Perplexity UX Teardown: Who Is Behind the Citation Chip
A UX teardown of Perplexity's signed-out search: an answer whose citation chips show one domain and a +1, a Sources panel that fits two of ten sources, and a Links tab where three of the first six results sit on display makers' own sites.
Perplexity was asked how OLED and Mini-LED displays compare in a bright living room. It answered in three bullets, and each bullet ends in a small grey chip: "onida +1", "rog.asus +1", "onida +1". Both domains turn out, on the Links tab, to be companies' own sites, onida.com/blog and rog.asus.com. The chips don't say so.
Private search start
The signed-out start state centers one query composer and explains that incognito sessions expire without entering history.
The start page and the mode menu
A heading, "You're incognito", one composer with the placeholder "Type @ for connectors", and a grey line under it saying sessions won't be saved and expire after 24 hours. On the composer sit a Search chip, a Computer chip, a Model menu, a microphone and a round button with a waveform icon.
Opening Search lists four modes. Search is checked. Deep research, Model council (with a "Max" tag) and Learn step by step each carry a padlock, so a signed-out visitor is shown three modes they can't use.
Three bullets, three chips
"Researched 7s" sits above the answer, which is three bullets in a serif face: Mini-LED stays brighter in a bright room, OLED dims on large bright scenes, and a "practical takeaway" that picks Mini-LED for sunny rooms. Each bullet gets one chip at its end, so the chip vouches for the whole sentence rather than for any single claim in it.
A chip holds a shield icon, a shortened domain and a count. "onida" leads the first and third bullets, "rog.asus" the second. The "+1" means a second source, but the capture never opens a chip, so which source that is stays unseen. A reader who doesn't already know the name gets little scent (NN/g on information scent) from "onida" about what kind of page sits behind it. Below the answer come four suggested follow-ups marked with a ↳ arrow, and a pinned "Ask a follow-up" composer.
The Sources panel fits two of ten
The count appears twice on the answer screen: "10 sources" in the row under the answer, and a "Sources 10" card at the top right with a cluster of small favicons.
Opened, the card becomes a panel in the right column while the answer stays put. The panel holds two entries, onida's "QLED vs Mini LED vs OLED" post and an RTINGS comparison whose excerpt is cut off mid-sentence. The remaining eight are out of view inside the panel. Both entries carry the same shield as the chips.
The Links tab
Links sits between Answer and Images at the top of the page. It lays the same research out as a classic results page: "Search results for:" and the question, then rows of favicon, domain, full URL, blue title, snippet and, on five of the six rows, a thumbnail.
Here the full URLs make the sources legible. Of the six rows on screen, three are on manufacturers' sites: onida.com/blog, rog.asus.com and tcl.com's blog. Two are RTINGS pages, one for TVs and one for monitors, and one is The Gadget Flow. Every row has the shield, the vendor pages included. On the answer screen, a vendor's blog and an RTINGS review look the same; telling them apart takes a tab switch.
What we would change on the answer screen
Put a source type next to the domain on each chip, "onida · brand" against "rtings · review", so the answer screen carries what the full URL carries on the Links tab. Show the "+1" as a second domain rather than a count, because nothing on the answer screen names it. List all ten domains with their type in the space the Sources panel already takes, and open one row at a time for the excerpt. If the shield means something narrower than "trusted", label it once where it first appears.
Take it further
We test whether a label tells people what's behind it before they click as part of the UX Clarity framework; a Full UX Audit applies that check to a whole product.
These six screens are from perplexity.ai on 28 September 2026: signed out, Perplexity's incognito mode on, English, 1440×900. One question was asked and answered. No follow-up was sent, the locked modes stayed shut, and the Images tab went unvisited. The answer and source ranking are live output and will come out differently if the question is asked again.
Sources: NN/g — Information Scent.
Does your interface show where a claim comes from on the same screen as the claim? Apply for a Full UX Audit →
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