Step 1: Query Understanding
The AI analyzes your question to determine intent, identify key concepts, and formulate optimized search queries.
Step 2: Web Search
Optimized queries are sent to Perplexity's search index, pulling back dozens of potentially relevant web pages.
Step 3: Source Evaluation
Each result is assessed for relevance, authority, recency, and content quality. Low quality pages are filtered out.
Step 4: AI Synthesis
The AI reads the top sources, extracts the most relevant information, and composes a coherent, natural language answer.
Step 5: Citation
Every claim is linked to its source with a numbered reference you can click to verify the original page.
| Perplexity | Google Search | ChatGPT | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Output format | Direct answer with inline citations | Ranked list of web page links | Conversational answer (citations optional) |
| Source transparency | Every claim cited with clickable link | You choose which links to click | Web search citations when activated |
| Data freshness | Real time web search on every query | Real time (Google's index) | Training data by default; web search when triggered |
| User effort | Read one synthesized answer | Click through and read multiple pages | Read one answer, verify if needed |
| Best for | Research with verified sources | Broad exploration and discovery | Creative tasks, coding, general conversation |
Why citations matter
Citations are not just a nice feature; they are the foundation of trust in AI search. Because AI models can occasionally misinterpret or misrepresent information (a phenomenon known as "hallucination"), clickable citations let you verify every claim against the original source. If a citation does not support the claim, you know to dig deeper.