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To check whether Perplexity names your practice, make sure PerplexityBot can read your site, then ask Perplexity the questions your patients ask and record whether each answer names you and cites your pages, because Perplexity answers by searching the web and citing its sources. Curve Compliance's AI Visibility shows how often Perplexity and other AI assistants name and cite your practice for those questions. AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service. This guide covers how Perplexity reads your site and how to track its answers; for the wider playbook on earning citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, see answer engine optimization for healthcare.
Next step. Want to see whether Perplexity names your practice, and which sources it cites when it names someone else? Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.
How Perplexity builds an answer
Perplexity's help center says “When you ask Perplexity a question, it uses advanced AI to search the internet in real-time, gathering insights from top-tier sources.” It lists four steps: understanding your question, searching the web, summarizing, and citing sources, where “Each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources, allowing you to easily verify the information or explore further” (Perplexity Help Center, How does Perplexity work?).
Perplexity calls itself an answer engine: it “serves as an answer engine by searching the web, identifying trusted sources, and synthesizing information into clear, up-to-date responses” (Perplexity Help Center, What is an answer engine?). Its own health example is telling. Asked about the health benefits of yoga, Perplexity will “Scan health and fitness websites, medical journals, and yoga blogs” (Perplexity). Your practice's pages compete with publishers, journals and blogs for the same citation.
PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User
Perplexity's crawler page lists two agents, and they behave differently. Here is each one in Perplexity's words (Perplexity Crawlers):
| Agent | What Perplexity says it does | What that means for your site | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| PerplexityBot | “PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity. It is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.” | “To ensure your site appears in search results, we recommend allowing PerplexityBot in your site's robots.txt file and permitting requests from our published IP ranges listed below.” | Perplexity Crawlers |
| Perplexity-User | “When users ask Perplexity a question, it might visit a web page to help provide an accurate answer and include a link to the page in its response.” | “Since a user requested the fetch, this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt rules.” It “is not used for web crawling or to collect content for training AI foundation models.” | Perplexity Crawlers |
Robots.txt is only half of access. Perplexity adds: “If you're using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to protect your site, you may need to explicitly allow Perplexity's bots to ensure they can access your content.” It recommends you “combine both User-Agent string matching and IP address verification,” and notes that “Cloudflare's Bot Fight Mode can't be skipped with WAF custom rules” (Perplexity). If your site uses strict bot protection, check that the setting meant for bad bots isn't also turning away the one that links to you. For every AI crawler in one place, see which AI crawlers to allow on a healthcare website.
Curve Compliance's AI Visibility checks whether AI search can read your site, and what to fix.
Does Perplexity train on your site?
By Perplexity's own description, no. PerplexityBot “is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models,” and Perplexity-User “is not used for web crawling or to collect content for training AI foundation models” (Perplexity). For Perplexity, allowing its crawler is a question of being found and linked, not of training. Other assistants split this differently, so read how ChatGPT's crawlers work and how Gemini and Claude find pages before you set one rule for all of them.
What Perplexity cites for healthcare questions
Perplexity names its source types: “articles, websites, and journals” (Perplexity). In practice a healthcare answer can mix a health publisher, a forum thread, a directory listing and a clinic page. When you read the answers yourself, three habits help:
- Read the sources behind the practice it names. Open the pages Perplexity cites when it names a competitor. They show what Perplexity found persuasive and where it found it.
- Check the listings that keep appearing. If a directory or health publisher keeps showing up in answers about your services, check whether your practice is listed there and whether the details are current.
- Put your name on pages that are already cited. If Perplexity cites your page but names someone else, make sure your practice name and what you offer are clear near the top of that page.
Perplexity also has a research mode that “performs dozens of searches automatically, reads hundreds of sources” before it writes a report (Perplexity). Each of those searches is a chance for a page to be read. See query fan-out and where AI gets healthcare answers.
Curve Compliance's AI Visibility shows where competitors are named and you aren't, who leads each topic, and which sources AI cites, so you don't have to read every answer by hand.
From Perplexity answers to booked appointments
Being named matters most when it brings a patient. Each Perplexity answer links to its sources, so a patient who wants to book can click straight through to your site. Curve Compliance's AI Visibility ties AI answers, Perplexity's among them, to the visits and bookings they bring you, and it measures what each published piece changes.
If you measure AI referrals elsewhere today, see tracking ChatGPT and Perplexity referrals without GA4 and from AI search traffic to bookings.
How Curve Compliance helps
AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service. AI Visibility shows how often AI assistants, including ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini, name and cite your practice for the questions your patients ask. It shows your mention rate (how often AI answers name you), citation rate (how often they cite your site) and share of voice (your share of the mentions among the brands you compete with), and it turns what it finds into a weekly roadmap sized to what your clinicians can publish, with medical topics flagged for clinical review. Every week you get a plain-language summary of what changed, and a one-page report to share.
With the managed service, Curve's team sets up your questions, competitors and topics, writes the pages on your roadmap, and makes the technical fixes that help AI assistants read your site. Your clinicians review and approve anything medical before it goes live. If your developer manages your site, Curve's team hands them the exact fixes. Each month, Curve's team walks you through your results on a call and sends a one-page report. AI Visibility is available on request: book a call to get started.
In one AI Visibility program we've run, for a HIPAA-focused healthcare software brand, AI assistants named or cited the brand in more than half of their answers to its 40 core buyer questions about five weeks in. Across 184 buyer questions, its site was cited in more AI answers than any competitor's, more than 2.5 times as many as the nearest one.
AI Visibility is built for healthcare: only the marketing question you track is sent to AI assistants, screened for PHI first, and never anything about a patient. Curve is SOC 2 Type II and signs a BAA on every plan.
Sources, checked November 2, 2026: Perplexity, Perplexity Crawlers; Perplexity Help Center, How does Perplexity work?; Perplexity Help Center, What is an answer engine and how does Perplexity work?.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I check whether Perplexity names my practice?
Make sure PerplexityBot can read your site, then ask Perplexity the questions your patients ask and record whether each answer names you and cites your pages. Curve Compliance's AI Visibility shows how often Perplexity and other AI assistants name and cite your practice, and tracks it over time.
How do I show up in Perplexity answers?
Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt and through any firewall, and publish pages that answer the questions patients ask, since Perplexity searches the web and cites its sources. For the playbook across assistants, see answer engine optimization for healthcare.
Does Perplexity train on my website?
Perplexity says no for both of its agents: PerplexityBot “is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models,” and Perplexity-User is not used to collect content for training (Perplexity).
Does blocking PerplexityBot keep me out of Perplexity?
It works against you. Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot “To ensure your site appears in search results.” Separately, Perplexity-User fetches a page when a user asks and “generally ignores robots.txt rules” (Perplexity).
Why does Perplexity cite other sites instead of mine?
Perplexity says it gathers from “authoritative sources like articles, websites, and journals” (Perplexity). Curve Compliance's AI Visibility shows where competitors are named and you aren't, and which sources AI cites, so you can see what to publish.
Can I track Perplexity answers by city?
Yes. Put the city in the question itself, such as best pelvic floor therapist in Tampa, and track one version for each city you serve.
Can I see how many patients come from Perplexity?
Yes. Curve Compliance's AI Visibility ties AI answers, Perplexity's among them, to the visits and bookings they bring you.
Is AI Visibility a Curve feature or a managed service?
Both. You can use AI Visibility as a feature in Curve Compliance, or Curve's team can run it for you as a managed service. AI Visibility is available on request: book a call to get started.
Talk to Curve Compliance
Next step. Want to know whether Perplexity names your practice when patients ask about the care you offer? Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.