Perplexity Brand Tracker — Perplexity API & AI Citations

Ask Perplexity the questions your buyers ask, and find out whether it recommends you, ignores you, or sends them to a competitor.

Perplexity answers every question with a live web search and a numbered source list. That makes it the single clearest signal of whether your content is winning AI citations — there is no ambiguity about where the answer came from, because Perplexity shows you.

This Actor runs any list of prompts, then reports for each one: the full answer, every cited source, whether your brand was named, whether your domain was cited, and how you stack up against a competitor set.

What you get per prompt

Field	What it tells you
answer_text	Perplexity's complete answer
brand_mentioned + brand_mention_count	Whether you were named, and how often
brand_position_score	How early you appear, bucketed 1–10 (1 = opening sentence)
brand_context	The exact sentence around your first mention — how you were described
share_of_voice_pct	Your mentions as a share of you + all named competitors
competitor_mentions	Per-competitor mention counts in the same answer
brand_cited + brand_cited_urls	Whether your pages were cited as sources
citations	Every source: title, URL, domain

The run summary adds your overall mention rate, citation rate, and a ranked table of the domains Perplexity cites most across your prompt set — the publications you need to be in.

Named vs cited

Two different problems, reported separately:

• Named — the answer text says "HubSpot". The buyer reads your name.
• Cited — hubspot.com appears in the sources. The buyer can click through to you.

Being named without being cited means Perplexity knows you but sends the click elsewhere. Being cited without being named means your page fed the answer while a competitor got the credit. You need both, and most tools only measure one.

Use cases

• GEO / AEO monitoring — a weekly record of whether Perplexity still recommends you.
• Share of voice — quantify your presence against a named competitor set, prompt by prompt.
• Citation gap analysis — see which domains win the citations you are missing.
• Digital PR targeting — the top cited domains table is a ranked outreach list.
• Messaging audit — brand_context shows the words Perplexity uses to describe you.
• Client reporting — dated, exportable AI-visibility evidence for retainers.

Pricing

Pay per event. No monthly fee, no setup fee, no minimum.

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.001 per run
Prompt check	$0.02 per prompt

A 25-prompt weekly check costs $0.501.

Perplexity performs a live web search on every single answer, which is what makes its citations trustworthy — and also what makes it the most expensive answer engine to query. If you want a cheaper baseline, our ChatGPT Brand Tracker starts at $0.005 per prompt, and our Google AI Overview Tracker covers Google's AI answers at $0.008 per query.

Input example

{
  "prompts": [
    "What are the best CRM tools for a small business?",
    "Is HubSpot worth the price for a 20 person sales team?"
  ],
  "brandName": "HubSpot",
  "brandDomains": ["hubspot.com"],
  "competitorNames": ["Salesforce", "Zoho", "Pipedrive"],
  "competitorDomains": ["salesforce.com", "zoho.com"]
}

Output example

{
  "prompt": "What are the best CRM tools for a small business?",
  "answered": true,
  "brand_mentioned": true,
  "brand_mention_count": 4,
  "brand_position_score": 1,
  "brand_context": "...For most small businesses, HubSpot is the strongest starting point because its free tier...",
  "share_of_voice_pct": 44.4,
  "competitor_mentions": [{ "name": "Zoho", "count": 3 }, { "name": "Pipedrive", "count": 2 }],
  "brand_cited": true,
  "citation_count": 20,
  "cited_domains": ["fitsmallbusiness.com", "hubspot.com", "g2.com", "forbes.com"],
  "checked_at": "2026-08-23T09:14:00.000Z"
}

FAQ

Do I need a Perplexity API key? No. Everything is handled for you — add prompts and run.

Are these real Perplexity answers? Yes. Every prompt is sent live and the answer and its sources come back as generated, not simulated or scraped from a cache.

Why do answers change between runs? Because Perplexity re-searches the web each time. That variance is the signal — track it weekly rather than reading a single run as fact.

Do I have to supply a brand? No. Leave the brand fields empty and you still get every answer and its full citation list.

Can I export it? Yes — JSON, CSV, Excel, or via the Apify API into n8n, Make or Zapier.

Track every AI surface

Each Actor in this family covers one AI surface deliberately, so you only pay for the check you need:

• Google AI Overview Tracker — does Google's AI Overview cite you for your keywords?
• Google AI Mode Tracker — Google's conversational AI tab, tracked the same way.
• ChatGPT Brand Tracker — does ChatGPT recommend you? Optional web-grounded mode with sources.
• AI Citation Gap Finder — which domains Google's AI cites across your whole keyword set, and where competitors are cited but you are not.
• AI Rank Tracker Pro — every platform in one run, with share-of-voice reports across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI.

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Tags: perplexity, perplexity api, perplexity seo, ai seo tool, llm seo, aeo tool, ai search optimization, ai search visibility, ai visibility, brand visibility, brand monitoring, GEO, AEO, generative engine optimization, answer engine optimization, ai citations, share of voice, llm monitoring, ai search