From Googling to Plexing: Perplexity serves 20 million queries in a single day
AI-powered search app Perplexity records a staggering eightfold surge in daily queries, marking a shift in digital search behaviour.
ADVERTISEMENT
In a remarkable milestone, Perplexity AI witnessed a surge in user engagement, serving 20 million daily queries—a significant leap from the 2.5 million daily queries recorded at the start of the year.
Aravind Srinivas, Cofounder and CEO of Perplexity, highlighted this evolution in consumer behaviour on LinkedIn, coining the term "Plexing" to describe the emerging habit of relying on the platform for queries.
The achievement comes on the back of Perplexity's launch of an AI-powered shopping assistant earlier this year.
Integrated with platforms like Shopify, the assistant enhances the discovery experience by offering real-time and relevant product information across Shopify-powered businesses in the U.S.
Buoyed by its success in the U.S., the company announced plans to expand the shopping assistant to new markets, aiming to further redefine the search experience in e-commerce.
Perplexity also announced in November it is experimenting with advertising. It said to fully deliver on its mission to spark the world’s curiosity, "we need to invest in building not just a beloved product, but a robust and self-sustaining business. That’s why starting this week, we will begin experimenting with ads on Perplexity."
The firm highlighted the content of the answers users receive on Perplexity will not be influenced by advertisers. Ads will appear in the US to start and will be formatted as sponsored follow-up questions and paid media positioned to the side of an answer.
Perplexity said in a blog post, "While brands are keen on understanding how their companies appear in AI answer engines like ours, we will avoid duplicating the SEO industry where people are implementing arbitrary tactics to improve their rankings at the expense of user utility. We would rather give brands a transparent way to advertise through Perplexity that — rather than attempting to manipulate answers — encourages users to express their curiosity about a brand."
Ad programs like this will help the search engine generate revenue to share with publisher partners, it said.
"Experience has taught us that subscriptions alone do not generate enough revenue to create a sustainable revenue-sharing program. Especially given how rapidly our publisher program is growing, advertising is the best way to ensure a steady and scalable revenue stream," it added.
