A post on LinkedIn called attention to Perplexity’s content discovery feed called Discover, which generates content on trending news topics. It praised the feed as a positive example of programmatic SEO, although some said that its days in Google’s search results are numbered. Everyone in that discussion believes those pages are one thing. In fact, they are something else entirely.
Context: Perplexity Discover
Perplexity publishes a Discover feed of trending topics. The page is like a portal to the news of the day, featuring short summaries and links to web pages containing the full summary plus links to the original news reporting.
SEOs have noticed that some of those pages are ranking in Google Search, spurring a viral discussion on LinkedIn.
Perplexity Discover And Programmatic SEO
Programmatic SEO is the use of automation to optimize web content and could also apply to scaled content creation. It can be tricky to pull off well and can result in a poor outcome if not.
A LinkedIn post calling attention to the Perplexity AI-generated Discover feed cited it as an example of programmatic SEO “on steroids.”
They wrote:
“For every trending news topic, it automatically creates a public webpage.
These pages are now showing up in Google Search results.
When clicked, users land on a summary + can ask follow-up questions in the chatbot.
…This is such a good Programmatic SEO tactic put on steroids!”
One of the comments in that discussion hailed the Perplexity pages as an example of good programmatic SEO:
“This is a very bold move by Perplexity. Programmatic SEO at scale, backed by trending topics, is a smart way to capture attention and traffic. The key challenge will be sustainability – Google may see this as thin content or adjust algorithms against it. Still, it shows how AI + SEO is evolving faster than expected.”
Another person agreed:
“SEO has been part of their growth strategy since last year, and it works for them quite well”
The rest of the comments praised Perplexity’s SEO as “bold” and “clever” as well as providing “genuine user value.”
But there were also some that predicted that “Google won’t allow this trend…” and that “Google will nerf it in a few weeks…”
The overall sentiment of Perplexity’s implementation of programmatic SEO was positive.
Except that there is no SEO.
Perplexity Discover Is Not Programmatic SEO
Contrary to what was said in the LinkedIn discussion, Perplexity is not engaging in “programmatic SEO,” nor are they trying to rank in Google.
A peek at the source code of any of the Discover pages shows that the title elements and the meta descriptions are not optimized to rank in search engines.
Screenshot Of A Perplexity Discover Web Page
Every single page created by Perplexity appears to have the exact same title and meta description elements:
Every page contains the same canonical tag:
https://www.perplexity.ai” />
It’s clear that Perplexity’s Discover pages are not optimized for Google Search and that the pages are not created for search engines.
The pages are created for humans.
Given how the Discover pages are not optimized, it’s not a surprise that:
- Every page I tested failed to rank in Google Search.
- It’s clear that Perplexity is engaged in programmatic SEO.
- Perplexity’s Discover pages are not created to rank in Google Search.
- Perplexity’s Discover pages are created specifically for humans.
- If any pages rank in Google, that’s entirely an accident and not by design.
What Is Perplexity Actually Doing?
Perplexity’s Discover pages are examples of something bigger than SEO. They are web pages created for the benefit of users. The fact that no SEO is applied shows that Perplexity is focused on making the Discover pages destinations that users turn to in order to keep in touch with the events of the day.
Perplexity Discover is a user-first web destination created with zero SEO, likely because the goals are more ambitious than depending on Google for traffic.
The Surprising SEO Insight?
It may well be that a good starting point for creating a website and forming a strategy for promoting it lies outside the SEO sandbox. In my experience, I’ve had success creating and promoting outside the standard SEO framework, because SEO strategies are inherently limited: they have one goal, ranking, and miss out on activities that create popularity.
SEO limits how you can promote a site with arbitrary rules such as:
- Don’t obtain links from sites that nofollow their links.
- Don’t get links from sites that have low popularity.
- Offline promotion doesn’t help your site rank.
And here’s the thing: promoting a site with strategies focused on building brand name recognition with an audience tends to create the kinds of user behavior signals that we know Google is looking for.
Check out Perplexity’s Discover at perplexity.ai/discover.
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