Perplexity Comet Is Free Worldwide: The Answer Engine Playbook for Growth

Comet goes free and discovery shifts to answers\n\nPerplexity has made its Comet AI browser free for all users globally. The move pushes AI-first browsing into the mainstream and changes how people discover products and content. Instead of ten blue links, users receive contextual answers, suggested actions, and in-line tasks that move them down the funnel faster. Early coverage confirms the new free access and positions Comet as a direct challenge to traditional habits in Comet available to everyone for free.\n\n## From blue links to direct answers\n\nAI-first browsers compress steps. A typical search-to-purchase flow used to look like this: query, skim results, click a link, skim a page, refine the query, compare options, then add to cart. In an AI browser, the flow becomes: query, read a synthesized answer that cites multiple sources, accept a suggested path, and complete the action in fewer clicks.\n\nWhen discovery shifts to answers, the primary surface that influences behavior is no longer a search results page. It is an answer page. In Comet, that answer can appear alongside a sidecar assistant that clarifies intent, compares options, or launches a task. This still leads to clicks, but the user’s mental model is different. The answer, not the publisher’s page, is the first draft of truth.\n\nFor growth leaders, that means two things. First, your content strategy must produce answer-ready facts, not just SEO-rich pages. Second, your conversion strategy must assume that an assistant will guide the user through the last mile, from comparison to checkout. For adjacent tactics, see the Chrome AI Mode playbook, the ChatGPT instant checkout pilot, and the Apple Visual Intelligence guide.\n\n## What changes for acquisition, content, and conversion\n\n- Acquisition: Ranking for keywords remains useful, but answer inclusion becomes critical. You want your brand cited in the assistant’s response and your link offered as the recommended next step.\n- Content: Article length matters less than factual clarity, freshness, and structured context. Content that resolves intent in a few sentences will outperform content that buries the lede.\n- Conversion: Conversational pathways appear inside the browser. Expect assistants to prefill forms, jump to filtered product lists, and start carts. Your job is to make those handoffs easy and observable.\n\n## Pilot 1: Answer Page Optimization (APO)\n\nSearch engine optimization will not disappear, but answer page optimization is the new frontier. The objective is simple: increase your brand’s share of authoritative answers.\n\n### 1) Structure for extraction\n- Add concise, source-ready statements at the top of key pages, under 60 words, that directly answer common queries. Lead with the policy or fact, then elaborate below.\n- Use schema.org markup for products, FAQs, how-tos, and reviews. Include availability, shipping times, and pricing.\n- Keep headlines and subheads literal. Assistants parse clarity, not cleverness.\n\n### 2) Cite and be citeable\n- Place your strongest statistics and differentiators alongside clear sourcing. If you commission a study, summarize the methodology in plain language on the same page.\n- Timestamp and version your content. AI systems weight recency on time-sensitive queries.\n\n### 3) Write for comparison prompts\n- Add short comparison tables that place your product next to two common alternatives. Include clear pros and cons. Assistants often mirror this structure in answers.\n\n### 4) Optimize canonical pages for brand-defining queries\n- If a user asks, "Is Brand X good for beginners," ensure your About or Guide page has a two-sentence, beginner-focused answer at the top.\n- Consolidate duplicative posts that confuse intent. One canonical answer page per critical query beats five overlapping posts.\n\n### 5) Instrument your answer surface coverage\n- Maintain a tracked list of 50 high-intent questions. Weekly, sample answers in Comet and note whether your brand appears, is cited, is recommended, and whether the link is present. Store snapshots and trend them.\n\n## Pilot 2: Conversational shopping inside the browser\n\nAI browsers do more than summarize. They propose next actions. Treat Comet as a storefront that can create highly targeted micro-journeys:\n\n### 1) Deep links that match assistant intent\n- Create linkable, pre-filtered product collections aligned to common prompts like "best running shoes for flat feet under $150." The page should auto-apply filters and load in under 2 seconds. Keep stable URLs so assistants can surface them.\n\n### 2) Cart-ready actions\n- Support add-to-cart links and prefilled checkout links for top bundles. Keep these links stable and documented. Assistants can present them when users express firm purchase intent.\n\n### 3) Conversational FAQs on product pages\n- Rework product detail pages so the top 300 pixels include three to five plain-English Q&A blocks, each with a 40 to 70 word answer. These are easy for assistants to lift and cite.\n\n### 4) Lightweight comparison and return assurance\n- Place refund windows, shipping cutoff times, and fit guides as short, extractable statements near the price box. That reduces friction when the assistant summarizes tradeoffs.\n\n### 5) Real-time inventory and delivery windows\n- Expose stock and ETA in structured data. If you can reliably present "arrives by Friday," assistants will use it as a tie-breaker.\n\n## The new KPI: Share of Answers and Assisted Checkouts\n\nIntroduce one umbrella KPI and two sub-metrics:\n\n- Share of Answers (SoA): Percentage of sampled AI answers for your priority questions that cite or recommend your brand. SoA = answers_with_your_brand / total_answers_sampled.\n- Answer-to-Click Rate (A2C): Among answers that cite you, the percentage that drive a click to your site.\n- Assisted Checkout Share (ACS): Percentage of checkouts where an AI browser or assistant is detected as contributing to the session that completed payment.