Tracking 47 Reddit comments through Perplexity citation rails

Short summary

Over six weeks, a team tracked 47 Reddit contributions to measure Perplexity citations, achieving a 13% durable hit rate. Citations correlated with subreddit quality, moderation, and content specificity (numbers, named tools)—but not upvote counts. The core finding: Reddit citations in AI search engines reflect existing community authority, making them difficult to engineer at scale without crossing ethical lines.

• •Tracked 47 Reddit comments over 6 weeks; 13% consistently appeared in Perplexity citation rails
• •Citations correlated with subreddit quality/moderation and specific content (numbers, named tools), NOT upvotes
• •Ethical contribution > algorithmic gaming; community authority is the upstream filter

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.