “[business] vs [competitor]” and “Best [service] in [city].”
3. Follow up. Ask “Any lawsuits or controversies?” and “What do former employees say?” The second and third answers often surface different sources.
4. Record the answer and every citation. Screenshot the answer, note the date and exact question, and copy each cited URL into a spreadsheet.
5. Check each citation against its sentence. Open the page and confirm it says what Perplexity attributes to it. Mark each as supported, misread, outdated or about someone else.
6. Repeat. Run the same questions a few times and on different days. Note which sources keep coming back, because those are your priority.

The spreadsheet of cited URLs is the most valuable output. It is, in effect, a ranked list of the pages that shape your reputation in Perplexity, and it often overlaps with what ranks for your name in Google.

How to correct wrong information in Perplexity

Report the answer

Perplexity answers have feedback options. Use them on the specific answer and say briefly what’s wrong and what’s correct, with a link to a reliable source. Like every AI feedback tool, this helps the company improve answers, but it isn’t a promise that the answer will change for others.

Fix or update the cited pages

Because Perplexity searches live, fixing a cited page is often the fastest route to a better answer. Work through your citation spreadsheet:

1. Your own pages. Update outdated About, team and service pages. Make sure dates, names, locations and ownership are stated plainly.
2. Profiles you control. LinkedIn, business listings, industry directories and social bios should all match.
3. Third-party pages. Ask for corrections with evidence. For press coverage, our guide to requesting a correction or retraction explains how to approach editors.
4. Forum and complaint posts. Report posts that break the site’s rules, and reply publicly and factually where replies are allowed. Our guide on removing a Reddit post covers what Reddit will and won’t take down.

Check that Perplexity can read your site

Look at your robots.txt file, or ask your developer to. If PerplexityBot is blocked, decide whether that’s intentional. Blocking AI crawlers is a legitimate choice for some publishers, but for a business worried about its reputation, it usually means the answer is written from other people’s pages.

Add sources that answer the real question

If Perplexity keeps citing a complaint page for “Is [business] legit?”, the web lacks a better answer to that question. A factual FAQ on your site, current reviews on the platforms your customers use, and independent coverage all give Perplexity more to cite. Consistent entity information, including schema markup and profiles on trusted databases, helps it tell you apart from similar names.

A worked example

This is an illustrative scenario, not a real client. “Juniper Lane Botanicals” sells skincare online. Asked “Is Juniper Lane Botanicals legit?”, Perplexity cites three sources: the brand’s own shipping page, a complaint-site post calling it a scam over a delayed order, and a blog post about a different company called Juniper Botanics that was the subject of an FTC complaint.

1. The owner reports the answer, explaining that the FTC matter concerns a different company, with a link to the brand’s official About page.
2. The About page gets a clear founding story, the legal business name, contact details and a line stating that the brand has no connection to Juniper Botanics.
3. The owner posts a calm reply to the complaint-site entry explaining the delay and how the order was resolved, without sharing personal details.
4. The brand adds a “Shipping delays and returns” FAQ, and keeps inviting every buyer to leave a review on the independent review platform it uses.

A few weeks later, Perplexity’s answer for the same question cites the About page and the review platform, and the unrelated FTC mention no longer appears. The complaint-site post still shows up occasionally, now alongside the brand’s reply. That’s the realistic target: an accurate, balanced answer, not a perfect one.

What you can’t control

There’s no way to pay Perplexity for a better answer or to opt your name out of its results. It will also cite accurate negative coverage if that coverage is relevant. In that case, the work is adding context and building stronger current sources, which is also what moves ordinary search results. Our search result suppression service focuses on exactly that.

If Perplexity repeats something false and damaging from a specific page, the problem is usually that page. For serious false statements of fact, talk to a lawyer about your options against the original publisher.

Common mistakes

• Not opening the citations. The answer text is only a summary. The fix is in the pages.
• Arguing in the chat. Telling Perplexity it’s wrong in your own conversation won’t change what others see.
• Blocking the crawler, then complaining about the answer. If Perplexity can’t read your site, it can’t cite you.
• Posting fake reviews or sockpuppet replies. These break platform rules and the FTC’s 2024 rule on fake reviews, and they tend to become the next cited source.
• Testing once. Answers vary. Patterns across several tests matter more than a single bad result.

Frequently asked questions

Where does Perplexity AI get its information about me?

Mostly from live web search. It reads pages it finds relevant, such as your website, profiles, reviews, news and forums, and cites them with numbered links. That makes it easier than many assistants to trace a claim back to its source.

Can I ask Perplexity to remove information about me?

You can report an inaccurate answer through its feedback options, and you can review Perplexity’s privacy policy for how to make a request about your personal data. Removing or correcting the source pages is usually more effective, because the answer is built from them.

How quickly will Perplexity reflect a corrected page?

It depends on when the page is next crawled and whether other sources still carry the old information. Because Perplexity searches live, updates can show up faster than in assistants that rely on training data, but there is no fixed timeline.

Is Perplexity more accurate than other AI assistants?

Not necessarily, but it is more transparent. Its citations let you check each claim. It can still misread sources or merge similar names, so verify every citation rather than trusting the summary.