# Sonar Pro API misses explicit owner on About page, while browser/Space finds it

**URL:** <https://community.perplexity.ai/t/sonar-pro-api-misses-explicit-owner-on-about-page-while-browser-space-finds-it/4192>\
**Category:** Bug Reports\
**Tags:** search-api\
**Created:** [March 20, 2026, 5:37am UTC](https://community.perplexity.ai/t/sonar-pro-api-misses-explicit-owner-on-about-page-while-browser-space-finds-it/4192 "2026-03-20T05:37:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mike\_new](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/97f17d/32.png) [@mike\_new](https://community.perplexity.ai/u/mike_new)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2026, 5:37am UTC](https://community.perplexity.ai/t/sonar-pro-api-misses-explicit-owner-on-about-page-while-browser-space-finds-it/4192/1 "2026-03-20T05:37:45Z")

</div>

109

## **Draft post**

**Title:** Sonar Pro API misses explicit owner on About page, while browser/Space finds it

Hi all,

I’m testing Perplexity for business contact sourcing via API and I’ve hit a consistency issue that looks bigger than prompt tuning.

## **Scenario**

- Target business: `http://www.murwillumbahcombatclub.com.au/`

- Relevant page: `/about`

- Use case: identify business owner/operator and return structured JSON

## **What the browser/Space does**

- In the browser, Perplexity finds the owners correctly.

## **What the API does**

- Using `sonar-pro`, the API returns no owner found.

- The structured output has blank values for:

- It sets `ownerConfidence` to `0`.

## **Why this looks wrong**

The About page explicitly says the business is:

> **“family-owned and operated by locals, Ian McLachlan and wife Gemma”**

So this is not a case where the owner is hidden in some obscure external source. The owner signal is right there on the first-party website.

## **Odd part**

The API output includes the About page in `pages_searched`, but still concludes no owner or proprietor was named on the website.

So it seems the API:

1. found the page,

2. looked at the page,

3. but failed to extract the obvious owner evidence.

## **What I already tested**

- Same/similar prompt as used in browser

- `sonar-pro`

- higher search context setting

- confirmed this is not an n8n parsing issue, because the raw API JSON itself has no owner in it

## **My questions**

1. Is the browser/Space retrieval and extraction path different from the API for this kind of task?

2. Is there a known issue with API extraction pages?

3. Is there a recommended API pattern for ownership/contact sourcing where the owner is named on the target website?

4. Has anyone here seen cases where the API lists the correct page in `pages_searched` but still misses plainly stated facts on that page?

5. Is this a Perplexity Bug?

6. Are there settings I’m missing in the API call?

## **Practical impact**

This matters because for contact sourcing workflows, finding the page is not enough. The API has to reliably extract obvious entity relationships like:

- owner

- founder

- operator

- director

At the moment, this makes the API less reliable than the browser for structured sourcing.

## **Recommendation to Perplexity team**

A good improvement would be:

- stronger first-party page extraction for structured tasks,

- or an API mode that prioritises exact evidence extraction from target pages before broader web synthesis.

Interested to know whether others have hit the same issue.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/sonar1/original/2X/7/7dd44f93e7af3628950d3619c9a24ac85ddb9910.jpeg)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kesku](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.perplexity.ai/kesku/32/898_2.png) [@Kesku](https://community.perplexity.ai/u/Kesku)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 2:40pm UTC](https://community.perplexity.ai/t/sonar-pro-api-misses-explicit-owner-on-about-page-while-browser-space-finds-it/4192/2 "2026-04-07T14:40:37Z")

</div>

Hey @mike_new — good writeup. The difference you are seeing is expected, though understandably frustrating.

When you use Perplexity in the browser, it runs a **multi-step Pro Search** workflow — it actively fetches and reads page content, follows links, and synthesizes information from multiple sources. A standard `sonar-pro` API call does a single-step search and works from snippets in the search index, which may not always include the specific text on an `/about` page.

To get browser-equivalent results via the API, you have two good options:

**Option 1: Agent API with `pro-search` preset** (recommended)

This replicates the browser’s multi-step research behavior:

```python
from perplexity import Perplexity

client = Perplexity()
response = client.responses.create(
    preset="pro-search",
    input="Who owns the business at murwillumbahcombatclub.com.au? Check the About page."
)
print(response.output_text)

```

**Option 2: Agent API with explicit `fetch_url` tool**

If you know the exact page to read:

```python
response = client.responses.create(
    model="openai/gpt-5.1",
    input="Read the About page at http://www.murwillumbahcombatclub.com.au/about and extract the business owner name.",
    tools=[
        {"type": "web_search"},
        {"type": "fetch_url"}
    ]
)

```

The `fetch_url` tool will actually retrieve the page content (like a browser would), so the model can read the owner information directly.

See the [Agent API docs](https://docs.perplexity.ai/docs/agent-api/quickstart) for more on presets and tools.