Research by BrightEdge shows traffic is surging to Perplexity and where there are opportunities to optimize traffic, especially e-commerce.
What is Paprexity AI?
Perplexity is a self-proclaimed Answer Engine founded by researchers and engineers from OpenAI, Facebook, Quora, Microsoft, and Databricks. It has the backing of many of Silicon Valley's most influential investors and engineers, which has helped propel the company as one of the top innovators in the new wave of AI search engines.
Perplexity includes its own version of a PageRank ranked index. It is a combination of a search engine and a chatbot, with the chatbot part acting as an interface for accepting queries, and the AI part being the backend. However, it retains the functionality of a chatbot in that it can perform tasks such as writing essays.
As you can see below, what sets Perplexity.ai apart from its competitors is that Perplexity shows a ton of citations to your website.
Traffic spike
One of the key insights from BrightEdge's research is that Perplexity.ai's referral traffic has skyrocketed by 40% since January. This shows that the user is interested in trying something different than his usual 10 blue links.
Using our proprietary BrightEdge Generative Parser, we were able to detect AI search experiences that indicate users are comfortable with AI search engines.
The takeaway here is that the search marketing industry is back to where it was more than 20 years ago, when Google first appeared. Me and his other SEO guys were testing which activities were helpful and which weren't.
Most of the searchers arrived at the technology when it was relatively mature and had no idea what it was like to confront the unknown, or even how to do it. The only difference between then and now is that today we know about research papers and patents. At that time, about 2005, he knew nothing.
BrightEdge's report reflects this transition period:
“For marketers who rely on organic search strategies to reach customers, new AI-first search engines like Perplexity and ChatGPT signal a seismic shift in the way brands market and sell their products. However, these AI-driven platforms are new and undergo frequent dynamic changes, making them difficult to track and adapt to.”
In an ad-supported model, organic search results compete with ads for the most valuable search queries, but this is not the case with Perplexity. BrightEdge believes Perplexity is an opportunity for search marketers because it is an ad-free model that sends organic search traffic.
Overlap with Google Search Generative Experience (SGE)
An interesting data point revealed by BrightEdge's research is that there was “significant” overlap between Perplexity's search results and Google's SGE results. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the strongest overlap was for health-related search queries. This is likely due to the limited number of sites eligible to create content on health and medical topics.
But what may sound discouraging is that Reddit shows up for most search query topics except for two YMYL (your money/your life) topics: healthcare and finance. That's it.
Duplicate B2B search results
Another area of overlap with Google's SGE is that Perplexity tends to rank authoritative sites on topics like healthcare and education, as well as reviews and local search sites related to restaurants and travel. Big brands like Yelp and TripAdvisor are his Perplexity winners.
Duplicate travel search results
Yahoo, MarketWatch, and CNN are commonly seen for financial search queries.
With the exception of Wikipedia and Amazon, which both search engines rank for, there is less overlap in e-commerce queries.
According to Bright Edge:
“Google uses Quora and Consumer Reporters for third-party product information, while Perplexity refers to Reddit. Overall, Perplexity is most likely to refer to product sites, but Google SGE will also include information resources such as lifestyle and news sites.”
This is good news for e-commerce sites that sell physical products, and it's actually a bright spot.
BrightEdge says Perplexity enables the following possibilities:
- Perplexity's share of search growth is increasing at a rate of 39% per month.
- Perplexity search results provide an average of 5.28 website citations.
- Perplexity AI shows more citations for travel and restaurant queries than Google SGE.
- BrightEdge encourages search marketers to take advantage of AI-driven search engine optimization opportunities.
Jim Yu, Founder and Executive Chairman of BrightEdge, said:
“Optimizing emerging search platforms is essential for marketers because the impact will be significant: Just 1% of the global organic search market represents approximately $1.2 billion in annual advertising revenue. AI-first engines are steadily gaining ground and carving out a space for themselves, and with so much expertise, mastering multiple search platforms is important for the marketing community.
With too much revenue at stake to be left behind, we closely track the development of these engines and everything in AI search, from traffic trends and queries to quality of results and more. ”
To learn more about Perplexity optimization, visit BrightEdge.
The ultimate guide to complexity
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