B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Current
37%
37% -- citation hallucination rate for Perplexity (2026)
Perplexity hallucinated on 37% of citation tasks, representing the lowest hallucination rate among tested AI search tools.
- Evaluation conducted on eight AI search tools by Columbia Journalism Review
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Lighthouse Research Team
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
37%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2026
Entity
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
75
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
60
Freshness
95
Source
Columbia Journalism Review
Primary
Tier B
https://dont-feed-the-algorithm.beehiiv.com/p/don-t-feed-the-algorithm-issue-041 ↗
Source Article
Don't Feed The Algorithm: Issue 041
🐊 Editor's Note
Hey there,
Welcome back to another Don’t Feed The Algorithm, your weekly dispatch from Averi — where we explore the intersections of marketing, AI and the future of work.
Everything is moving this week. And I mean everything.
1.5 million people quit ChatGPT. Claude went from 42nd on …
Original Research
Columbia Journalism Review
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Columbia Journalism Review tested eight AI search tools on citation accuracy
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Industrymarketing
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Plain Text
Perplexity: 37% citation hallucination rate. Source: Columbia Journalism Review (2026). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/perplexity-citation-hallucination-rate
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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/perplexity-citation-hallucination-rate" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>37%</strong> -- citation hallucination rate for Perplexity<br><small>Source: Columbia Journalism Review (2026) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/perplexity-citation-hallucination-rate" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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