\n\nWhy these matter:\n- SoA reflects top-of-funnel visibility when answers drive discovery.\n- A2C shows whether your content is compelling enough to win the click from the assistant surface.\n- ACS proves commercial impact and helps budget content and engineering work that improves assistant compatibility.\n\n## How to measure Share of Answers without full click data\n\n- Weekly manual sampling: For a fixed question set, ask Comet the same queries and log whether your brand is cited or recommended. Track at least 50 queries.\n- User agent and referrer detection: Tag sessions that originate from AI browsers. Maintain an allowlist of user agents and referrers that map to Comet and similar tools. Update monthly.\n- Session notes in research: Encourage support or sales to ask "what helped you decide" and tag mentions of an AI assistant.\n- Controlled experiments: Run geo or time-based changes to answer pages, then observe SoA change in your weekly sampling.\n- Post-purchase survey: Add a one-question checkout survey with two options that matter, "I used an AI assistant" and "I compared options in an AI browser."\n\n## Instrumentation checklist for Assisted Checkout Share\n\n- Create a new analytics dimension, Origin Assistant, with values like Comet, other AI browser, unknown assistant.\n- Fire an event on checkout start and checkout complete that includes Origin Assistant, Completion Method, and whether a prefilled checkout or add-to-cart link was used.\n- Define Assisted Checkout Share as checkouts with Origin Assistant not null divided by total checkouts, reported weekly.\n- Set guardrails. If ACS rises but return rate jumps, investigate whether assistants are over-qualifying price or shipping speed.\n\n## Content changes that lift Share of Answers quickly\n\n- Lead with the answer. Each key page should open with a one-paragraph, factual summary that resolves the user’s intent.\n- Timestamp and version claims. Include an updated-on date and a one-line change log for policy pages and essential guides.\n- Publish real comparisons. Side-by-side tables with verifiable tradeoffs travel well into assistant responses.\n- Offer clean product feeds. Include brand, model, size attributes, and delivery windows.\n- Tighten internal linking. Make canonical answers easy to find.\n\n## Features to expect as Comet scales\n\nPerplexity positions Comet as a personal assistant inside the browser, with unified search, context, and automation cues such as form filling and suggested actions. You can review the current experience in the Comet product overview and download.\n\nAs these capabilities grow, expect assistants to propose sensible defaults, such as the right filter set for your category or the most common configuration for a product bundle. Your metadata, not just your copy, will increasingly decide whether you get surfaced.\n\n## Governance, brand safety, and compliance\n\n- Transparency: Make claims that can be verified in a single click. If your claim is vague or untraceable, you lose the comparison by default.\n- Consent and tracking: Respect user consent banners. Avoid hidden fingerprinting to detect AI browsers. Rely on declared user agents, referrers, and user-provided survey data where needed.\n- Returns and CX: Conversational shopping can over-accelerate purchases. Monitor refunds, support tickets, and negative reviews as closely as ACS. If friction rises, add fit notes, compatibility details, and delivery caveats to assistant-ready copy.\n\n## A practical 30-day rollout plan\n\nWeek 1\n- Pick 50 high-intent questions and define your baseline SoA and A2C with manual sampling in Comet.\n- Identify 10 pages to refactor around answer-first principles. Draft new 60-word intros and three Q&A blocks per page.\n- Map deep linkable collections for your top three categories and create stable URLs.\n\nWeek 2\n- Add structured data to the 10 pages and verify markup health.\n- Produce two comparison tables for key decision points. Include pros and cons.\n- Instrument Origin Assistant and assisted checkout events in your analytics stack. Test user agent detection for Comet.\n\nWeek 3\n- Ship add-to-cart and prefilled checkout links for your top five bundles. Place them on pages where assistants are likely to land users.\n- Update refund and shipping statements to be short, specific, and extractable.\n- Train support to ask a single attribution question about assistants in post-chat or post-purchase moments.\n\nWeek 4\n- Re-run your 50-question sample and record new SoA and A2C. Compare to baseline.\n- Review ACS and returns. If returns rise, adjust copy and filters surfaced in answer pages.\n- Plan the next 10 pages for APO and expand your deep-link library.\n\n## Teams and tools that make this easier\n\n- Content and SEO co-own answer page optimization. Add a shared KPI, Share of Answers, to both teams’ scorecards.\n- Product and analytics co-own Assisted Checkout Share. Tie it to quarterly growth goals.\n- Legal and brand pre-approve answer-ready claims to publish faster with fewer revisions.\n- Research manages weekly sampling and publishes a short update with screenshots of wins and losses.\n\n## The bottom line\n\nComet going free accelerates a shift that was already underway. Discovery is moving to answers, and assistants are guiding the last mile. Treat answer pages as the new top-of-funnel surface and conversational shopping as the new mid-funnel. Ship APO and conversational shopping pilots now, then measure impact with SoA, A2C, and ACS. If you can raise Share of Answers, sustain a healthy Answer-to-Click rate, and grow Assisted Checkout Share without spiking returns, you are building for an AI-first web rather than fighting it.\n\n## Next steps for this week\n\n- Confirm your 50-question list and run your first Comet sampling.\n- Identify 10 pages for answer-first refactors and assign owners.\n- Implement assisted checkout tracking in your analytics stack and validate data quality.\n- Publish your baseline SoA, A2C, and ACS, then communicate next month’s targets.\n