Imagine a customer looking for a new standing desk. A year ago, they'd go to Google, type "best standing desk 2025," click through a few listicles, compare prices on Amazon, and eventually buy something.
Today, that same customer opens Perplexity, types the same question, and gets a curated answer with specific product recommendations, prices, reviews, and buy links. All in one response. No clicking through ten tabs. No scrolling past ads.
Perplexity just compressed the entire product discovery process into a single interaction. And if your product isn't in that answer, you don't exist in this customer's journey.
What Perplexity Shopping actually is
Perplexity launched its shopping features as a natural extension of its answer engine. When a user asks a product-related question, Perplexity doesn't just list options. It researches them in real time, pulling from product pages, reviews, comparison sites, and editorial content.
The result is a synthesized recommendation that includes product names, key features, price comparisons, pros and cons, and direct purchase links. For the user, it's like having a knowledgeable friend who's already done all the research.
Perplexity also introduced visual product cards, showing images, ratings, and pricing in a clean format. Some queries even trigger "Buy with Perplexity" options, where the platform facilitates the purchase directly.
This isn't a search engine with shopping results bolted on. It's a fundamentally different approach to product discovery, one where AI does the filtering and the user just decides.
How this differs from Google Shopping
Google Shopping has been around for years, and it works on a fundamentally different model. Merchants pay for placement. Google shows product listing ads alongside organic results. The user sees a grid of options sorted by relevance and bid price.
The problem for users: they know some results are ads. Trust is lower. The experience requires clicking through multiple listings to compare. It's functional, but it's not effortless.
Perplexity's approach removes the ad layer (for now). Recommendations are based on the AI's synthesis of available information, not on who paid more. Users perceive this as more trustworthy because it feels like genuine advice rather than sponsored content.
For brands, the implications are significant. In Google Shopping, you can buy your way to visibility. In Perplexity Shopping, you have to earn it through product quality, reviews, and third-party credibility.
What Perplexity uses to make recommendations
Perplexity's shopping recommendations draw from multiple sources. Understanding what feeds the AI helps you figure out how to influence it.
Editorial reviews carry weight. When publications like Wirecutter, TechRadar, or niche industry blogs review your product favorably, Perplexity picks up on that signal. The AI trusts sources that have done rigorous testing and comparison.
User reviews on platforms like Amazon, G2, and Trustpilot also factor in. Perplexity synthesizes the sentiment across these reviews to form its recommendation. A product with thousands of positive reviews gets more confident recommendations than one with a handful.
Your own product pages matter too, but differently than you might expect. Perplexity isn't looking at your SEO optimization. It's looking at how clearly you describe your product, what specific features and specifications you list, and how your pricing compares to alternatives.
Comparison content is particularly valuable. Articles that pit your product against competitors, written by third parties, give the AI a framework for understanding where your product fits. "Product A is better for X, Product B is better for Y" is exactly the kind of structured information AI loves to work with.
The new surface area for visibility
For e-commerce brands and product companies, Perplexity Shopping creates a new channel you probably aren't tracking.
Think about how many product-related queries happen every day. "Best running shoes for flat feet." "Most reliable wireless earbuds under $100." "What CRM should I use for a small agency?" Each of these queries is a potential customer, and Perplexity is answering them with specific product recommendations.
If your product shows up in these answers, you're getting visibility at the exact moment of buying intent. Not awareness-stage visibility. Not consideration-stage visibility. Decision-stage visibility. The highest-value touchpoint in the funnel.
And because Perplexity is growing rapidly, these queries are multiplying. The platform reported over 15 million monthly queries related to products and shopping. That's a meaningful audience, especially when you consider how high-intent these users are.
Impact on e-commerce strategy
If you're running an e-commerce brand, this changes how you think about discoverability.
Traditionally, product visibility meant SEO, paid ads, and marketplace optimization (Amazon, Shopify, etc.). You controlled most of these channels directly. Pay more, get more visibility. Optimize your listing, rank higher.
In Perplexity Shopping, you can't directly control your placement. The AI decides. Your leverage comes from building the signals the AI trusts: strong reviews, editorial coverage, clear product information, and competitive pricing.
This means your PR and content strategy suddenly has a direct line to product sales. That Wirecutter review you've been chasing isn't just for backlinks anymore. It's training data for AI product recommendations.
Similarly, your review strategy matters more. Encouraging genuine customer reviews on relevant platforms doesn't just help your Amazon ranking. It feeds the AI systems that are increasingly driving product discovery.
What service businesses should pay attention to
This isn't just about physical products. Service businesses and SaaS companies are also affected.
When someone asks Perplexity "What's the best email marketing tool for small businesses?" the platform pulls from the same types of sources: reviews, comparison articles, editorial coverage, and product pages. Service businesses that have invested in their digital presence, built third-party credibility, and maintained clear positioning will show up.
The mechanism is the same. The AI synthesizes available information and makes a recommendation. Your job is to make sure the available information works in your favor.
Tracking your Perplexity visibility
You can manually check by running product queries on Perplexity and seeing if you show up. But that's not scalable, and it only gives you a snapshot.
Systematic tracking across AI platforms, Perplexity included, gives you a real picture of where you stand. Tools like Mentionable track whether AI platforms recommend you for relevant queries, so you can see your visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and others in one place.
Without tracking, you're guessing. And in a channel this new, guessing means missing opportunities your competitors might already be capturing.
What to do about it
Audit your review presence. Are you well-reviewed on the platforms that matter for your industry? If not, that's your first priority.
Invest in getting third-party coverage. Editorial mentions, comparison articles, and industry reviews feed the AI's recommendation engine. This is the new SEO, except instead of building backlinks for Google, you're building credibility signals for AI.
Make your product information crystal clear. Specifications, pricing, use cases, and differentiators should be easy for any system, human or AI, to parse.
And start paying attention to this channel. Product discovery is shifting, and the brands that recognize it early will capture demand that their competitors are still looking for on Google.
